Just came across this Pixhawk clone, so thought I would share.
http://witespyquad.gostorego.com/flight-controllers/rtfhawk-2-4.html
Ready to Fly Quads is a reputable distributor, and I have made a few purchases from them already. They already have a clone of the APM2.x, that has been somewhat successful. Will this new clone be just as good. for under $100USD, might be work a try.
Comments
I think there’s this mistaken view that 3DR “originated Ardupilot” That’s simply incorrect, as the code base, although much re-written, originated from classic open-source community a long time ago, and still exists thanks to the many great volunteers with no affiliation with 3DR. While 3DR has been and is a great steward and facilitator, it does not own Ardupilot, nor Mission planner, and one-way and unannounced decisions disfavoring other boards, e.g. in open-source Mission Planner, is disturbing, and they take more and more .....
3DR had now taken everything from the original from open-source community, and now has locked it up with OTP. Pay 3DR or you Do not get to load our own open-source community code. No questions answered ..
maybe, I don't really know but,
A number of businesses, big and small, pay their employees to work on open source projects. Some even donate large blocks of code that they spent plenty of money to create. They want to make sure they influence the way the code base is developing, and the easiest way to do this is to contribute lines of code.
To summarize the situation:
1/ APM planner & Mission Planner implemented a certificate check that officially supposed to alert users of their FC origin. This makes sense considering they want to certificate their hardware and there's no reason to argue about that.
2/ Seems the "feature" was a bit too conservative, as it prevents homebrew & clone boards to be updated from the software. As a flying developer and part of the community, I fell like part of me is 'stolen' and locked away.
3/ it took only few minutes to find alternative solutions by using an old px4uploader.exe with MP, but this was blocked on purpose.
4/ the people modified px4uploader, nobody is alerted that they run a non 3DR hardware anymore but firmware upload works for all boards, but they updated the MP without changing any ver. number and blocked everyone on purpose.
5/, a new APM build was distributed removing the upload fail. It only displays an alert box saying hardware is not original. This solution sounds acceptable. No need to hack MP anymore. Everybody would be ok with that.
6/ But one day later, a new build is pushed that enable again the upload fail process with non otp signatures.
7/ As it stands you can not upload firmware with MP, unless you pay the man. no homebrew allowed!
Can somebody explain us what's the motive on this ? all of the Qtupload was removed from the website. so many secrets.
3DR: please read up on the GPL. I feel this behavior is violating your own license. It is not open anymore
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
thats right but some people try to make life for non 3DR hardware users a little bit more difficult right now.
Paul,
would like to help you but I don't have any idea on coding at all, hope someone will help you, I don't see any problems on what you are doing
success and cheers
Dieter
Mike,
https://store.3drobotics.com/products/3dr-pixhawk
Pixhawk schematic diagram
Pixhawk board layout
Learn more about open-source hardware
https://pixhawk.org/
They finally emailed me back ..a couple days later. But I did not really get any of the info we need. Please tell me how to get my coa file in the system? This is the email I received:
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“You're finally at the top of the queue. It has been a busy couple of days.
I think all the information you need to make a COA is here
https://github.com/PX4/Bootloader
here
https://github.com/diydrones/PX4Firmware/src/systemcmds/auth
and
https://github.com/PX4/Firmware/blob/master/src/modules/systemlib/o...
So what would you like to contribute to this project?”
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I tried to express my feelings at the end of The CrashCast podcast, but I can not truly explain how I feel as a long-time flyer of these boards. It is about the flyers, the community; everyone is a dev, everyone can get a little part of the pie, not just 1-5 people getting all the money...
http://thecrashcast.com/more-than-a-little-info Great podcast. (Thank you guys for letting me pop on at the end, i )
There have been many many people who have contributed to MP, and now have had their doors locked, without getting to holding a key.
I will support the RTFHawk, I am a one-man-band. please help me help you, I do not want to fight or fork, I want to work together for a common goal.
A bunch more of RTFHawks have been tested and are shipping out the Door! Thank you for the support...
Paul aka. witespy