New Product: The Navigator Flight Controller and BlueOS!

Blue Robotics Products Flight Controllers
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The Navigator depends on the new bcm2711 chip in the RPi4, so it is indeed RPi4 only.

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Are you planning to keep the retro compatibility with the Pixhawk? Or BlueOS will be developed focusing only on the navigator flight controller?

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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Relay integration with the navigator board

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Hi @matosinho, welcome to the forum :slight_smile:

BlueOS and Navigator are separate projects. BlueOS is open source software, and isn’t even confined to being used as part of a vehicle - we have no plans to lock down which flight controller(s) it supports. At the moment it supports at least Pixhawk, Pixhawk 4, and Navigator, with some level of support for other ArduPilot compatible flight controllers. Other controllers and firmware types may get added over time, particularly with community contributions :slight_smile:

New features developed by Blue Robotics will generally be flight controller agnostic, and will aim to maintain compatibility with systems BlueOS is already compatible with at the time. That said, new features may get developed and tested with Navigator first, since it’s our in-house flight controller and will be going in our electronics enclosures and vehicles.

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I am curious if and how this Raspberry Pi can be retrofitted into an existing ROV2?
Ervan

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A Raspberry Pi 4B by itself is very easy to fit in - it just replaces the existing Raspberry Pi 3B and can have all the connections the same.

If you mean putting in a Navigator as well (in place of the Pixhawk) then I’d direct you to this comment :slight_smile:

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I suspected it was a swap-out. I am somewhat cautious about swapping out the Pixhawk but if the Navigator is a better option, we’ll consider it along the Pi. Thanks.

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:slightly_smiling_face:

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Some slight caveats

  • the RPi4 requires BlueOS (Companion won’t work), and
  • I’m unsure whether it would need some kind of heat sink or fan.
    • I imagine that’s not strictly required (since the RPi3 doesn’t use one, and it’d be running the same software), but we do use a heat sink with Navigator so it might be advisable (and definitely wouldn’t hurt)
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I upgrades to the Navigator and everything seams to be working except the nmea injector. I also posted on the cerulean forum aswell

any suggestion?

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Another question I have is ping 1D isn’t streaming its data as a rangefinder like it did for the pick hawk is there a way to get the ping 1D data with the navigator

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Hi,
Are there any plans to add a can bus port (or two :slightly_smiling_face: ) on the navigator?
How about DroneCAN (UAVCAN v0) support in BlueOS?

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Hi @CUIS,

Glad it’s mostly working well :slight_smile:
Which part of the NMEA injector is not working as expected?

Indeed - I’d recommend you take a look through the feature comparison table on the BlueOS release post, which mentions that for the Ping Sonar devices

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Hi @carl,

Given the board has only recently been put into mass production, I don’t expect there will be major design changes in the near future. If it’s possible to accomplish via a software or firmware change in ArduSub or BlueOS to change / switch the function of an existing port then it may be an option :slight_smile:

I don’t believe it’s something we’re working on internally, but BlueOS is designed to be extensible so that may come about via an external / community effort, particularly once we’ve stabilised the BlueOS API and released the extension system in an accessible form :slight_smile:

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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Navigator/BlueOS NMEA GPS not working

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Noting that there’s now a Navigator Retrofit Guide for people with an existing Pixhawk + Raspberry Pi 3B BlueROV2 :slight_smile:

Thanks to @DanielG_BR for all the hard work!

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Anyone know if it’s worth upgrading to the Navigator controller?

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It’s not an essential upgrade if you’re already happy with your existing flight controller, but it may still be of interest - there’s an overview of both in the Technical Reference if you want to compare. Functionally speaking the Navigator

  • is a bit more tailored to ArduSub use-cases
    • e.g. there are leak probe connectors built in
  • has a couple of extra PWM outputs
  • has more usable connectors
  • has more potential for expandability
    • we’re planning to make libraries available for accessing the sensors and connectors, so that they’re accessible from user code outside the autopilot firmware, but that hasn’t been done yet
  • does not yet support relay outputs → relay support added in ArduSub 4.1.1
    • I believe there’s currently a working branch that’s being tested - it should hopefully be merged in to the main ArduSub reasonably soon
  • is more robust when updating firmware (because it’s just files on the Raspberry Pi)
  • has easier to access log files

If you do decide to upgrade,

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4 posts were split to a new topic: Navigator/BlueOS NMEA GPS not working

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I did read the chart but with Blue OS and the Pixhawk the ping 1d works and I can get the data from:
http://192.168.2.2:6040/mavlink/vehicles/1/components/1/messages/RANGEFINDER/message/distance

but when i switched from the pixhawk to the navigator I could not find the rangefinder in the mavlink