DShot1200 ESC Protocol

by Oscar

What is DShot1200? DShot1200 is an ESC protocol similar to DShot 600, but twice as fast with lower delay. There are some benefits in using DShot1200, and special hardware is required to run it.

Some of the links on this page are affiliate links. I receive a commission (at no extra cost to you) if you make a purchase after clicking on one of these affiliate links. This helps support the free content for the community on this website. Please read our Affiliate Link Policy for more information.

Update (Sep 2019): DShot1200 is officially removed from Betaflight 4.1 as it no longer supports 32K looptime and the developers believe it brings no benefit under 8K looptime compared to DShot600.

To learn about what DShot is please see this guide.

Just like DShot150, DShot300 and DShot600, the number “1200” in DShot1200 signifies the bit-rate in kilobits per second. So in theory DShot1200 is 2 times faster than DShot600.

DShot1200 would be faster than Multishot too. Multishot has a varying signal length between 5us to 25us depends on throttle level, while DShot1200 has a constant, fixed signal length of about 13uS. Unless you fly really slow with Multishot with low throttle, it’s more likely that the delay would be between 15us to 25us (50% to 100% throttle).

In order to run 32K looptime you have to use either Multishot or DShot1200 as other protocols are not fast enough.

Advantages of DShot1200

Comparing to Analog ESC protocols like Oneshot and Multishot, the same benefits of DShot applies to DShot1200:

  • Higher resolution and more accurate and reliable data
  • Data error rejection
  • Now with the advantage of even higher speed with DShot1200, there are more reasons to change over to digital ESC protocol now from analog

Comparing to other DShot protocol, DShot1200 is simply faster. And faster is always better if the system is capable of running it :)

I often get asked if DShot1200 is better than DShot600. To be honest I can’t really tell the difference between DShot600 and DShot1200 in flight. But you have to use DShot1200 if you want to run 32K/32K looptime, DShot600 is too slow for it.

What ESC/FC can run DShot1200

DShot1200 has been implemented and tested in KISS FC and ESC’s. And we are hoping it will be available for Betaflight and BLHeli in the near future too.

Any ESC that is already struggling with DShot600 will not be able to run DShot1200. I think the latest 32-bit ESC’s with STMF0 processors and BLHeli_32 firmware should support DShot1200 when they are out.

Leave a Comment

By using this form, you agree with the storage and handling of your data by this website. Note that all comments are held for moderation before appearing.

2 comments

Marcus 20th April 2018 - 5:03 pm

Should I switch to use dshot 1200 on the Holy bro kopis 1?
It’s currently on 600

Reply
frik 7th June 2017 - 12:28 pm

How fast/what is the update freq. of value sent from RC transmitter through RC receiver to Flight Control board? Assumimng some fast serial protocol like FrSky SBUS.

If DShot1200 has update freq of 83kHz what is max. update freq. in Betaflight with best/fastest FC in these times?

Reply