i have a raspberry pi 3 and i wanted to use blue os with a pixhawk 4 since it seems a lot easier and more streamlined than setting up the pi myself. i also have a pi cam v2 and i just wanted to double check its compatibility as well. from my understanding, i should just need a usb connection between the pixhawk 4 and rpi 3 and plug the pi cam into the regular camera slot on the pi, without having to tinker in the software beyond configuring things on qground control. side note: do i need an ethernet switch? or can i just have a direct ethernet connection between my pi and topside laptop?
thanks for bearing with me this is my first time doing this and i dont want to buy something i dont need.
Hi @bobo, welcome to the forum 
As far as I’m aware:
- Pixhawk 4 has been listed as compatible as of BlueOS-1.0
- but we don’t regularly do any kind of official testing with them
- Raspberry Pi camera support is provided by turning on legacy support in BlueOS
- Note that there is a known issue with support for the latest RPi camera models, but the v2 should be old enough to be included in the legacy support option
Fair enough - I’m sure we can all relate to that
Given you already have the camera, that one seems worth plugging in and trying.
If you want a stronger sense of Pixhawk 4 compatibility then I believe I have one I can try to plug in and do some very basic testing on some time this week, but it should at least get detected by the BlueOS autopilot manager, and work with the MAVLink inspector and parameters pages, unless something has been unintentionally broken since support was first added.
Thanks! I had no idea whether it would work on a direct usb connection, and after seeing a post last year from two guys who were trying the same thing and had to directly edit the code of blue os to get it to work I was considering just buying a pixhawk 1 and risking it on the Chinese knockoffs. Also thanks for the quick response, I had no idea the mods were this involved in the forums. If you could test it out for me I would really appreciate it.
@EliotBR, do i need to hook the pi up to the telem1 of the pixhawk or just reguar usb connection? px4 docs say that i need custom wiring to the telem 1 but bluerobotics docs say direct usb…
@williangalvani was working with the firmware flashing process and happened to be testing the Pixhawk 4 as part of that - it seems to still be connecting and working fine with the latest version of BlueOS
When we were using the Pixhawk 1 on our vehicles we had a direct USB connection, but depending on which firmware type you’re running it may be preferable to use an alternative connection mechanism, because some firmwares assume they’re on a test bench if a USB connection is detected, and change their behaviour as a result.
@EliotBR im back again. for some reason the camera worked once and then stopped. the photo is of the errors i get trying to look at the feed. because i do not have a pixhawk yet, i do not have a vehicle set up in the blue os settings and cannot access most of the things in the settings, everything seems to be timing out and takes multiple reloads of the page to see. is this a problem with not having a vehicle set up or is it the fact that i am on a rpi 3 and it cannot keep up?
