From my researches, the NAVIO 2 seems to be the best platform to be used for applications where self-navigation is the major task. The problem is that it’s quite expensive and for my build also quite big.
Based on performance and dimensions/weight, what is the next flight controller that you would suggest after NAVIO 2?
Why do you think a Navio2 is best? The ONLY reason to use a Navio2 is if you want to use Linux, need a pi-cam or require LTE control. I have one and it is a quality product. That said it is hardly the best for autonomous navigation. In fact the IMU is connected by i2c instead of SPI so refresh rates are lower – someone can correct me if I am wrong on that but I think I am correct. Not much of an issue with a plane but maybe noticable with a multirotor.
Holybro and Matek make numerous Ardupilot compatible flight controllers that cost a lot less and use F4 or F7 processors with integrated OSDs. You can go even cheaper on Banggood but maybe if you are making a larger build you may want to stick with at least a name brand of some sort.
Hello Marc, thanks for your suggestion … I have been looking for a while now, also checked Holybro and Matek … but I still have one doubt now: my goal is to control the drone with a script, for example by using dronekit. I would like to write a script on python (for example) which describes a drone mission made of n number of points (n can be ideally a large number), send it to the drone and then let the drone execute this autonomously (even if the link to the GCS is lost during the mission because the “mission instructions” are load all at once)
What I understood so far is that this is possible with autopilots having companion computers associated. Is that correct? For that reason my choice went to the Navio2 + RP3
For example I found the Dropix V2.1 which looks very interesting in terms of compactness and weight but I’m not sure if it is the right choice for what I would like to do … any suggestion on that?
You can use companion computers with any of these boards. Go to the wiki on companion computers.
But is a companion computer required, for example with the Dropix V2.1, in order to do autonomous flights as described above?
There is a new feature that allows LUA scripts to be run off the SD card. May be interesting to you.check it out.
But yes, to run a python script that flies waypoints you need a companion computer. This communicates with the autopilot with a spare UART port. Any of the ones we discussed will work.
That’s AUTO mode in Ardupilot - you upload the waypoints to the flight controller, switch to AUTO mode and Ardupilot will then autonomously go to those waypoints. I think there’s a waypoint limit of several hundred though.
Well yes. True. I assumed he had a reason for doing it in Python! You can of course fly waypoints without any companion computer.