Control Servos with Pixhawk

Hi everybody,

I am new to pixhawk and arducopter and I have been looking for something:

I would like to control servos from my RC remote directly.

The setup is a pixhawk, spektrum satellite receiver and dx8 on a quad frame.

I have found "RC11" but seem to be having trouble other RCxx outputs that work and can only get the stuff to work under the gimbal controls.

Is there no way of using the many outputs for something other than gimbal and motors?

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  • How to configure RC12/ RC13/ RC14 for servo or led control using mission plannner guys ?

  • Found a solution. You can set the channels as pass through (individual channel settings in the full parameter list). Then, you can assign an RC channel to it and a port in the camera gimbal setup page.

    Also need to enable the pwn outputs (up to six on pixhawk).

    If there is interest I will try and make it a bit more detailed with photos, etc.

    • Definitely interest from me....desperate to understand how to do this. Please post details if you can.

      thanks in advance

      • We were just struggling with this issue as well in a family project we're doing.  Details on how we eventually got a servo to work are at http://pleasingsoftware.blogspot.com/2014/05/day-four-bombs-away.html

        We are pretty new at this, so this may not be the ideal way to get this to work, but it works for us.

        Day Four: Bomb's Away!
        Note: This is a series of articles in which we document our attempt to build an autonomous drone for the  Sparkfun AVC .  The previous post ...
      • I planned to do this in the past couple of days but other things have come up. I will try and make it this week.

        • Any chance yet to document this vipe?

          • Yeah, sorry. Been busy troubleshooting (connection  and power consumption issues).

            As a quick guide, you have to set up all channels RC6 to RC11, I think, to disabled or RC passthrough.

            Then, using the gimbal setup, you can untick the "stabilize" box, assign an output and assign a RC channel (to the right) for input.

            From there you power the output rail (I am assuming if you need this when to power the servos. I had a self powered led light system). Then just plug your servo on each output to work out which one corresponds to the one you need.

            To be honest, this is a workaround as you still use the gimbal setup to get your signal through (so if you have a fully functional gimbal you'll lose some channels) and involves some trial and error so it doesn't really satisfy me but serves my purpose (which was to switch my "landing lights" on and off).

            I will try and screenshot when I manage to connect the pixhawk to the computer again.

  • Depending on what your receiver will do and how you connect it to the Pixhawk, you should be able to either connect to the servos on the receiver directly, or configure the servo output of the Pixhawk to "pass through", which will simply do exactly that - pass the servo signals through to the output rail.

    • Brad

      flysky dr4-ii is connected to RC in of pixhawk.  I can't get any of the aux out to passthrough any channels. How do you configure a the 'pass through'?

    • In my case I am using a spektrum satelite rx. none of the outputs seems to respond. Plus, the denomination of outputs is different on the actual pixhawk and the software....

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