Pixhawk 6C mini Drone Build

Hardware Pixhawk family
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HELLO EVERYONE AFTER A LOONG TIME!

I have finally collected the budget to make a UAV with My Dream FC series! After a successful flight of my previous and first drone, in which you people recommend me Holybro Kakute H7 Wing, I have now collected the budget to make a drone using: Holybro Pixhawk 6C Mini With M10 GPS! This will be my first ever Pixhawk drone! I will be using F450 frame, BUT!, this is not the normal F450 frame, but this will be the upgraded version of F450 frame, which is redesigned in india by robu.in ! It’s arms will have 35% of glass fibre and Polyamide Nylon and it will have integrated PCB!
I will be using Ready To Sky 920KV CW/CCW BLDC motors and ready to sky Simonk 30A banana connector ESC!
And, for power, it will have LiPo 3S 5200 mah battery, and no more drone crashes this time because of faulty propellers! I will be using Carbon Fibre Propellers! A Holybro Power Module for correct battery monitor and failsafe! All things which I wanted in my drone! Transmitter is same as Fs-i6 of previous drone.
Any changes you might like to suggest?
Also I have some doubts regarding Pixhawk 6C Mini… I will ask them in next reply…

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So, Since I have only worked on apm and Kakute H7 Wing, I want to know some features of Pixhawk 6C Mini, not the sensor features, but like, what all it can do? Can we customize the default ardupilot firmware? If yes, how? Suppose if I want to connect some LEDs to my UAV, And want to glow them in a manner, how can I write some sort of code in firmware to program Pixhawk to glow LED in that manner throughout the flight!?
What is the use of the SD card slot there in Pixhawk? Can we design custom flight modes in Pixhawk? Like the drone should move/rotate in a manner? What is the need of a so much powerful STM32H743 on a FC which has to just handle some sensor data and motor outputs? Even a low level microcontroller like Atmega 2560P can also do that without lagging? Don’t you think 480MHz is quite large just for a drone purpose?

(And yes,! No more scoldings of you people now “Ditch that Apm 2.8!” “Beg, Borrow or steal to get something H7~F7 based!” “Apm is discontinued and that’s a clone!” “The problem is in your machine!” :wink:)

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Has anybody used Pixhawk 6C Mini or 6C ??

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The 6c mini is a very capable controller. You won’t have any limitations with that one in terms of what Ardupilot can do.

The SD card is where log files, terrain data, and Lua scripts are stored. You need that.

Yes, you can create custom flight modes, but given the modes that are out there you can likely meet any custom needs you have with a Lua script.

3S power on a F450 frame doable, but it won’t be fantastic performance. Better to go with 4S.

And if you’re spending all that hard earned money on 6C-mini, then ditch the simonk ESCs. You just purchased a high power gaming computer and connected it to a monochrome CRT monitor. Find some Blheli-S indivudual ESCs or 4-in-1 ESC. Your performance will improve and tuning will be better.

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Actually Soldering is my biggest issue with the ESCs, and to solder motor wires to ESCs, on those small places will be an issue… I actually got a harsh current from a faulty Soldering machine, A 220V discharge from solder! My hand pained for many days… So I am having a kind of phobia from soldering… That’s why I will go to a local mobile point to get the things soldered in my drone… And for the motor connections to ESCs, I always like simple banana connectors so that motors can be replaced easily!

These are the ESCs I am/was currently using:
https://zbotic.in/product/readytosky-simonk-30a-esc-with-3-5mm-banana-connector/

These are the motors I am using:

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What actually is the problem with the good Simonk ESCs? They are branded Ready To Sky Simonk 30A ESCs?

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So will The SD card get filled overtime? And will we have to format the SD card time to time? Doesn’t this Pixhawk has inbuilt storage, yes it has! It has 2MB flash and 1MB RAM ? Then can’t it store all data there? And what is terrain data? I am not using any sensors to sense the terrain?

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These are a notorious point of failure. Cut them off and solder directly. And ReadytoSky is not a “brand” they are labeler and reseller of cheap product.

Simon-K is ESC firmware that was developed by Simon Kirby in the stone age (12yrs ago), so several generation back from what’s available today. It is usually found on the cheapest, poorest quality ESC’s available.

Do they look something like this?
esc
If so replace them.

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No, the SD card won’t get filled up. The log, terrain and Lua script files aren’t that big.

No, the onboard memory is working memory for the processor. Think of the SD card like the hard-drive in your computer. The SD card is over and above what the processor has.

Terrain data is just that, data about terrain elevations for any given location. It will never be as accurate as a ranger finder but it will give approximate data for altitude.

As @dkemxr said, replace the ESCs.

You have a lot of reading to do. Get into the wiki and start doing some research.

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Ok so that means I have to take the risk of soldering in the new quad,… Still, I will prefer any Dshot or BLHeli32 ESCs , not the 4 in 1 ESCs, because my motor’s wires are’nt that big…
Actually like, I am always feared that suppose if I solder the wires there on ESCs, what if they got removed somehow in Air! DRONE CRASHED!
Oho this my Google feed! When I search ESCs, by default it shows me local, Simonk ESCs, or otherwise expensive T Motor ESCs!

