Kerotan1989
New Member
Hello,
I have a friend who needs a fairly long range drone (say about 4 miles or so) that can take off, follow a GPS route, return home and land, all completely autonomously. I've done a fair amount of research into my own build, and am fairly certain on a few things, but a bit confused about some other things.
So here's the things I'm pretty sure will work well together for the type of drone we need
Tarot 650mm Ironman frame
Tarot 4008 330KV motors
30A HobbyWing Platinum Pro ESCs
Tattu 6S1P 10000mAh 15C battery
15" diam 5.5" pitch props, carbon fibre or plastic
now the stuff I'm a bit confused on
Pixhawk Radiolink with GPS OR HolyBro Pixhawk PX4 with GPS (similar to HolyBro Pix32?)
FrSky X8R receiver (EU firmware, we're British)
FrSky Taranis QX7 2.4GHz transmitter
All up weight - ~2780g, including camera and gimbal (not mentioned above)
So here are my questions (a fair few, but any help would be appreciated)
Drive components
1. Will the selected drive components be compatible with each other and the weight of the drone? I've
put it all through eCalc and it seems okay, but a bit of human advice or warnings would be great.
Flight controllers
2. My understanding of the Pixhawk devices is that the Radiolink is best suited to using APM (ArduPilot), whilst the HolyBro is optimised for PX4. Is this accurate?
3. What we really need is pre-flight GPS route planning, telemetry monitoring, and some very basic RC control just for the PID tuning and testing the drone (as stated, the plan is for it to fly fully automated). This is why we're looking at Pixhawk, because the available software seems good for the job. The only part of that that would need to be fairly long range is the telemetry.
With all that in mind, could someone(s) who's worked with these devices before perhaps recommend a good telemetry setup for each of the flight controllers?
4. Power to the FC. From looking around, I thought the easiest way to power either of the Pixhawk flight controllers would be to use a power module directly between the battery and the FC. For the HolyBro, I was going to use the HolyBro APM 10s power module. Would this work, and would the same power module also work for the Radiolink?
5. What is the difference between , the HolyBro Pix32 and the HolyBro Px4? I'm struggling to find a good history of Pixhawk models to compare the two, and can't even tell which is more recent, and so a bit of advise on this would be great.
6. For either flight controller, I'm not quite clear on how to set up telemetry, and what hardware to use to match the various firmwares. Could someone suggest a good telemetry module for the Radiolink and also for the HolyBro?
7. Finally, I'm fairly sure that the FrSky transmitter and receiver I mentioned above would be compatible with either flight controller. Is this the case?
That's it! If anyone can give any advise at all I'd be eternally grateful.
Thanks,
Tom
I have a friend who needs a fairly long range drone (say about 4 miles or so) that can take off, follow a GPS route, return home and land, all completely autonomously. I've done a fair amount of research into my own build, and am fairly certain on a few things, but a bit confused about some other things.
So here's the things I'm pretty sure will work well together for the type of drone we need
Tarot 650mm Ironman frame
Tarot 4008 330KV motors
30A HobbyWing Platinum Pro ESCs
Tattu 6S1P 10000mAh 15C battery
15" diam 5.5" pitch props, carbon fibre or plastic
now the stuff I'm a bit confused on
Pixhawk Radiolink with GPS OR HolyBro Pixhawk PX4 with GPS (similar to HolyBro Pix32?)
FrSky X8R receiver (EU firmware, we're British)
FrSky Taranis QX7 2.4GHz transmitter
All up weight - ~2780g, including camera and gimbal (not mentioned above)
So here are my questions (a fair few, but any help would be appreciated)
Drive components
1. Will the selected drive components be compatible with each other and the weight of the drone? I've
put it all through eCalc and it seems okay, but a bit of human advice or warnings would be great.
Flight controllers
2. My understanding of the Pixhawk devices is that the Radiolink is best suited to using APM (ArduPilot), whilst the HolyBro is optimised for PX4. Is this accurate?
3. What we really need is pre-flight GPS route planning, telemetry monitoring, and some very basic RC control just for the PID tuning and testing the drone (as stated, the plan is for it to fly fully automated). This is why we're looking at Pixhawk, because the available software seems good for the job. The only part of that that would need to be fairly long range is the telemetry.
With all that in mind, could someone(s) who's worked with these devices before perhaps recommend a good telemetry setup for each of the flight controllers?
4. Power to the FC. From looking around, I thought the easiest way to power either of the Pixhawk flight controllers would be to use a power module directly between the battery and the FC. For the HolyBro, I was going to use the HolyBro APM 10s power module. Would this work, and would the same power module also work for the Radiolink?
5. What is the difference between , the HolyBro Pix32 and the HolyBro Px4? I'm struggling to find a good history of Pixhawk models to compare the two, and can't even tell which is more recent, and so a bit of advise on this would be great.
6. For either flight controller, I'm not quite clear on how to set up telemetry, and what hardware to use to match the various firmwares. Could someone suggest a good telemetry module for the Radiolink and also for the HolyBro?
7. Finally, I'm fairly sure that the FrSky transmitter and receiver I mentioned above would be compatible with either flight controller. Is this the case?
That's it! If anyone can give any advise at all I'd be eternally grateful.
Thanks,
Tom
