New Product: The Navigator Flight Controller and BlueOS!

[btrue]

@btrue

Also, Is it worth upgrading to the Navigator controller? I have looked through several posts, but I haven’t seen anyone mentioned if it’s a direct upgrade right now or if it’s just aimed at new customers.

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

[EliotBR (Eliot)]

@btrue

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

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
  • BlueOS does not yet support directly retrieving Pixhawk logs

If you do decide to upgrade,

@EliotBR

there’s … a Navigator Retrofit Guide for people with an existing Pixhawk + Raspberry Pi 3B BlueROV2

[CUIS (Aaron Snyder)]

@EliotBR

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

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

[EliotBR (Eliot)]

@CUIS

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

That seems doubtful, since rangefinder messages are not implemented yet in BlueOS’s Ping service. Maybe you’re mixing up Pixhawk+Companion with Pixhawk+BlueOS, or perhaps you’ve got a DVL that’s set up to send rangefinder messages?