G'day Chris,
Eyeing off those new mini pixhawk controllers. Like you said , the APM looks like it has died a sudden death.
How much of the hardware can you transfer from APM to pixhawk? Haven't played around with the quads for well over a month. Got to pull my finger out if I am ever going to be ready for the September trip.
Cheers, Mark
Hi Mark,
If you want any full sized pixhawk's just wait a little bit longer as most of the pixhawk's will drop in price as 3DR has a pixhawk 2 that they are using in the Solo but will release soon separately soon. I'll most likely pick up one of the mini pixhawk's for my 250 sized quad but anything larger I like the pixhawk format/size.
Some of the stuff the Pixhawk can do is great, for example I use the EKF stuff and it has stopped the odd wander from happening (I find the wandering instances were happening less due to two GPS's but it still occurred once in a while). I've not had one uncommanded move since I've turned it on for the tricopter. Compared to my 250 quad, it sitting in loiter will often decided to wander upto 4m before returning to the right location (only takes the GPS getting a funny reading).
In terms of reusing stuff, to be honest only the airspeed sensor and optical flow are the only items that are impacted (from memory you don't have the airspeed and I think you might have bought a optical flow at some stage?). They'll work but the pixhawk versions are better. If you buy a cable pack (or two) or you have a bunch of DF13 6 position connectors spare then you can convert the GPS and telemetry. Most of the other items there are no changes, just plug them in.
In their defense they have said for the last 9 months that APM on copter wont be able to go much further. Sadly that day is here, I could kind of see it happening a while back and thats why I switched over. I will go further and pursue more of the linux boards as time goes on. In terms of Pixhawk's life span for copter, I'd say you'd get another 1.5 to 3 years before we are in the same boat again :-)
I'm struggling with my local oval's being used later and later each weekend. I got some good flying in last weekend and I should get a small flight in later this afternoon. This is one of my reasons for getting optical flow and lidar so i can fly near my house, I'd like to get my roof survey done as well as do some more photogrammetry stuff too (so more varied locations).
There is nothing wrong with the APM's you just wont get the new features as they come out, they'll still fix critical bugs. Mine are about to be used as antenna trackers for my UAV challenge project.
Regards,
Chris
