Hi there! I am a newbie in this forum and need help to choose better solution to start new project upgrade of existing bait boat! What to choose ArduPilot or Pixhawk controller? Any suggestion would be so helpful for me! Thanks in advance!
There are many options!
http://ardupilot.org/rover/docs/common-autopilots.html lists most of them.
Which is best depends on a range of factors (how many motors, servos, peripherals, canbus, vibration isolation, size, etc etc). But the old APM is not an option you should consider at all.
This autopilot bait boat options:
- Automatically drive from spot to spot from your Home position!
- If transmitter unexpectedly stop working after a few seconds the bait boat have to return to your Home position!
- Display various parameters on the monitor such as battery conditions, compass, direction, distance to the spot , GPS coordinates, echo sounder display, water depth and temperature and etc.
- Store more than 500 spots or Waypoints found by a echo sounder and GPS receiver with one key store function!
- List of programmable options for each one spot as stop and pause for bait and feed drop, back feed for spot mission completed, ready conditions for next waypoint signal and command if is not auto!
- Self-calibrating internal compass for absolutely linear driving to the spots.
- Accuracy with good to very good satellite reception: 90% below 1m
You’ll need to do some research about echosounders that are currently supported, but you can do most of that with ArduPilot and Missionplanner.
When starting out, it’s really worth the time to read through the documentation, and checking out Randy’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/rmackay9 which gives a great overview of using boats with ArduPilot.
I’m very much not a boat expert, but there are some very informative threads if you search this forum.
Thanks! Lot of information everywhere so I have to choose and collect everything useful to make this project possible!