Hi, everyone! I’m wondering if someone could tell me how to know if a GPS would be compatible with the Pixhawk? I’m currently looking at using this one (https://www.newark.com/adafruit/746/em-406a-gps-module/dp/85W2025?COM=main-search%20CMPNULL), but I’m new to this and don’t really know what I’m looking for. Also, are different Pixhawk versions compatible with different GPS systems? Thanks!
Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer which covers all the possibilities. (Is there ever?) This is because folks are often programming capability which covers specialized cases, or general-purpose capability that works on “standard protocols” and thus works unknown numbers of GPS’s.
But if you’re new, I recommend you go with whichever GPS (usually) comes with the Pixhawk version you’re interested in, rather than seeking a “risky” alternative.
With regards to the specific GPS you linked, a little googling suggests it can do NMEA output. ArduPilot has support for some NMEA GPSs, so… it may work, or it may not. If you’re willing to dig in and try it out, please do and let us know how it goes!
EDIT I forgot to finish with: If someone else knows that this will/won’t work, please chime in! (I’m only guessing)
Please do not waste your money on a Sirfstar3 GPS. This chip is over ten years old. There are so many cheap Ublox M8N GPS moduls all over the internet, there should be no need to buy this.
NMEA based GPSes were one of the original GPSes we did use many years ago. NMEA is still supported in ArduPilot stack, But as it is a text based data, it is bit “slow”
Sure uBlox is preferred choice and GPS communication is optimized for uBlox binary data packets. Same goes with automatic configuration of GPS devices during boot.
1 Like