Tower and PX4 flight stack

Posted by Jack on October 10, 2015 at 12:15am

Hello everyone

I'm considering getting an Android tablet to use Tower, but with the PX4 flight stack installed on the Pixhawk rather than APM.  It's alright if there are some limitations, I just want to be able to specify waypoints and basic autonomy commands.

Is this currently possible?

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Replies

  • Jack July 10, 2016 at 9:06pm

    I've forked the dronekit-android repo and have started expanding the PX4 code to make it Tower compatible.

    https://github.com/Jack-2025/dronekit-android

    Anyone interested, please join in and also spread the word! You can send me a message and I'll add you as collaborators.

    Jack-2025/dronekit-android
    Android DroneKit implementation. Contribute to Jack-2025/dronekit-android development by creating an account on GitHub.
  • Jack October 10, 2015 at 3:50pm

    Thanks Bill.  Do you have an idea of what could be different from the autopilot side, rather than the ground control side, that would make them incompatible?  Since both use Mavlink I'd guess they would be mostly interchangeable.

    The Mission Planner wiki says:

    "At time of writing (Feb 2015) QGroundControl is not recommended for use with ArduPilot – flying is supported (QGroundControl is a MAVLink compatible GCS) but the configuration screens for ArduPilot have been removed."

    So my guess was that since QGroundControl works with APM and PX4, then QGroundControl could be replaced by Mission Planner or Tower, even though there may be a few limitations.

    • Developer
      Bill Bonney > Jack October 10, 2015 at 5:43pm

      That's not really true, as QGC doesn't support changing the flight modes for APM. A dev is working on that compatibility at this moment.

      >Do you have an idea of what could be different from the autopilot side

      I understand all the issues (the ones I know, excluding unknown unknowns ;) ) to make it work with PX4. It's just I don't have time personally to do it. 

      MAVLink is common between the autopilots, but they all have a slightly different interpretation, implementation of the protocol, so there are some incompatibilities. MAVLink doesn't come with a conformance test suit, so that doesn't help.

      Somebody is working on PX4 compatibility for Tower, I'll see if I can find more info.

    • xiaoyao > Bill Bonney January 2, 2016 at 5:31pm

      hi Bill Bomnney ,now whether there is progress about Tower work with PX4 flight stack? is there a branch working  on it ,i am foward to it .

      i would be very grateful if you have any news .happy new year!

    • Jack > xiaoyao March 14, 2016 at 1:53am

      As far as I know, no one is working on making Tower compatible with PX4.  And looking at the 3DR Services sources, Px4Native.java is basically empty.

  • Developer
    Bill Bonney October 10, 2015 at 12:46am
    Somebody is working on it for PX4, but at the moment it's probably not gong to work.
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