There is no magic to a “real” Pixhawk. Pick another H743 based Flight Controller that better suits your budget.
And Pixhawk 4, F7 based, was discontinued some time ago.
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Rotorgeeks in Ontario sells Matek flight controllers. CAD prices and no border issues for shipping. https://rotorgeeks.com/
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I don’t have any issues buying from them from the US. Good outfit.
I know your pain. I bought EV800D goggles and found they were unusable
with glasses, fortunately i found a very cheap (in both senses)
“smartphone VR adapter” at a thrift store that was made of foam and
fabric, i cut out the parts that held the lenses and the EV800D
detachable screen was a snug fit inside the opening, i just had to glue
in some foam to hold the fresnel lens and get the proper spacing, and
some velcro to hold the screen securely. It seems awful but it works
well now.
As long as it works, that’s great! How the thing looks is unimportant.
I ended up using my EV800D just as a small monitor. I use just the rear
part, without any lenses, and mount it on a tripod. Then I can look at
my drone directly, or at the FPV screen, switching quickly between them.
It’s quite tiny for such a use, of course, but for me that ended up
working better than wearing the goggles as intended, and having to tear
them off and put on my normal glasses to land the drone visually.
I’m generally unsatisfied with the video system on my drone. I would
love to replace the whole setup by a good digital video system, but I
have high requirements, that apparently no off-the-shelf system satisfies:
- True 1920x1080 resolution
- Settable white balance (NOT automatic!)
- Transmission on a relatively low frequency band, to get through trees.
Not 5.8GHz, not 2.4GHz, and probably not even 1.2GHz! Being a ham, I
could legally transmit my video around 432MHz, or 225MHz, but of course
I would have to build the equipment myself… - Receivable with a suitable receiver that can be connected to a
standard monitor or TV.
The DJI flight unit with its 720p resolution is now available at
acceptable cost, but it needs $400 DJI goggles to receive. No thanks!
Someday something will show up, and then I will buy it and replace my
blurry, unreliable, horrible video system, along with the tiny
googles-turned-monitor!
Manfred
Yes that’s discontinued, but that’s still available at Holybro’s website, as once I thought to go up with Pixhawk 4 only, so I requested holybro to remanufacture it. And then they restocked that soon! (Somehow! Within 3 to 4 days) Then I changed again my plan to go with Pixhawk 6C Mini… As that was cheaper, mini form factor, and with H743…
Oh sir!!! You literally said my words!!! Exactly my words!!!
Every line feels relatable!!
Similar was my first drone, Heavy F450, local 30A Simonk ESC, Golden coloured coplet type motors 1000KV, plastic unbalanced props, And the same M7N GPS with no brand…
But I also think that if I would have seen that drone parts are such expensive, then I would never had made drones! Parts literally costing 100s of $ !
Really…
We should purchase what we require… Not what is the latest…
And yes…
“It’s better to play with a low performance drone, than to watch other people playing with their expensive ones!”
Really the most relatable reply I have ever seen here…
Patently incorrect and terrible advice in general.
Using an APM board in 2024 is a non-starter. Don’t do it.
“Pixhawk 2.4.8” hardware at this point is nearly all trash clone junk that is wildly overpriced. Anywhere I can find one other than Ali Express has them priced similarly to branded H7 boards. And reasonable quality F405 boards are a dime a dozen.
Plus, the autopilot itself is pretty resilient and rather unlikely to sustain damage in a crash…AND we don’t really expect you to crash. We expect you to follow the documentation that leads to success.
Again, you are making assertions you simply can’t back up with fact.
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As the orginally post I replied to was deleted also my post doesn’t make sense here so I also deleted it
Any low-price flight controllers you would recommend for a beginner? I’m planning to do image recognition so it would need to be able to connect to a raspberry pi
Depends on what you mean by low price but a Matek H743 is a good choice. Pick the version that suits the craft you are using.
What frame is that? I’ve been looking for one like that.
All of Brandon’s frames are custom designed and printed/built.
Pixhawk is awesome for begineers with the connectors.
I encounter issues with a pixhawk 2.4.8, my external compass was not detected as sensors but Im just a begineer.
I guess pixhawk 6 mini is currently the cheaper acceptable option
And that’s why it’s on this list…
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If money is an issue, get Speedybee (FC about 35 USD). They work 100 % and quality is 100%. The only issue is that they have F405, a simpler processor, so you may not have some advanced features. I have several of them, both wing and copter versions, and they work!
