Controller Boards

Minimum Controller Requirements

  • Arduino support
  • 32 bit processor
  • At least 21 GPIO pins for:
  • 3x UART: Receiver, GPS, spare/debug (6 pins)
  • 1x SPI: fast IMU (4 pins)
  • 1x I2C: Magnetometer, Barometer, Current sensor, slow IMU (2 pins)
  • 1x IMU interrupt pin
  • 8x PWM: Motor, Servo (8 pins)

Default madflight Controller Boards

Board ESP32 DevKitC ESP32-S3 DevKitC Raspberry Pi Pico (W) Raspberry Pi Pico 2 Black Pill
Board Size 55 * 28 mm 69 * 26 mm 51 * 21 mm 51 * 21 mm 53 * 21 mm
Board Weight 6.9 g
(9.1 g with headers)		 8.4 g
(10.9 g with headers)		 3.0 g 3.0 g 4.5 g
Board Pins 38 pins 44 pins 40 pins 40 pins 40 pins
Available external GPIO pins 21
+ 4 input only
+ 1 button: 0
Note: strap pin restrictions		 25
+ 7 external pins but used:
Button: 0
OSPI: 35, 36, 37
RGB LED: 38
USB: 19, 20
Note: strap pin restrictions		 26
Internal only:
Power save: 23
VBUS monitor: 24
LED: 25
VSYS voltage: 29 ADC3		 26
Internal only:
Power save: 23
VBUS monitor: 24
LED: 25
VSYS voltage: 29 ADC3		 30
+ 2 external but used:
Button: PA0
LED: PC13
PWM 16
(8 LEDC timers each with 2 output pins)		 8
(4 LEDC timers each with 2 output pins)		 16
(8 timers each with 2 output pins)		 24 25
(6 * 16bit + 2 * 32bit timers)
Available UART 3 3 6 (2 + 4*PIO)
+USB Serial debug		 8 (2 + 6*PIO)
+USB Serial debug		 3
Available SPI 2 2 2 2 5
Available I2C 2 2 2 2 2
Available ADC pins 16 (12bit) 20 (12bit) 3 (12bit) 3 (12bit) 10 (12bit)
On Board Peripherals WIFI + BT + Button WIFI + BT + Button + RGB LED LED
+ WIFI/BT (W)		 LED Button + LED (+ optional SPI flash)
MCU ESP32 ESP32S3 RP2040 RP2350 STM32F411CE/CC
MCU GPIO 34 45 30 30 32
Processor 2 core LX6 240MHz 2 core LX7 240MHz 2 core M0+ 133MHz (overclock 266MHz) 2 core M33 150MHz (overclock 300MHz) 1 core M4 100MHz
Coremark (single core) 351 228 172
FPU 1 core FPU 1 core FPU no FPU 2 core FPU 1 core FPU
MFLOPS (*) 63 61 2.0 78 (156 overclock) 48
RAM 320K data
132K instruction
64K cache		 320K data
128K instruction
64K cache		 264K data/instr.
16K XIP cache		 520K 128K
Flash 2-16M QuadSPI 2-16M OctalSPI 2M QuadSPI 4M QuadSPI 512K internal (CE)
256K internal (CC)
PSRAM 0-8M 0-8M 0 0 0
Board price single piece $4 $5 $4 $5 $3

(*) MFLOPS (million floating point operations per second) results with TestFLOPS program in tools folder

Other boards

Board MCU Specs IO Size Weight Power Consumption Price
Waveshare RP2040-Zero RP2040 2MB flash, RESET+BOOT button, RGB LED 20 io + 9 via solder points 23 * 17 mm 1.7 gr $3
WeMos LOLIN32-Lite ESP32 4MB flash, 0MB PSRAM, 2*240MHz, RESET button, lipo charger, LED 23 io 50 * 25 mm 4.7 gr $3
WeMos LOLIN S3 Mini ESP32-S3 4MB flash, 2MB PSRAM, 2*240MHz, RESET+BOOT button, LED 27 io 34 * 25 mm 3 gr $5
WeAct STM32F405 Core Board STM32F405RGT6 1MB flash, 192kB RAM, 1*168MHz, 6 UART, RESET+BOOT+USER button, LED, SDCARD 45 io 42 * 25 mm $8
WeAct STM32H743 Core Board STM32H743VIT6 2MB flash, 1MB RAM, 1*480MHz, 8 UART, RESET+BOOT+USER button, LED, SDCARD, 8MB SPI Flash, LCD, DVP 77 io 67 * 41 mm 13.7 gr 0.5W $16
Raspberry Pi Zero ARM11 SDCARD, 512MB RAM, 1*1GHz, in production until at least jan 2030 26 io 65 * 30 mm 9.0 gr 0.4W (idle) to 1.0W (100% cpu) $9 + SDCARD
Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W Arm Cortex-A53 SDCARD, 512MB RAM, 4*1GHz, WLAN, in production until at least jan 2030 26 io 65 * 30 mm 11.4 gr 0.8W to 3.0W (idle=0.8W + 0.55W per 100% core) $15 + SDCARD

STM32 Flight Controllers

A list of STM32 microcontrollers used in flight controllers, in order of power, from least to most:

MCU Clock Flash RAM Flight Controller Firmware Breakout Board Price
F411 100MHz 512K 128K -BI $4
F412 100MHz 512K 256K --- $5
F446 180MHz 512K 128K --- $5
G473 170MHz 512K 128K -B-
G474 170MHz 512K 128K --- $6
F722 216MHz 512K 256K -BI
F745 216MHz 1M 256K AB-
F405 168MHz 1M 128K ABI $7
F427 180MHz 2M 256K A-I
H750 480MHz 128K + 8M QSPI 1M --- $12
H723 550MHz 1M + 8M OSPI 564K --- $13
H743 480MHz 2M + 8M QSPI 1M ABI $15
H753 480MHz 2M 1M A--

Flight Controller Firmware
A: ArduPilot
B: BetaFlight
I: INAV

Pinouts

ESP32

ESP32S3

RP2040

STM32F411