It's been a while since we had the last release of Betalight. After all, Betaflight 4.1 was released in October 2019. Half a year ago. Luckily, developers were not hibernating over the winter, and brand new, 4.2, release is scheduled for May 2020. Slightly more than 2 weeks from now.

Below is the list of the most important (from my perspective) functional changes.

The most important changes:

  • By default, Betaflight 4.2 sets DISABLED ESC protocol and it is up to the user to set correct protocol supported by ESCs
  • Virtual Current Meter uses now throttle setpoint, not RC command. Now it will work correctly with throttle limiting, throttle boost and so on. It should give more reliable current estimation now
  • Support for FrSky Graphical OSD aka Pixel OSD
  • By default, stick arming is disabled in Betaflight 4.2. It can be changed with enable_stick_arming CLI command
  • Improved STM32H7 support
  • Added the STM32G4 support. We can expect boards based on STAM32G4 to appear in the future
  • Dynamic Notch Filter improvements - it is now faster and more reliable
  • NFE Race Mode implementation known from Silverware
  • Yaw Spin Recovery auto mode
  • Scheduler improvements - gyro processing works always with full gyro sampling rate while filtering is run together with the main PID loop. It results is a more reliable scheduling and less jitter
  • Quick Rates System - max rotation rate is set in degrees per second and curve is set with the expo. This is very similar to rates used by INAV
  • For Crossfire CRSF it is now possible to display SNR in dB instead of RSSI dBm in OSD

Other change:

  • D_min and FF improvements
  • disarm reason is now logged in the Blackbox log
  • ICM42605 gyro and accelerometer sensor support
  • Dynamic LPF curves are now configurable
  • RC channels preview was added to the OSD
  • CLI name command removed
  • OSD distance from home alarm
  • CMS VTX management improvements
  • More GPS options are now settable from Betaflight Configurator
  • SOFTSPI feature removed
  • support for Redpine protocol for CC2500 RF chipsets
  • serial passthrough via MSP