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Config Target Guidance - Cloud Build

Due to the increase in poorly designed flight controllers, primarily clones of known poorly designed units, Betaflight is now taking a strong stance on adding targets to our cloud build platform.

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From the 3rd of December 2024, the Betaflight project will no longer accept new flight controller designs using the STM F4 and F7 series microcontroller where there is more than 4 motor outputs.

  • We strive to be the best flight experience available on the widest range of hardware. To continue delivering that we now need to limit flight controller designs using the older microcontrollers that have restrictions on timer and DMA resources.

  • Moving forward these microcontrollers should only be used on budget freestyle or racing designs and for AIOs that only require 4 motor outputs. The STM H743 is now very close in price to the F405 and is a much better choice. We recommend the H743 be used in high performance, high motor output and high IO flight Controller designs where an STM microcontroller is preferred by the designer or manufacturer.

  • Existing designs will not be affected by this change but features maybe restricted for those flight controllers in the future where performance becomes an issue.

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From the 16th of September 2024 the betaflight project has deprecated implementation of new STM F411 applications, SPI for RX communications and no longer recommends BMI270:

  • The STM F411 has been a stable option for those smaller FCs. Whilst the cloud build has extended its useful life (with the limited flash size), the limited available IO renders this chip a poor choice for future designs. We are therefore going to restrict acceptance of new targets with this chipset, in favour of AT32 or G4 options. Existing targets will maintain full support.

  • New targets for designs that use SPI for RX communications will not be accepted. This is because we favour the use of serial for RX communications, which is also inline with the wishes of the ELRS development team. Existing targets will maintain support for the time being.

  • The BMI270 IMU is no longer recommended due to calibration issues (drift).

From the 1st of July 2024 ALL targets presented to the config repository for use in the cloud build system will be required to follow these conditions:

  1. Schematics need to be presented with the prospective config file. If your company requires these schematics to not be public they can be emailed to cloudtargets@betaflight.com

  2. Our team will assess the schematics. If the schematic has resource sharing, lack of DMA and or timers on critical functions, e.g. gyro, motors, sharing SPI bus lines or is a blatant clone of existing designs (especially so if we consider it to be poorly designed), it will be DENIED a target until such time as it is redesigned to both meet the expected performance of the betaflight firmware, and demonstrates it is not merely a clone of an existing design.



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It is advised to start a dialogue with the Betaflight team before you move to making prototypes. The Betaflight team will endeavor to create a reference library to assist manufacturers as early as possible in the process.

  1. Due to the increasing number of issues from cheap poor quality hardware hitting the market there will be a target fee for our team to approve and add a target to our system for deployment in the cloud build system. Please contact the team via cloudtargets@betaflight.com for details. Note if you are a hobbyist please contact us via our discord or the above email as we will not be charging non commercial users for target insertion.


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Betaflight is free software, and will continue to be free, however the automated build and delivery system is not free and comes with operational costs. Supporting the costs of running the cloud build system is optional. You are free to distribute your own hexes however you choose. Your customers are able to flash your distributed firmware using the “Load Local” function of the betaflight configuration and maintenance application.

  1. If a company wants to collaborate on the design with our team for performance testing, optimisation and official betaflight approved status to their flight controller we have a numbers of options available via the Betaflight Partners Program with details available via the email partnersprogram@betaflight.com

  2. This document was produced to give guidance to manufacturers. Read It Manufacturer Design Guidelines

  3. If your company is part of the Betaflight Partners Program already you are exempt from the target fees.