I am starting this discussion to post information for testing the Px4 platform.
Most of the discussion is currently in the APM vs Px4 thread. ArduCopter on the Px4 is a work in progressand has made great progress. I have Arducopter on a Px4 Fmu board hovering now and I am very glad to see the code base integrated into the Stm32 platorm. Ardupilot represents many hours testing and refinement , many thanks to Andrew Tridgell ,Randy Mackay and the other developers as well as Gary Mcray for the documentation on the Wiki
The Px4 can support a Quad with 4 Motors using only the Px4_FMu board with some of its Usart pins defined as Pwm outputs or using the Px4_Io board to supply Pwm motor (servo) outputs. The configuration with the Io board may work better at the moment , the Fmu only has a number of issues to get booted up configured and running. It may be that all the testing at the moment is being done with boards that use the Px4_Io.
The Px4 usb is software driven not a ftdi chip like the Apm and has given problems but is working now . When the Stm32 bootloader starts it creates a Usb port with its own Id and sets up a DFU device for loading. If no bootloader request is received it jumps to the code startup and creates a usb serial port with a different USB Id for a mavlink connection. Windows drivers have to deal with the Usb connection and connect the appropiate driver.
I think the Px4 vs Apm answer is that it is still early in the Px4 development but shows great promise.
Replies
gary, i am able to connect to mission planner when i upload arucopter firmware. but cannot connect to mission planner when i load arduplane 2.73. i tried on both the boards. may be i should try aruplane 2.72
Hi,
I just received a px4fmu + px4io I ordered from 3drobotics. I succeeded flashing them with APM V3.0.0-rc1 using QUpgrade and connecting to the px4 system using MissionPlanner 1.2.50 via USB. All of this on an Ubuntu 13.04 (I compiled QUpgrade from source and ran MissionPlanner using mono).
I plan to mount the px4 into a small (300 g. including a 2S lipo) hexa. I was just starting the configuration of my APM using mission planner when I discovered a problem. As the Orange R710 spektrum DSM2 receiver with s-bus was included in the pixhawk maintained list of supported peripherals I ordered one of these and pluged it to the px4fmu ppm/sbus port. The px4 is able to receive signal, but channels order is reversed (they are in order 1: throttle, 2: roll, 3: pitch, 4: yaw). I think I am running in the same kind of problem as experienced by another user of the same receiver. As a workaround, I plugged an orange satellite in the sat. port of the px4io, instead of using the R710 receiver but I was wondering if there was a way to re-assign the channels ?
I run in another problem : from time to time, I cannot connect to the px4 from my ubuntu computer. In the syslog, I can see that the USB serial device is correctly initialized (and a /dev/ttyACM0 special file is created), but I get a timeout when I try to connect using Mission Planner and I get no characters when I try to connect a serial terminal (actually "cu -s 57600 -l /dev/ttyACM0"). At normal time, MissionPlanner initialize correcly a mavlink connection and/or I get a mix from APM startup message and mavlink frames in the terminal. I removed everything I suspect to use the serial port (e.g. modemmanager) else than MP or the terminal (and of course I don't start the two at the same try). I suspect mis-connection between the px4fmu and the px4io, or with the sdcard or an insufficient power via usb but I'm not sure. Does anyone get this kind of problem ?
Best Regards,
Remi
Jhon@ what i found that PX4 communicated with mission planner when i changed the laptop. it would not communicate with my earlier laptop although everything seemed normal. the old laptop reconized the PX4 when connected and even could load the firmware but would not connect via mavlink.
hi gary, thomas, i was able to connect the PX4 again with mission planner 1.2.50. the problem was with laptop com port addressing. i tried another laptop which had very few com ports assigned. PX4 got connected. PX4 is very sensitive to com port addressing.a lesson to learn. took almost a month to find out. so now i can move further. planning to install it on a skywalker on which APM2.5 is installed.
hi gary, thanx once agian. i am able to now upload the firmware using both mission planner and using qupgrader on both the boards. but i am not able to connect to mission plannerr using both the boards. i had reached a stage earlier where i was getting telemetry using 3DR radio and was about to fly on aircarft. i do not know what happened and i am back to sqaure one. i wll try another laptop and install mission planner. i am sure my boards are good.
hi gary can you please email the PX4FMUv1.6 driver that u are using. my email is ravinewdelhi@yahoo.com
i was just planning to fly the pX4 in a aircraft when everything failed. i have to restart form scratch.
hi gary, i am back to sqaure one. after successfully connecting PX4 with Mission Planner. now i am not able to connect to mission planner and not able to upload the firmware. i have to chnage my laptop. bad luck
how do i download the USB driver form the GIT repository. it says copy to clipboard.
Re: If no bootloader request is received it jumps to the code startup and creates a usb serial port with a different USB Id for a mavlink connection. Windows drivers have to deal with the Usb connection and connect the appropiate driver.
I'm not sure if this is discussed in this thread but this is no longer the case. As of a few weeks ago the bootloader mode and the run mode both use the same USB ID.
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