Starting a mower project - F405/H743 ok?

Hardware Rovers and boats
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Hey folks -

I am only an egg.

I’m just starting an autonomous mower project as I’m not getting any frakking younger.

My hardware setup for this project is very fluid at the moment and based on the stuff I have here - but
I haven’t settled on a controller/AP yet.

I’m planning on a gas push-behind mower (for now, would like to go electric eventually), with large (350w) brushed electric motors for propulsion, RTK for positioning (I have 2 of the Sparkfun ZED-F9F units, but never used them), some sort of IR at first or maybe LIDAR eventually ($$$) for immediate/non-mapped obstacle avoidance, Pb-acid deep cycle for power, and some sort of wireless control (thinking WiFi or maybe 915MHz LoRa because I’m familiar with it and the range would be better). Ardupilot for software/firmware.

However, the controller is up in still completely the air. I do have an old old Crius AIO Pro v2 from a drone project that doesn’t seem to be supported in Ardupilot (I was using MegapilotNG, which kinda looks like it doesn’t even exist anymore.)

Anyway, I think it’s at least 4-5 years old and doesn’t seem to be supported in Ardupilot. So. New controller.

I’m seriously looking at the Mateksys F405 family. I like the price and the ecosystem (being able to buy stuff that I know will work is nice. Minimum therbligs.) I can get everything I want for like $100ish, and that’s like 1/3 the price of some other controllers.

Here’s the questions I have and would appreciate your help with -

  1. Is there any reason I SHOULDN’T use one of these controllers with my setup? Any specific one I should use? (the new? H743 vs the 405? They look very similar except for processing capability and $) Any quirks I should plan to work around?

  2. Is the F405 and Ardupilot compatible with the Sparkfun RTK board? Looks like it’s definitely compatible with the base-station/corrections, but what about using the Sparkfun rover/GPS board on the rover? I’m really not in the market for another RTK setup - this one was expensive enough, but I’m think some basic GPS modules might be able to receive the corrections too and I can then save the other RTK board for something else.

Anyway, as I said, I’m new to all this. I do have some aviation-type drone and a decent electronics background, but haven’t worked in this area for some years. I would appreciate your help and thanks in advance!

As this project develops, I thought I might keep my progress updated somewhere - is there any interest in this, or is it a case of “yet another”?

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I am using an H743-Wing V3 on my mower and it works well. I’m sure the F405 would work OK as well, but be sure whichever controller you choose has 2MB of Flash. You cannot install the full ArduRover firmware with all features on a 1MB controller. For instance, you would give up the possibility of using a Moving Baseline (aka GPS for Yaw) configuration, which many of us use in a mower application. Read the section enitled “Firmware Limitations” here: Loading Firmware — Rover documentation (ardupilot.org) and click on the link at the end of the first bullet there to specifically check for limitations for a particular controller.

The Sparkfun F9P board will work very well. I know at least 2 other mower users who are using those boards. I personally use the Ardusimple RKT2B boards, but the Sparkfun boards are nearly equivalent.

Good luck with your project!

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I’d skip any F405 hardware at this point, especially for a mowing/agricultural application. It’s rapidly becoming outdated, and many of the features that we’ve come to rely upon simply do not work on those older boards.

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