Discussions

APM 2.5 or PX4

Posted by Jeremy Gore on January 16, 2013 at 8:54pm

Hi All,

Just about to get myself a quad setup for my APM2.5.

After browsing the forums I see a PX4 for sale.

Having never heard of it before. Is the PX4 the new best thing? Benefits of it over the APM2.5?

Any advice would be great

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Replies

  • John Campen July 2, 2013 at 5:51pm

    We are up into July now so any update one the PX4 and how its developing?

    How is it now comparing with APM2.5+? What I am interested in is to have a board that the baro and mag sensors are separate from the board so they can be mounted similar to the DJI system and have them well up away from RF noisy cables ect. 

    I see the APM2.5 with Arducopter 3.0v now has issues with the mag when setting the compassmot and seems the obvious fix is going to be to eventually to have the baro and mag separated off the board. If not then there is going to be limitations on how your hardware can be setup.

  • Jason Ferrier April 29, 2013 at 9:17am

    For those that have been using the PX4, do you have any updates to share since January?

  • Moderator
    Michael Pursifull January 17, 2013 at 7:02am
    PX4 is a much more powerful platform. It has more resources, a 32bit arm-based processor, and is a lot harder to integrat, for the moment, into your UAS. It has an RTOS, it requires a completely different tool chain to bootstrap and compile/update (for now) and requires different methods to connect RC gear, most of your components (read: servos) and does not presently allow for end-user use of analog sensors beyond those that are onboard (no plug and play support for airspeed sensor, for example)

    That being said, I love the PX4, and if you are a roll-up-your-sleeve electronics, micro controller, coding, cable hacking kind of guy, please do jump in and take early advantage of the PX4. It is a whole new beautiful world.
  • Moderator
    Michael Pursifull January 17, 2013 at 6:55am
    Stick with the APM2.5+ for now.

    The PX4 is for bleeding edge pseudo-developers only.
    Until Tuesday, the general recommendation was PX4 was for developers only, but as of Tuesday, the Dev team have been asking more advanced hackers to begin using it.

    If you don't already know about the PX4, or are not an edge-of-new, no-doc-needing, custom-cable-making, ready-to-lawn-dart, non-windows coder, stick to the APM for a few months more. The APM will be solid for a long time after, and the most important thing you should know about the PX4 is that there are two different sets of code which run on it at this time. The official PX4 environment, which the board designers just had flying fixed wing for the first time about a week ago, and the APM-derived code, ArduPlane and ArduCopter, with a special hardware abstraction layer, all run on top of the native PX4 environment. Also run in fixed wing first time ever within the last couple of weeks. The point here is that the same code run on the APM from our community is run on the PX4, and the reason is the community and developers want both architectures to be flying. There be dragons, avoid the PX4 for just a little while longer unless you hack and code.
  • John January 16, 2013 at 10:28pm
    Was wondering the same thing myself. From what I read the PX4 is faster than the apm. Radio and servo integration is not straight forward and no analog input support yet for sensors. Not sure which GPS units work with this controller and where they're connected.

    Any recommendations... PX4 or APM 2.5?
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