Do I need the bootloader for ardupilot?

I’ve searched for over an hour and haven’t seen a yes or no but I have a speedybee f405 v3 currently running iNav. when flashing the bootloader there’s warnings saying it could brick the board. I just want to try ardupilot is there a temporary way to test it out?

Yes you need to install arducopter firmware with bootloader… because inav/betaflight bootloaders come standard with the board .

https://firmware.ardupilot.org/Copter/stable-4.4.3/

In the list you can find your board then pick the hex file xxx_with_bl.hex and flash it with stmcubeprogrammer or DFU-util

would I be able to to go back to iNav if I don’t like ardupilot?

Yes … inav and betaflight will normally detect the board and erase ardu and install their bootloader… if not you need to do same as before, find inav/betafl firmware and flash it with stm32cubeprogrammer… I guess speedybee comes with betafl so connect it in dfu mode in betaflightconfigurator should reinstall to default.

Only do it if you are confident :sunglasses: