New Budget Control Equipment With ELRS and FrSky

New from BetaFPV

BetaF­PV, a well-known hob­by­ist man­u­fac­tur­er, recent­ly announced the 3rd iter­a­tion of its entry-lev­el Lit­eRa­dio con­trol equip­ment. The new remote comes with­out a dis­play and is portable and light­weight, mak­ing it easy to keep with you at all times. Com­pared to pre­vi­ous mod­els, it has a sim­i­lar appear­ance. But its built-in bat­tery now has a capac­i­ty of 2000 mAh instead of 1000 mAh. The devel­op­er claims that the bat­tery life of Lit­eRa­dio 3 is up to 15 hours. Fur­ther details about all the fea­tures of the new app! Let’s fly!

Peculiarities

Key fea­tures of BetaF­PV Lit­eRa­dio 3 con­trol equip­ment:

• Built-in mul­ti-pro­to­col mod­ule sup­port­ed by FrSky FCC, FrSky LBT, FrSky D8, Futa­ba S‑FHSS (Option­al; Trans­mit­ter pow­er: 100mW)
• Built-in 2.4GHz ExpressLRS mod­ule (Option­al; Switch­able trans­mit­ter pow­er: 25/50/100mW)
• Bay for exter­nal TX mod­ules ELRS Nano/TBS CRSF Nano
• Improved con­trol stick mechan­ics
• 8 out­put chan­nels
• Remote con­trol sys­tem adapt­ed for Drones/Aircraft
• Open­TX Firmware
• Man­age Settings/Menu via BetaF­PV Con­fig­u­ra­tor
• Built-in pow­er sup­ply with a capac­i­ty of 2000 mAh (auton­o­my up to 15 hours)
• Built-in charg­er (charg­ing via USB‑C port)
• FPV sim­u­la­tor mode

Appearance

Appear­ance of the new con­trol equip­ment Lit­eRa­dio 3:

Specification

Brand:

BetaF­PV

Mod­el:

Lit­eRa­dio 3

Oper­at­ing fre­quen­cy range:

2.4GHz

2.4GHz sys­tem:

CC2500/SX1280

Num­ber of chan­nels:

eight

Sup­port­ed pro­to­cols:

Futa­ba S‑FHSS/Frsky FCC D16/Frsky LBT D16/Frsky D8, ExpressLRS 2.4G

Trans­mit­ter pow­er:

ELRS ver­sion: 25/50/100mW
Fresky ver­sion: 100 mW

Types of sup­port­ed UAVs:

Mul­ti-motor drone/Airplane

USB‑C inter­face:

Charg­ing / Con­nect­ing to the con­fig­u­ra­tor / Con­nect­ing to the FPV sim­u­la­tor

Food:

Built-in 1S 2000mAh

Oper­at­ing time on one charge:

up to 15 hours

LED sta­tus indi­ca­tor for bat­tery:

Green — pow­er on
Red — pow­er below 3.5V
Blue — nutri­tion is opti­mal

New sticks and switches

The mechan­i­cal part of the con­trol sticks has been improved com­pared to pre­vi­ous Lit­eRa­dio mod­els, and the switch­es have been replaced with less frag­ile but­tons. USB‑C con­nec­tor allows you to charge the bat­tery and use the radio con­trol with FPV sim­u­la­tors.

BetaFPV Configurator

BetaF­PV Con­fig­u­ra­tor is a util­i­ty designed for the radio con­trol sys­tem that allows you to con­fig­ure it — and in fact allows you to for­get about the lack of a built-in dis­play (for Win­dows PC and Mac OS X, you can down­load it here). Through the soft­ware, you can cal­i­brate sticks, update firmware, assign but­tons, man­age ExpressLRS con­fig­u­ra­tion, and more. The oper­at­ing sys­tem is Open­TX.

*BetaF­PV Con­fig­u­ra­tor inter­face.

Optional versatility

Lit­eRa­dio 3 is avail­able with a choice of built-in mul­ti-pro­to­col mod­ule com­pat­i­ble with FrSky FCC, FrSky LBT, FrSky D8, Futa­ba S‑FHSS (100 mW), or built-in 2.4 GHz ExpressLRS mod­ule (25, 50 and 100 mW). If you need oth­er pro­to­cols such as Cross­fire or ExpressLRS at 868 MHz, then the Lit­eRa­dio 3 is equipped with a nano-sized bay on the rear pan­el, allow­ing you to place var­i­ous TX mod­ules to expand its com­pat­i­bil­i­ty, such as BetaF­PV’s ELRS Nano TX Mod­ule:

Assignment of buttons and controls

The pur­pose of the but­tons and con­trols of the new Lit­eRa­dio 3 remote con­trol:

Developer recommendations

How to switch protocol?

To change pro­to­cols and TX mod­ules, do the fol­low­ing:

1. Turn off the remote.
2. Then turn it back on by press­ing and hold­ing the BIND but­ton.
3. The col­or and flash­ing fre­quen­cy of the sta­tus LED before the buzzer is trig­gered will change accord­ing to the table sta­tus­es below.

The Frsky ver­sion can sup­port 4 dif­fer­ent inter­nal pro­to­cols, includ­ing Frsky D16 FCC, Frsky D16 LBT, Frsky D8 and Futa­ba S‑FHSS. The pro­to­col is indi­cat­ed by how long the LED blinks at pow­er up before the buzzer sounds.

Note. The Lit­eRa­dio 3 Frsky ver­sion only works with the D16 ACCST 1.X Frsky pro­to­col. There­fore, if you are using a Frsky receiv­er with D16 ACCST 2.X or ACCESS ver­sion, bind­ing will not be pos­si­ble!

What about the LiteRadio 2 SE predecessor?

The devel­op­er draws the atten­tion of the con­sumer to the fact that pre­vi­ous mod­els pur­chased direct­ly from BetaF­PV stores in Decem­ber 2021 will have improved Lit­eRa­dio 3 sticks, and will also be com­pat­i­ble with the afore­men­tioned BetaF­PV Con­fig­u­ra­tor soft­ware. The ExpressLRS add-on can be upgrad­ed to ELRS 2.0.

Availability and price

Lit­eRa­dio 3 is already avail­able for pur­chase both on the devel­op­er’s web­site and on var­i­ous Inter­net mar­ket­places for $59.99 (exclud­ing tax­es; in ExpressLRS 2.4 GHz or FrSky ver­sions, with default stick modes Mode 2 (throt­tle on the left) or Mode 1 (gas on the right).

Add. accessories

The list of rec­om­mend­ed addi­tion­al acces­sories includes: Lit­eRa­dio 3 com­pat­i­ble trans­port case, ELRS mod­ule and a neck strap to hold the remote in two print and size vari­a­tions: