Removed for privacy.
The pixhawk has onboard gyros/accelerometers/compasses for attitude control. For position control you will need external positioning hardware. The underwater GPS kit in our store will provide the necessary data.
Yes, there are multiple motor configurations supported ‘out of the box’. You can also compile the firmware with a custom motor configuration.
Water absorbs RF; the efficiency of absorption is frequency dependent. I know 2.4GHz radios are useless underwater, but I’ve heard tale of lower (MHz) frequency radios could penetrate maybe 5-10 meters. You will have to figure this out yourself if that is the direction you want to take. We would of course be happy to hear about the results.
I have a question of my own. Will the cyclo-rotors work if they are shrouded? It looks like the thrust is directed into the vehicle body and will result in no net force on the vehicle.
I’ve been looking around and I’ve seen people having success with 75 mHz frequencies in shallow water, and my applications will be in water no more than a meter or two deep, so hopefully this frequency can work, though I have not tested it before.
I do not believe the rotors will be shrouded for our uses in a model basin first. We will have each hub flush with the hull with the blades sticking out of the hub perpendicular so the blades will be extruding out from the hull and create thrust normal to the surface of each blade, and thus parallel to the hull surface, with components in the 2 directions based on the adjusted pitch of the blades. I hope that answers your question!
Ok, I’m sorry that I forgot to mention, but there is no support in ArduSub for RC receivers.
There are two options to use an RC receiver with ArduSub, both will require a bit of programming:
- Modify the firmware on the autopilot to read and handle RC input.
- Read the RC receiver with external hardware (an arduino), then interpret the data and send the autopilot commands using the MAVLink communication protocol.