We’re currently using Pixhawks for the flight controller in some robotics platforms we develop, and I had a few questions about the Navigator flight controller I was hoping someone can help me with:
I assume that the Pi4 + Navigator board work in tandem to replace the Pixhawk. Is Ardupilot/Ardusub run on the Pi4 running BlueOS?
Is it possible to use Pymavlink to send commands and receive data from the Pi4+Navigator board? With a Pixhawk, we currently do this by communicating with the Pixhawk’s device file when it’s attached to a Linux companion computer. If we wanted to run our vehicle control software on a computer separate from the Pi4+Navigator (it would only be doing the flight controller processing), what would be a good way handle Pymavlink comms between the Pi4+Navigator and the vehicle control computer?
Hi @rattasak, sorry for the delay on responding to this.
That’s correct, and yes, the Navigator + RPi4 combo operates as a linux-based flight controller, where the Navigator is essentially an advanced I/O board that allows the ArduPilot firmware running on the RPi4 to interact with the physical world (via its sensors and actuators).
Yes, you can set up and configure MAVLink endpoints in BlueOS, which can then be connected to and communicated with via Pymavlink. It’s also possible to use the mavlink2rest connection (TCP port 6040) if you’d prefer a REST-based interface.
Presumably ArduSub would be running the low level control, and your separate control computer would be sending higher level commands? A MAVLink endpoint connection for that should be fine - a UDP client endpoint is likely the most stable
