As an apprentice FPV pilot I am amazed at how much more I need to learn.

As I stumbled on a review of a little budget toothpick I read the following:

"For my ESC settings the first thing I did was to update the BLHel_S firmware to JazzMaverick with 48kHz PWM for improved efficiency and bidirectional d-shot which allows RPM filtering. The firmware I chose is directly below and is for GH-30 ESCs. Please check your ESC is the same before blindly flashing."

And it dawned on my newb brain that just like FCs software there might be choices for ESCs firmware too.

In general are there "main" families, are there better ones? Somewhere suggested to understand/learn about these "d-shot", "RPM filtering" concepts?

Thanks a lot

Pretty much all of the modern ESCs that we use on our quads these days (excluding the APD ones) are either BLHeli_S or BLHeli_32 ESCs. The former uses a 16-bit MCU and runs on BLHeli_S firmware, and the latter uses a 32-bit MCU and runs on BLHeli_32 firmware.

For the most, all you need to really worry about is that you are on the latest version of the ESC firmware. The latest versions of both BLHeli_S and BLHeli_32 natively support bi-directional DSHOT so you don't have to load Jazz Maverick or JESC firmware onto BLHeli_S ESCs anymore if you don't want to.

If you want to know the basics of RPM filtering and how to set it up then see Oscar's article below...

https://oscarliang.com/rpm-filter

If you want to learn more about ESC firmware and BLHeli settings in general then have a watch of the following video...

Thank you very much, appreciate it.

So now that both have Dshot, what is the major difference in the 2? I used Heli_S Configure and thought that was rather easy compared to what 32 looks like.

(04-Sep-2020, 12:27 PM)Gruv Wrote: So now that both have Dshot, what is the major difference in the 2? I used Heli_S Configure and thought that was rather easy compared to what 32 looks like.

Welp, the main selling points used to be DSHOT1200, ESC telemetry, current sensing, higher PWM values and (I guess) startup music. More recently also Bi-directional DSHOT.

DSHOT1200 isn't supported in newer versions of Betaflight, I don't know what ESC telemetry is for, 48K PWM frequencies can be had on BLHeli_S now with custom firmwares, as can bi-directional DSHOT. And you don't see current sensing on most mini-quad ESCs anyway. But you can still have the first two bars of the Super Mario theme play when you power up, so that's cool.

I mean, I still buy BLHeli32 ESCs for future-proofing and so I don't have to pay the bidirectional DSHOT tax, but it's less important than it was.