Firmware for KakuteF4 AIO V2

Trying to load Ardupilot firmware on a Kakute F4 AIO V2 on Windows 10. Understood that the available firmware is only for Kakute F4 and Kakute F4 Heli and V2 and/or AIO versions of this FC might not be supported. I used the _with_bl.hex version of firmware with BetaFlight to flash the board. It connects fine and I get to “Flashing…” and then I immediately get “USB device successfully closed.” After power cycle and reconnecting I get only a solid green LED and no serial port found. Options selected in BetaFlight are “No reboot sequence” and “Full chip erase.” AFAKI VCP drivers, Zadiag and ImpulseRC Driver Fixer all installed and working without issues. I installed ImpulseRC Driver Fixer towards the end and behavior unchanged.

I can recover by putting in boot mode and flashing with BetaFlight, but the behavior above repeatable every time.

Firmware used:

https://firmware.ardupilot.org/Copter/stable/KakuteF4-heli/
https://firmware.ardupilot.org/Copter/stable/KakuteF4/

Any suggestions appreciated!

If you are unsure about flashing its firmware (I understand this is a DFU device), try original ST instructions.

So it wasn’t able to flash the ArduPilot firmware.

Did you hold down the bootloader button whilst connecting the Kakute to the USB port?

So it wasn’t able to flash the ArduPilot firmware

Most likely not, but it did seem to erase the existing Betaflight firmware without issue.

Did you hold down the bootloader button whilst connecting the Kakute to the USB port?

Yes I did this when trying to flash ArduPilot firmware and also when when successfully flashing Betaflight every failed iteration of trying to flash ArduPilot…I tried about 6 times. I tried both the bootloader button and Betaflight CLI with “bl” command. Both methods result in successfully entering DFU mode. When flashing the Betaflight firmware I got the green progress bar and successful verification as expected.

That’s interesting you can get the programmer (and even the source) from MFG. I’m tempted to go that path, but I know the bootloader is working since after it erases the Betaflight image I’m able to flash it back on - see response to Stephen.