Hello,
I have a Pixhawk 1 and have run out of UARTs by using radio telemetry, companion computer (Raspberry Pi 4) , Lidar, and GPS. I have been making upgrades to the quad e.g. the Tx/Rx and ESCs, so I would also like to recieve telemetry from them, hence the need for auxiliary UARTs.
Ideally, I would like to increase the number of UARTs on the FC by two through the RPi. Since I run openCV scripts for precision landing on the RPi, I think it’s fitting to offload the lidar (currently on serial4) onto the RPi instead of it directly connected to the FC. This way, I will be freeing up serial port 4/5 and connect ESC telem to serial4, which will replace the lidar, and then connect FPort telem to serial5.
So far, I have set a static device name for one component, which is plugged into the USB port of the RPi via TTL → USB converter. However, I am stuck on how to proceed. Will I have to write code to parse the data and feed it into the FC or will Ardupilot do that for me if I set serial protocols > 5? I’m thinking that I probably have to do some combination of both approaches but I need some guidance/insight.
Also, if there is a more elegant solution to getting the telemetry I am looking for or overall configuration, then please share. I am pretty new here, and to electronics in general, so I am unaware of the possibilities.
For example, there is a lot of overlap in the telem data from the ESC and Rx, so could some clever integration or splicing be implemented here?