Any of these has a H7 processor and is a better choice:
3DRControlZeroG, AEROFOX-H7, AET-H743-Basic, Airvolute-DCS2, AnyleafH7, Aocoda-RC-H743Dual, ARK_FPV, ARKV6X, BeastH7, BeastH7v2, BlitzH743Pro, BlitzWingH743, BotBloxDroneNet, CBU-H7-LC-Stamp, CBU-H7-Stamp, CUAV-7-Nano, CUAV-Nora, CUAV-X7, CubeNode, CubeOrange, CubeOrangePlus, CubeRedPrimary, CubeRedPrimary-PPPGW, CubeRedSecondary, DevEBoxH7v2, Durandal, NucleoH743, NucleoH755, FlyingMoonH743, FlywooH743Pro, FoxeerH743v1, GEPRC_TAKER_H743, H757I_EVAL, H757I_EVAL_intf, Here4AP, Here4FC, IFLIGHT_2RAW_H7, JFB110, JHEMCU-H743HD, KakuteH7, KakuteH7v2, KakuteH7-Wing, KakuteH7Mini, KakuteH7Mini-Nand, kha_eth, luminousbee5, MambaH743v4, MatekH743, MatekH7A3, MFT-SEMA100, MicoAir743, MicoAir743-AIO, MicoAir743v2, mRoControlZeroClassic, mRoControlZeroH7, mRoControlZeroOEMH7, mRoCZeroOEMH7, mRoNexus, mRoPixracerPro, NxtPX4v2, PixC4-Jetson, Pixhawk6C, Pixhawk6X, Pixhawk6X-PPPGW, PixPilot-V6, PixPilot-V6PRO, PixSurveyA2, QioTekZealotH743, RADIX2HD, rFCU, SDMODELH7V1, SDMODELH7V2, SIYI_N7, SkySakuraH743, SkystarsH7HD, SPRacingH7, SPRacingH7RF, SULILGH7-P1-P2, TBS_LUCID_H7, TMotorH743, VUAV-V7pro, X-MAV-AP-H743v2, YJUAV_A6, YJUAV_A6SE, YJUAV_A6SE_H743, YJUAV_A6Ultra, ZeroOneX6, ZeroOneX6_Air
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I agree only partially, a F405 will fly normal copter exactly as well as H7, but if you are a programmer, and need special features, then yes H7 is better. But a H7 runs between 60 and 80 USD upwards.
Basically, you get what you pay for, except for the crap pixhawk 2.4.8
I have experience only with two Matek H7 boards, H743-slim and H7A3, and I must say that I am NOT thrilled: Matek does not work with QGC, and for Log downloads, MP fails almost always (there was a general issue with MP downloaidng logs, it was solved, for most boards, including Speedybee, but for Matek I have to pull the card out. Also, the Speedybee documentation is much better than Matek). And H7A3 is partially supported by Ardupilot. For a beginner, and especially if you are on a budget, I would say Speedybee could be a better choice…
I have many of these boards of every version; Slim, Mini, Wing, and have never experienced any problem of any kind. The Mini version get’s hot but even then there is no issue. QGC works fine, I use it on multiple platforms. I don’t know what you are talking about.
And while Speedybee is an Ardupilot partner now their documentation, and their own tech support people, are lacking. They have told people boards are not AP supported when they obviously are,
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My experience matches @dkemxr’s. Unless @Michail_Belov can point to a specific, known issue with the Matek hardware in use, these statements regarding incompatibilities are down to conjecture and misconfiguration.
Matek 743 does not connect to GCG. There are several threads about this issue
Matek 743 connects without problem to MP, but…
The reason why I had to switch to GCG for log download is because one of the previous MP versions was constantly hanging. I was using Speedybee FC F405 at that time. Then, a new release of MP was issued, and MP began to work fine with downloading log files from Speedybee FC.
Then I started with the H743, and the MP fails to download in about 80 % of the tries. I tried to switch back again to QCG for logs, but QCG does not connect at all to Matek.
Also, the documentation and specifications of the Matek board is inferior compared to Speedybee, especially for beginners. Speedybee took all the steps to make it idiotproof… (not fool proof). When I started out with copters, I would say that the documention of Speedybee was much more helpful than that of Matek.
But, I am not saying that Matek board has any hardware failure per se, that is not the point.