Currently I have a Speedybee F405 V3 flight controller with a BLS 60A 30x30mm 4-in-1 ESC.
the flight controller is flashed with Ardupilot 4.6.0.
The ESC is flashed with Bluejay, and usind DShot600.
I’m using an external compass&GPS module (but only using the compass part), there’s a GEM1305 GPS receiver (I’m planning to use it with a base station).
There’s an RC receiver and an ESP32 based “dronebridge”, to be able to connect with Mission Planner to the drone.
There are plans for a WS2812 based LED board to be connected to the flight controller and a little MILC camera, that should be triggered by the flight controller.
It was pointed out, that F405 MCU is barely enough for this task. It can fly, but the computational capabilities are a little bit low for this application.
I started to find STM32H7 based boards. (the 4in1 ESC is OK, I’m not planning to replace that one)
I really like TBS LUCID H7 Flight Controller (60USD): It has a clean top-side design, there are only solder pads on the top side. Easy to access.
However, the SD CARD socket is on the bottom side, so it’s pretty painful to extract the card from the socket for reading with a computer…
Is the USB transfer of dataflash log from FC’s SDcard to PC faster on an H7 based board faster than with my current F405 based FC?
What are the experiences with this flight controller?
I use this FC as my main one and I have several in builds. It is ok as long as you know its faults and how to get around them. Overall I would recommend it but I have not done too much research into its competitors.
The only real cons are that its “upside down” like you mentioned but I usually get around this by just mounting it with the SD card side up and changing one parameter in mission planner to fix this. I think its something like AHRS_ORIENTATION = 6 and its fine.
Another annoyance is here when the FC can occasionally get stuck in DFU mode. You just need to full chip erase using anything like betaflight/STM32 Programmer then reflash with ardupilot from mission planner. If you have a .param file saved this isnt too large of a headache and it happens seldom enough that I still recommend this FC.
Finally at the time of writing this it doesnt actually cost $60. I very recently purchased one from TBS and for me it was about $20 shipping but then the day before it arrived I got a call from the post office or UPS that I owed an additional $20 tariff fee. This FC will end up costing about $100 unless you can buy it on Ebay from someone who already has it in the US and doesn’t pass the import tariff onto you lol.
Thanks for your comment!
I haven’t thoght about mounting the FC upside down, and correcting the reversed sensor signals by software. I’ll definitely consider it
How often does the FC get bricked?
Can this happen at regular start-up (for example on the field or on the bench at home) or only around firmware update?
it can be bricked in the field. I am not sure how often but for me in about 2.5 months of 6/7 days per week of use this has happened to me twice. I am not sure if one or any of those was my fault though, as I had inserted an SD card that had too low a write speed one time. Another time I just tried to use it on a new day after it worked fine and it wouldn’t leave DFU mode. This is also the only non Cube orange plus FC I have used so I am not sure if issues like this are common around its price point.
Also if you want to frequently access the micro SD card slot for changes I would recommend a telemetry radio which allows you to wirelessly write/change parameters and upload missions.
An update I didn’t realize yesterday, the devs addressed the bootloader problem so if you have newer than 4.6.1 on your H7 this should be addressed on slide 4
