Change Log

the firmware releases and their relevant change logs are shown below versioning follows semantic versioning 3 1 0 24th september 2025 build hash 7f253ba6 major changes gatekeeper firmware v3 1 0 brings a brand new arinc825 4 compatible can 2 0b control protocol, as well as improved prop parking and more flexible stopping/braking options this patch also inclues minor fixes and improvements for rpm mode, rpm limiting, and motor temperature limiting configuration changes to note brake on stop has been replaced by stopping behaviour parking stop strength has been replaced by active hold strength new features arinc825 can protocol can 2 0b protocol that adheres to the arinc825 4 specification this protocol can be used in place of dronecan to drive, configure and update the device flexible stopping behavior stopping behavior (when the motor approaches 0 erpm) is now configurable, allowing for selection between freewheeling, passive braking and active holding flexible arming behaviour when the unit arms, prop parking or stopping behavior can be set to activate immediately this can cause props to move as soon as power is applied gradual braking new option to gradually apply passive braking force, useful for larger inertial loads requires afw/regeneration adjustable beep volume beep volume has been made to be adjustable and can be normalised other changes rpm mode will not function without motor pole pairs being set increased default dronecan arming packet timeout reversible dshot throttle packets are now parsed and accepted hardware version is now reported through dronecan getnodeinfo bug fixes motor temperature limiter has been improved prop parking has been improved to be more reliable and achieve higher accuracy when setting angular offsets rpm limiter has been improved rpm tracking when freewheeling has been improved dronecan status error count field no longer sets bit 31 when a flag is set communications mode led color has been modified to appear less red settings changes settings deprecated park stop str prop parking stop strength, replaced by actv hld str brk on stop brake on stop, replaced by stop behav settings added actv hld str active hold strength beep volume beep volume can protocol can protocol selector beep const vol normalise beep volume grad brak en gradual braking enable gb duration s gradual braking duration gbrak strt dc gradual braking starting duty cycle mot t dty lim motor temperature limiter minimum duty cycle park on armed prop park on armed state stop behav stopping behavior stop on armed stopping behavior on armed state usb pwr lockout usb power lockout arinc settings arinc nsc offset node service channel id offset arinc stat1 hz status message 1 frequency arinc stat2 hz status message 2 frequency arinc stat3 hz status message 3 frequency arinc fid function code identifier arinc phsm hz periodic health status message frequency arinc pf id profile id arinc pf s id profile sub id arinc sid server id arinc tunnel fid function code identifier for tunneling settings modified arm msg timeout default 1000 → 5000 mot ovt resp max 1 → 2 rpm i term default 0 00004 → 0 006 rpm p term default 0 00009 → 3 79 requires hargrave configurator >=v1 11 0 3 0 1 7th july 2025 manufacturing enhancement change no effect in field, functionally the same as 3 0 0 improvements for manufacturing end of line testing 3 0 0 28th may 2025 major changes gatekeeper firmware v3 0 0 is a major update which contains new features, improves existing features and performance, and has many behind the scenes improvements re configuration may be required if updating from previous firmware versions and it is recommended to review the changelogs and documentation in detail key breaking configuration changes include motor kv and motor pole pairs are required to be set to use reversible drive mode communications settings have been reworked to support the new input priority system the canbus en setting has been depracated no configuration is required to use either can bus or serial (dshot/pwm) signalling the advanced settings toggle has been removed and now all settings are immediately configurable over dronecan telemetry rate setting has been split between periodic serial telemetry (ser tlm hz) and dronecan esc status telemetry (can tel stat rte) key drive behaviour changes include duty cycles below 2 5% are allowed once the motor is spinning behaviour changed when 'brake on stop' disabled, the motor will now immediately disconnect, as opposed to ramping down before disconnecting the communications only mode (orange led) will be entered when a dronecan parameter set request is received or a dronecan firmware update is started the unit must be rebooted before drive can resume new features input priority system the input priority system is a feature that enables the motor controller to take in both can bus and serial (dshot/pwm) signals at the same time this enables both signals to be used simultaneously in a fallback scenario, or for either signal to be used without requiring configuration secondary arming switch the secondary or physical arming switch provides a physical means to lock out motor drive when this switch is in the off position the unit will not arm and therefore be unable to drive motor starting beep the unit can be configured to beep the motor before drive begins as an additional safety feature arming and disarming beeps when enabled the unit will beep on the transitioning between the armed and disarmed states odometer logging powered on time and motor running time are logged and saved on device and can be viewed in the configurator tool more detailed logging the on device datalogs include more status flags and log their uptime in ms logging fields now include their units mechanical rpm in serial telemetry the 'tlm rpm mech' toggle has been added when enabled mechanical rpm, rather than electrical rpm, will be reported in serial/dshot telemetry configurable beeps with the introduction of the motor starting and arming/disarming beeps status, warning and motor starting beeps can be toggled separately other changes a status bit in the dronecan esc status extended (1036) message is now used to indicate that propeller parking is active uart telemetry format unified to be dshot esc telemetry when using periodic serial telemetry status led changes solid white device is initialising solid orange device is in communications only mode fast flashing pink device is about to restart purple has been modified to a more violet color the 'temperature' field in the dronecan esc status (1034) message is reported at a higher resolution reversible drive performance has been improved the 'configuration invalid' error has been added to indicate an incorrect device configuration dronecan debug message formatting has changed for errors and status messages for example the debug message for the 'signal loss' error has change from 'err 13 signal loss' (2 1 3) to 'input signal