I originally came across dronekit-python and in their documentation talked about Ardupilot. There’s a lot I see to go over. The setup I’m looking at is a beaglebone black, two robocalw 2X60A controllers and 4 CIM dc motors with omniwheels. The drone can go forward/ back, rotate left/ right, and move left and right without rotating. Looking at the FrSky QX7 transmitter. My question is do i need a pixhawk or other hardware on the drone? Right now i just want to get the thing moving with manual input and use dronekit for a gimbal camera setup. Then branch out to OpenCV and autonomous features. Thank you for any information and links to other threads.
Ardurover is firmware that runs on a “flight controller”. It has been ported to run under Linux with BeagleBone single board computers. You can also run a Pixhawk and connect it serially to the Beaglebone if you want to offload the “flight control” function to the Pixhawk leaving your BBB to other tasks.
We have a list of “flight control” boards that we support here. The Pixhawk family is the most popular but there is also the Beagle Bone Blue if you want to stick with Beagle Bones. The problem with that board is that it uses I2C (instead of SPI) to read from the IMU so the majority of the board’s CPU is consumed just reading data. A very disappointing mistake by the beagle bone people… it could have been such an awesome board. Anyway… there are lots of choices… you might be fine with a random Pixhawk clone… it’s also theoretically possible to run ardupilot right on the BeagleBone Black if an IMU cape is added.
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