We long ago decided that the controller of the Hybrix20 was going to be a Pixhawk. Some customers tell us that Pixhawk is not the right platform for our product but we would like to work on those few things that are missing to fit a drone of these features.
The first step has been to ruggerize the enclosure and the connectors. The second step is to adapt the software to the special requirements of Hybrix20.
While we thought how to do this I would like to show you the box we have built
Jose Luis Cortes
Quaternium
Comments
Regarding the use of Ultimate LRS ( http://www.itluxembourg.lu/site/ ) for the long range RC/telemetry, Jose contacted me to present his project and ask authorization. I agreed, and am happy that he chose ULRS after comparing with the other LRS systems. The only point is that if he sells the system he has to take care of legal/compliance aspects, that vary from country to country.
He's also the one who made a 20 km ground to ground testing of ULRS. Much larger distances can be made ground to air, but 20 km ground to ground is a record. So yes it's good to have innovative people test and use the ULRS, and just look at this Pixhawk enclosure (not even to mention their hybrid drone), these are the guys who push the whole community forward.
@Jose -- why not make a posting in the Ardupilot forum as well (http://ardupilot.org/). This is one of the best Ardupilot applications I have seen.
@Jose All good. It is just when you posted your controller here you made no mention of ULRS and did not clarify when I asked. But I suppose you may have been busy. Anyhow congratulations on your Hybrid. Looking good. Will you be offering the new flavor of Pixhawk for sale? Maybe you could consider a version using the Pix 2.1 Cube.
Chris, somepeople who have recommended me change autopilot (people with a lot of criteria in my opinion), I think they were thinking about Spanish autopilots. There are 3 or 4 autopilot manufacturers here in Spain. I think they was thinking in a Spanish company called Embention, they have a controller certified according to standards DO-178B/C / ED-12, DO-254, DO-160G
Certifying an autopilot according to DO-178B I think it's a pretty hard job, it could be interesting to get a certificate of airworthiness but maybe we are talking about airplanes. I imagine a certificate of airworthiness in a multirotor is still far.
@Marc Dornan
We use the last firmware version than we upload with mission planner, doing nothing with this firmware, no IP out of the public domain.
We use ULRS in the ground-station project. We love this project! I emailed Ben (flipflap) before use it, I said him than we wanted to use it professionally and I asked him about licenses or how he was thinking about distributing this software. Before publishing the ground-station I send him some pictures of this ground-station and the multirotor datalink. I think I've done everything right.
Agreed ;-). I'm just wondering which one of the "professional" autopilots people are wanting. Procerus? Micropilot? Something else?
@Chris Anderson
I supose this type of professional autopilots that come in aluminum enclosure and are about $8000.
I do not understand why I have to pay $8000 for a flight controller if we have always used pixhawk and it works perfect. I even imagine that with one of these autopilots we would take a step back in terms of performance.
Firstly, I love your flying machines and your work.
Any chance you could supply more details as to what you have done with Pixhawk and what you needed to do to make Pixhawk work for you? I agree that the connector situation on Pixhawk is not acceptable for a work machine and your approach looks good. What have you been doing with the firmware? I assume you know the license situation and have taken appropriate measures if you want to keep your IP out of the public domain. One has to ask, will you be putting anything back into the public domain?
I would have to say I found it really odd that you seemed to use an RCGroups project (ULRS) for your Mavlink/RC, and posted here, and never acknowledged it. Maybe you are no longer using ULRS (either the open source or closed source version).
Impressive! What did those customers who had doubts about Pixhawk recommend instead?