Betaflight LED strip layout

The grid is a picture of the craft, not a picture of the wire. You drop an LED on a cell so you can see that the front-left of the quad is the LED you think it is. The flight controller does not read that picture as a coordinate of the airframe. It reads the list. The first used entry is the first LED on the data wire, the second entry is the next LED, and so on.

X and Y each use four bits, which is why the grid is 16 by 16 and not a free drawing. Two LEDs can share a story about facing even when they sit in different cells. Facing is a separate mask: Front, Right, Back, Left, Up and Down. Flight-mode colour uses that facing, so a front LED and a back LED can show different colours in the same mode.

The flight controller counts LEDs until it meets an all-zero entry. That empty entry is the end of the strip. If you clear an LED in the middle, everything after it drops off the count. Remove from the end when you want a shorter strip, or move the later LEDs up the list before you leave a hole.

Colour holds one palette colour. Flight mode picks a colour from the mode and from the way the LED faces. Arm state switches between the disarmed and armed colours. Battery fades from green toward red as the pack drains. RSSI fades from green toward red as the link drops. GPS shows satellite and fix status. Thrust ring plays a spinning animation.

On Betaflight the next functions are a GPS bar, a battery bar and altitude. The bars are graphs along the strip, so they need several LEDs in wire order to mean anything. A single LED set to GPS bar has almost nothing to draw. Altitude colours that LED by height. None of these is a return-to-home setting.

On INAV the function in that slot is Channel: the colour follows a transmitter channel. INAV does not offer GPS bar, battery bar or altitude in this list. If you copy a Betaflight layout onto an INAV board, check each LED's function after the read. A slot that was a battery bar on Betaflight is not a battery bar on INAV.

Overlays sit on top of the function. Betaflight can add throttle hue, a rainbow, a Larson scanner, blink, the video channel, turn indicators and warning flashes. INAV can add throttle hue, a Larson scanner, blink, blink while landing, indicators, warnings and a strobe while armed. Rainbow and video TX are Betaflight overlays. Blink on landing and strobe are INAV overlays.

The palette has 16 colours. An LED stores the index, from the first colour to the sixteenth. Change colour 3 and every LED that uses colour 3 changes with it. That is why a mode can share a colour with a fixed LED: they point at the same index. The firmware ships a default palette. You can replace any entry.

Brightness is one number for the strip, from 5 to 100 percent, in steps of 5. It is not per LED. A strip that is too bright at night is this slider, not a darker palette, unless you want the colours themselves to change. Rainbow spread is 0 to 359 degrees, in steps of 5. Rainbow speed is 1 to 2000, in steps of 10. Spread is how far around the colour wheel neighbouring LEDs sit. Speed is how fast that wheel turns. Both apply when a rainbow overlay is on.

Mode colours are a second table: orientation, headfree, horizon, angle, mag and baro, each with a colour and a channel. Special colours cover disarmed, armed, animation, background, blink background, GPS with no satellites, GPS with no fix, and GPS locked. The GPS rows are those three lock states. They do not configure a rescue or a return.

If the LED strip feature is off, the tab shows a warning. You can still place LEDs. The board will not drive the strip until the feature is enabled and saved. Enable it, save, and power the strip the way that board expects. A layout that looks right and a strip that stays dark is often this feature, or a data wire on the wrong pad, not a wrong colour index.

INAV also has a pin card: whether to use the LED pin, a joystick switch, and duty percents for the joystick keys. Those fields are INAV settings. They are not on the Betaflight grid. Leave them alone on a Betaflight board, and set them when the connected firmware is INAV.

Check the wire order with one LED set to a fixed colour and the rest cleared, then add the next. If the wrong physical LED lights, the list order does not match the chain. Reorder the list. Do not keep repainting cells and hoping the wire follows the picture.

Chrome or Edge connects over USB or Bluetooth. The Android app adds Wi-Fi. iPhone uses Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and has no USB host. Modes that the LEDs react to are assigned on the Modes tab. Video channel overlays are not a substitute for the VTX table.