Experiencing a "Runaway takeoff" During Drone's First Flight

Misbehaviors

If the settings, such as propellers and motor direction of the drone, are incorrect, the following situations usually occur:

1. After pushing the throttle, the drone cannot be controlled at all, and flips directly;

2. Or it quickly flies into the air (and the drone will automatically stop its motor).

The most obvious phenomenon is seeing a prompt for "Runaway Takeoff" at the end of the black box file.

Basic Inspection

1. Motor Director

Please face the drone head forward and shake the drone in different directions to check if the 3D model in the Betaflight Setup page will also have the same shaking.

If the direction of motion of the model is different from the actual drone's motion, it indicates that there is an error in setting the gyroscope direction.

Please reset the gyroscope direction on the Configuration page.

 

2. Motor Order

Please rotate each motor in order on the Motors page of Betaflight (when rotating the motor, please make sure that the propeller has been removed), and check if the sequence of motors is correct.

When the drone head is facing forward, the sequence of motor rotation is as follows (please make sure to remove the propeller when rotating the motor).

Usually, when reverse-installing the ESC or flight controller (with a power cable in front), it is necessary to re-order the motors.

If the motor sequence is incorrect, you can use the "Reorder Motors" function on the betaflight Motors page to rearrange the motors.

3. Motor Direction:

Please rotate each motor in order on the Motors page of Betaflight (when rotating the motor, please make sure that the propeller has been removed), and check if the direction of rotation matches what is displayed on Betaflight.

The order of the motor can be changed through the "Motor direction" function.

Note that when the motor rotates externally (when all four motors rotate in the opposite direction), you need to enable the "Motor direction is reversed" option. This option will affect the mixed control logic of the motor.

4. Direction of the Propellers

Please check Oscar Liang's blog:

How to Choose Propeller for Mini Quad

Please pay special attention to the following two sections:

Two Different Propeller Directions
Installing Propellers the Correct Way

You can determine the direction of a prop by finding its leading edge. The propeller should rotate to the taller leading edge in order to generate downward thrust. They are also often labeled CW or CCW on the blade :)

Uncommon Causes that Can Arise

1. With the analog ESC protocol, throttle calibration is needed.

When using an ESC protocol other than Dshot (such as Oneshot, Multishot), it is necessary to calibrate the throttle range of the ESCs (Dshot protocol does not require calibration).

When the ESC range is not calibrated, there will be significant differences in motor speeds when all four motors are simultaneously rotated in Betaflight Configurator. (even the throttle required for individual motors to start rotating can far exceed that of other motors.) 

The calibration method can be referred to in this article.：https://oscarliang.com/how-to-calibrate-esc/

2. The parameters of the four ESCs are inconsistent.

Connect the ESC to BLHeli_s, and check if the firmware version and settings of the ESC are consistent.

How to connect 32bit ESC to BLHeli_32.

How to connect 8-bit ESC to BLHeli_Suite.