Hi,
I like to thank all developers for their tremendous work giving me and all the other users so many opportunities and fun with ArduCopter, Plane, Rover and PX4.
Now I have two questions I could not answer myself although following this forum quite a while...
1. What are the differences between the software PX4-flightstack and ArduCopter?
I know PX4 refers to three terms:
- the hardware (Pixhawk, PixRacer etc.)
- the full stack which can be used as Flight Controller and autopilot with qgroundcontrol and
- the firmware which is also referenced in github as a module within ArduCopter.
PX4.io states ArduCopter is a monolithic application to the PX4 flightstack
2. Why do we have two open-source solutions based on PX4: PX4 Autopilot and Arducopter?
Why are the efforts not fully aligned to work on PX4? I have seen many main developers of Arducopter Plane Rover are also core developer and committer of PX4.
I would really appteciate you answer and looking forward the next spacetime to enjoy Arducopter and Plane or try PX4.
BR
Bjoern
Replies
They're just two projects that started independently long ago and have been gradually converging under Dronecode. They use the same RTOS and many of the same libraries below the flight stack, and the same ground stations above the flight stack. It's just the flight code layer that's different. It's like different flavors of Linux these days. They all do similar things, but it's increasingly just a matter of taste.
Also PX4 is BSD licenced and APM is GPL V3 licensed, so companies that are concerned about the IP issues around GPL V3 often chose the BSD stack instead.