See! Is this a BLHeli ESC? As they have mentioned in name?
https://robu.in/product/30a-blheli-esc/

Nowhere it’s written that they are Simonk, and also it has many safety features like the BLHeli ESCs? Because some of the 30A ESCs BLHeli are 1100 INR each! Double the price of my current ESCs!?

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You seem focused on the least common denominator, asking why we need an SD card, why such fast processors, why the demand for better speed controllers…

ArduPilot is EXTREMELY broad.

It has controlled everything from sub-250g quadcopters and little hobby RC cars all the way up to commercial drones carrying payloads of hundreds of kg along with several ton agricultural vehicles in farm fields. Theoretically, it can control jumbo jets, as proven in simulation.

Supported autopilot hardware ranges from cheap F4 boards and ESP32-based (experimental) boards to H7 and even Linux SBC applications.

The supported sensor suite is too vast to enumerate here. There are drivers for hundreds of peripheral devices, operating at speeds as low as 9600 baud and as high as 12.5Mbps or more, across serial, CAN, I2C, SPI, and ethernet protocols. And if your device isn’t supported directly, a Lua scripting engine runs in the background of any F7 (or preferably H7) autopilot, allowing low level access to all of those protocols and many of the control, performance, and navigation controllers.

Why do we need so much processing power? To run and schedule all of these peripheral tasks in parallel with high speed inner and outer control loops that run at orders of magnitude beyond that which was originally conceived on the old Atmega processors, affording extremely precise attitude and position control while processing and logging the possibly vast array of sensor data using sophisticated filtering and sensor fusion algorithms.

Why do we need so much flash memory? To support all of those use cases.

Why do we need SD storage? Modern .bin logs easily exceed several MB each.

Why ArduPilot? Because you don’t get that amount of flexibililty and peripheral support anywhere else (at least for free).

If you just wanna fly a basic quadcopter without any automation or sensor fusion, use Betaflight. You’ll still need an F4 or better autopilot at its core, and you’ll still find recommendations for 32 bit ESCs as the standard.

3 Likes
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Firstly, we should focus on making basic Quadcopter with simple M10 GPS and B19 Camera, and then we can plan to add automations! Because I don’t like a drone which can “only” Fly.
Thank you for the brief description on ardupilot! Actually I now realised what actually that ardupilot thing is! I thought it can just be used to make a drone with some Sensors, servos, gimbal. And nothing mission planner can do! (Silly!)
Please can you tell me whether these ESCs I above shared are BLHeli or not?

https://robu.in/product/30a-blheli-esc/

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Hello again Rudraksh

You are still on the cheap path in terms of price. But cheap does not mean inexpensive, because it is prone to errors and then the repairs cost a lot.
The same goes for your soldering phobia - it was a cheap defective soldering iron that caused you pain, luckily it seems to have turned out well - learn from it. Use sensible tools and materials.
The best connection for high currents (ESCs) is a direct solder connection. The absolute worst connection is a simple banana plug, because it has no secure locking mechanism at all.

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Oke ok…
I will solder…
But actually I will go to a nearest mobile point and I and the shopkeepers will all solder together…
But now comes the ESC fact,
What does an ESC do, its work is to just control motor RPM on FC signals and that’s all!? So why we need a “good” “BLHeli” ESC? Simonk belongs to “stone age” but if the Electronic Speed Controller is Controlling Speed, what more we expect from it?

All I mean to say is, Where is the visible/core difference between low priced Simonk and high priced BLHeli?

And did somebody checked this? Here is written only in the title that its BLHeli. Are these ESCs Good to be used?
https://robu.in/product/30a-blheli-esc/

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We expect that it does not burn, catch fire and crash the vehicle.
Bad, cheap ESCs do all of that :slight_smile:

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But the fact is that, in India, thousands of people make Quadcopter, and always use Simonk or ready to sky ESC. Here, is like when you say ESC, you mean normal yellow, red or black coloured ESC!?
Although I know those ESCs are cheap and local, but yes, when used with even 1000KV motors , they work extremely fine for years!
If just getting hot or burning is issue…

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The ESC you linked looks like an imitation of a the Hobbywing Skywalker. Usually, when a company rips off another’s branding, it’s a sign of poor quality. I can find nothing anywhere other than Bangood regarding “Skyliner” ESCs. Not a good sign.

Likewise for SimonK ESCs. The developer for those has long since ceased development and has expressed disappointment that his name continues to be used on products that have nothing to do with him or his project. Anything sold today under that name is highly likely to be cheap, low quality hardware, and the firmware is well outdated with no current support.

1 Like
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See now this:

This is a pure branded Emax BLHeli 30A ESC with oneshot! (What is one shot? Is there any two shot three shot also!?)

Only this I can find in my budget of one ESC under 900INR

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Read the wiki. There isn’t anything that anyone has told you here that isn’t in the wiki:

https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-escs-and-motors.html#protocols

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This is really all wheel spinning here. You asked for advice and it was given. You have spec’d a capable Flight Controller and plan on surrounding it with poor quality hardware. OK, then do that.
After building it follow this procedure for configuration and tuning.
The Configurator