I would like to disable deadband entirely. I started using curves which are complicated and different for cyclic and rudder, and include deadband, so I would prefer to control it over my radio (OpenTX with lot of customizations). However in the software I can't go below 4. Is there any reason for it? Could it be made to allow values down to 0?

Also, I have a feeling that deadband is greater for rudder, than for cyclics - is this correct?

So is there any way to get rid of the deadband?

No, disabling stick deadband would result in unwanted behavior.
Anyway you should not use any mixes for stick input. This is useable for flybared helicopters but never for flybarless units. It will always cause a troubles and imprecision.
Instead it is better to ask why you need it since nothing like this should be needed normally.

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Spirit System developer

No no, there is no mixing involved, just a custom curve. This is what I use for AIL and ELE now:



It's a result of a lot of testing and works good for me. And as you see, it has a kind of "deadband" included in it. It's not exactly deadband, but it is very insensitive around center.

But having deadband included in Spirit, I think I won't be able to get consistent results in Sim and in real heli. I will test it more (we didn't have flying weather recently and I developed this in the SIM), but I imagine deadband will ruin this setup..

So deadband is OK in general, I just want to control that in the radio. Is Spirit requiring this for some reason? Could it be removed, or allowed to go lower than 4?

Also, it seems to me that controlling this separately for cyclic and rudder really makes sense.

I am afraid it can't be turned off and it will not change also in the future.
This is common basically for all modern FBL units. Value of 4 is so low you should be unable to notice it even as Pro pilot.
Yet we recommend to use a higher values generally as this is reaching precision limitation of the stick input readout in todays radios.

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Spirit System developer

It seems that you are confusing dead band with expo because what you have achieved through your custom curves there is basically a type of expo to make the center inputs less sensitive without affecting the rest of the curve as much as regular expo would if you used it to flatten center that much.

The purpose of deadband is not to make inputs around center less sensitive but to eliminate false inputs from your radio. If you go to the diagnostic screen and move your gimbals you can see that the numbers turn bold at the point at which the spirit actually moves your servos in response to your stick input. When you increase or decrease deadband in the software you can see that the numbers turn black at a different %. If you eliminated deadband all together it could start detecting inputs without you even touching the sticks and moving the model.

I personally like to have precision and keep the deadband as low as possible but to where I'm not getting phantom inputs.

I think it's clear to me what deadband is. I tested a lot of different curves and this is what came out to work best - there's no strict deadband there, but very low sensitivity at center, almost flat curve around zero makes very similar thing at the end.

I'm just looking for some ways to work it around and there is some light at the end of the tunnel. For me flying with this is fine. The problem is getting same response to sticks in simulator and in reality - this deadband complicates stuff. Especially because my main sim for every day use is Realflight and it doesn't have anything like that to adjust.

Your remark about "bold" numbers might become useful. So far I was just listening to the servo and planned to connect some receiver tested to see when Spirit starts reacting - just checking numbers getting bold will be easier...