Porting PX4 to Matek F405-HDTE - Need Guidance on Feasibility

Hey everyone,

I’m looking into porting PX4 to the Matek F405-HDTE flight controller and wanted to get some input from the community before diving in too deep.

Background: I have a F405-HDTE here that I’d like to run PX4 on instead of ArduPilot. I know ArduPilot works great on this board, but I specifically need PX4 for my project requirements. Before I spend months on this, I wanted to check if it’s even worth attempting or if there are better alternatives.

What I’ve found so far:

Hardware compatibility looks promising:

My research suggests:

  • All the core sensors are already supported in PX4

  • The MCU is proven to work with PX4 (Omnibus F4SD example)

  • Main work would be board-specific pin mapping and configuration

  • Could use Omnibus F4SD as a template since it’s the same STM32F405RGT6

My questions:

  1. Am I missing any major roadblocks that would make this impractical?

  2. Has anyone attempted this already or know of existing efforts?

  3. I’m wondering if there are PX4-specific gotchas I haven’t considered. The sensor driver support seems like the biggest hurdle cleared already.

Alternative considered: I know ArduPilot works perfectly on this board and has similar capabilities, but my specific use case requires PX4’s ecosystem and some features that aren’t easily available in ArduPilot.

Any thoughts, warnings, or encouragement would be appreciated! Also happy to document the process if I proceed, since this seems like it could benefit others.

Thanks!

I have added a few boards to PX4 over time. It’s more involved than just changing the hwdef like in ArduPilot. You basically start with a copy of boards/whatever/autopilot that is most similar and then adapt all the files that need changes. It’s mostly straightforward until something doesn’t work as expected and you have to some debugging. That’s where a 1-2 day suddenly takes longer.

That being said, you can book a call with me (see julianoes.com) or any of the other consultants ( Consultants - PX4 Autopilot ) if you’re stuck.