fcPicker

A site that helps UAV builders pick the best flight controller (autopilot) board for their build. Initial dataset is every ArduPilot-supported board, parsed straight from the firmware's hwdef files. Schema is designed so PX4 / INAV / Betaflight can be added later.

How it works

~/ardupilot/.../hwdef/*    tools/build.py     data/boards/<slug>.json    tools/bundle.py    frontend/public/boards.json
   (hwdef.dat / .inc)   ─▶ (Python/SQLAlchemy) ─▶ (one per board,      ─▶ (concat)       ─▶ (consumed by React UI)
                                                  hand-editable,
                                                  committed)
                                  │
                                  └─▶ data/fcpicker.sqlite (intermediate)

The site is fully static. The per-board JSON files in data/boards/ are the source of truth — each has hwdef-derived keys plus a manual block (form_factor, size_class, dimensions_mm, weight_g, connectors, notes) for fields that can't be extracted automatically. tools/build.py only ever overwrites its own keys; manual edits survive re-runs. tools/bundle.py concatenates the per-board files into frontend/public/boards.json for the frontend to fetch.

Local setup

Prerequisites: Node 20+, Python 3.11+, and a clone of ArduPilot at ~/ardupilot (only the libraries/AP_HAL_ChibiOS/hwdef/ tree is needed).

# one-time
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -r tools/requirements.txt
cd frontend && npm install && cd ..

# re-import from hwdef (only needed when ArduPilot adds new boards)
.venv/bin/python tools/build.py

# re-bundle per-board files into boards.json
# (the pre-commit hook does this automatically when data/boards/*.json is staged)
.venv/bin/python tools/bundle.py

# run the site locally
cd frontend && npm run dev

Project layout

fcpicker/
├── tools/
│   ├── build.py          # parses hwdef → SQLite → data/boards/*.json
│   ├── bundle.py         # concats data/boards/*.json → frontend/public/boards.json
│   └── requirements.txt
├── data/
│   ├── boards/<slug>.json   # source of truth, one per board, committed
│   └── fcpicker.sqlite      # generated, gitignored
├── frontend/
│   ├── public/boards.json   # bundled, committed (so Cloudflare can build)
│   └── src/                 # React + Vite + TypeScript app
└── README.md

Deployment (Cloudflare Pages)

Create a Pages project pointing at this repo with:

• Framework preset: Vite
• Build command: npm run build
• Build output directory: dist
• Root directory: frontend

boards.json is committed to the repo so Cloudflare's build env (which doesn't run our Python pipeline) can find it. Regenerate locally and commit whenever the ArduPilot hwdef sources change.

Contact

Found a bug or have a board that's parsing incorrectly? Get in touch:

• GitHub: @fredgaffey — open an issue on this repo
• Email: fredgaffey08@gmail.com

Roadmap

• Manufacturer + pretty-name extraction from wiki pages
• Pinout: UART / CAN / PWM / I2C counts
• Vehicle-type and use-case wizard with scoring
• PX4 / INAV / Betaflight support