loss' (3 0 0) the beep indicating the unit is idle and waiting for a signal is no longer separate between can and serial signals, it is now unified to the beep used for can bus signal waiting on 2 1 3 the signal acquisiton beep sounds on both initial signal acquisition and on signal re acquisiton flight computer compatiblity for bidirectional dshot signalling has been improved the minimum output duty cycle is configurable, optionally throttle values below the minimum duty cycle can be truncated high erpm performance improved bug fixes the bit indicating that a custom format is being used in the 'error count' field of the dronecan esc status (1034) message is reset to 0 when all errors are cleared a bug that would cause no dronecan debug messages to be sent for a period of time and then be sent in a large batch has been resolved improved propeller parking performance, reliability and response to high temperature scenarios duty cycle is no longer limited by the overvoltage limiter when it is disabled fixed brake on stop edge cases settings changes settings deprecated adv settings advanced settings toggle canbus en can bus enabled log clr hz chg clear logs on logging rate change tlm en telemetry enabled tlm freq telemetry refresh rate settings added can sig prio can signal priority can cfg w armed dronecan allow configuration when armed can tel stat rte dronecan telem rate wwdg zer tht ignore zero throttle after watchdog event tlm rpm mech mechanical rpm in serial telemetry min duty minimum duty cycle mot beep dur motor beep duration mot beep to motor beep timeout mot beep en motor starting beep enable ser tlm hz periodic serial telemetry rate req all sig require all signals to arm sig fb armed require signal armed to fallback arm sw en secondary arming switch enable arm sw tout secondary arming switch timeout ser sig prio serial signal priority status beep en status beeps enable warn beep en warning beeps enable trnc min duty truncate throttle below minimum duty cycle settings modified arm msg timeout dronecan armed message timeout period default 5000 → 1000 mot pole pairs motor pole pairs default 1 → 0 min 1 → 0 rpm mode ki rpm mode integral control min 0 001 → 0 rpm mode kp rpm mode proportional control min 0 001 → 0 requires hargrave configurator >=v1 9 0 2 1 0 18th july 2024 this release addresses the following ecns ecn100004 over temperature response default major changes over temperature response is now set to power ramp by default moved settings the following settings have been moved between basic and advanced advanced > basic overtemperature ramp end temperature (ovt ramp temp) ramp up rate (ramp up rt) ramp down rate (ramp dwn rt) datalogging frequency (log freq) datalogging control (log type) max regeneration current (regen bus cur) basic > advanced auto timing advance (auto timing) motor temperature sensor enable (mot t en) rpm limit enable (rpm lim en) prop parking enable (park en) new features identify esc the configurator can now toggle a series of beeps and flashes to help identify which esc is being communicated with logging over dronecan datalogs on the esc can now be read over the dronecan tunnel variable logging data the following logging data columns can be enabled or disabled via settings to vary data retention length log phase current (log phase curr) log power (log power) log voltage ripple (log ripple) log mcu temperature (log mcu temp) log motor temperature (log mot temp), requires motor temperature sensor to be enabled motor parked prop parking triggers a flag in dronecan status and log warnings when the motor is parked bugfixes dronecan "disarmed" debug messages are now only sent on state change, or when trying to throttle in a disarmed state improved error handling reporting rpm now properly reports 0rpm rpm when throttle is zero phase current properly reports 0a when throttle is zero dronecan status rpm values now saturate at the max allowable by dronecan various stability improvements subversion releases 2 1 1 hardware compatability update 2 1 2 bugfix for new hardware 2 0 1 27th june 2024 this patch release addresses the following ecns ecn100001 over temperature ramp response ecn100003 noisy can bus watchdog restart bugfixes over temperature ramp end temperature setting now defaults to 105 degrees celcius can bus variable bitrate logic hardened to prevent watchdog restarts 2 0 0 20th may 2024 major breaking upgrade upgrading from firmware \<v1 3 2 requires additional steps to upgrade to v2 0 0 it is possible to downgrade to a v1 x x firmware from v2 x x firmware if the hardware supports it, however this update process must be followed whenever upgrading from v1 to v2 update process for \<v1 3 2 to v2 0 0 update esc firmware to >=v1 3 2, \<v2 0 0 update esc firmware to >=v2 0 0 breaking changes prop parking speed units have been changed to mechanical rpm prop parking strength setting has been split into two settings based on function prop parking turning strength power applied to bridge when parking prop parking stopping strength power applied to bridge when parked new features rpm mode new drive mode to set the motor to spin to a target speed setpoint (otherwise known as governor mode, speed control, heli mode, speed governor) hargrave configurator dronecan support support for changing settings and applying presets from the hargrave configurator through dronecan devices (e g cubeorange) dronecan variable baud rate support support for common baudrates less than 1mbps bugfixes can terminator improvements can will disconnect from network if incompatible bit rate detected subversion releases 2 0 1 can and overtemperature response bug fixes requires hargrave configurator >=v1 4 0 power cycling all escs is required between baud rate changes it is recommended to setup esc configuration via usb or on a separate dronecan network before attaching to existing peripherals 1 3 0 22nd mar 2024 allow naming of esc for log file identification ptc setting option added uart packet structure changes reversible drive mode improvements dronecan boolean save logic reworked propeller parking sub system improvements further starting improvements minor bug fixes subversion releases 1 3 1 hardware compatibility update 1 3 2 2 0 0 upgrade compatibility 1 2 0 12th mar 2024 improvements to bus current calibration and reporting addition of regenerative current calibration motor temperature sensing range increased regenerative current range increased communications protocol changes for config tool subversion releases none 1 1 0 18th jan 2024 default maximum switching frequency increased, improve starting performance temperature ramp setting limit increases add ptc motor temperature calculations add pwm jitter functionality calibration corrupt warning added allow dronecan updates when unit is in an error state subversion releases 1 1 1 hardware compatibility update 1 0 0 10th nov 2023 initial production release of microdrive firmware subversion releases none