Boards Marketed as “ArduPilot Compatible” — But No Firmware or Heartbeat?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been pulling my hair out with conflicting information online over ardupilot compatibility and I am semi new to ardupilot. I have build ardu rovers before but I am still learning especially as I move to try and make an arducopter

I have a couple of flight controllers (specifically the TBS Lucid H7 and Rotor Riot Brave F7) that are listed or marketed as “ArduPilot compatible” on various sites and forums. But when I try to actually set them up:

  • There are no prebuilt firmware files available on
    ArduPilot firmware : /Copter/stable
  • They do not appear in Mission Planner for automatic firmware install
  • Even after trying to flash firmware manually using STM32CubeProgrammer, I get no heartbeat detected when trying to connect in Mission Planner
  • Some tools (like STM32 flasher) report success, but the board boots back into Betaflight with previous settings and doesn’t respond at all in mission planner again.

Are these boards truly supported by ArduPilot? Or is “compatible” just being used loosely to mean “has the right chip, and maybe you can compile it yourself”?

I’d really appreciate clarification on:

  • Whether a “compatible” board requires me to build my own firmware target
  • Why some boards appear to accept firmware, but then don’t boot or show a heartbeat

One example is the TBD Lucid FC I have that says “…and seamless support for Betaflight, ArduPilot, and INAV…” but I seem to be finding alot of seams. (Team BlackSheep Online Store - TBS Lucid H7 FC)

Thank you and please forgive me for being a noob

TBS Lucid H7
Don’t know anything about the Rotor Riot F7 board and have seen no evidence it’s supported by Ardupilot. I see it’s an F722 board so it never will be supported.

The link above is for the Stable version for the TBS Lucid H7. There will not be one for a F722 based FC. Right?

We support over 240 different flight controllers. But I can not find that one on the list.

Or any other F722 based controller. That was my point.

Thanks Dave, I deleted my first post now.

thank you so much, i’ll use the link

Actually use the 4.6 beta6 firmware for that board found here TBS Lucid H7
It includes a fix for the I2C port that may cause frustration if you use the Stable version and connect a compass to I2C.

Edit: 4.6.0 Stable is out now so you can use that.

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