Introduction to Pixhawk: Flight Controllers, PX4 and ArduPilot
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Most open-source drones, from university research quads to survey and delivery aircraft, are flown by a Pixhawk-family flight controller running PX4 or ArduPilot. It is a small computer that reads a gyro, accelerometer, compass, barometer and GPS, works out which way the drone is pointing, and adjusts four motor speeds hundreds of times a second. Get its wiring, calibration or failsafes wrong and the drone will not arm, or worse, will flip on take-off.
In this course you open the box: every port on today’s Pixhawk 6C and 6X boards, how to wire a quad, how to flash PX4 or ArduPilot and set it up with QGroundControl or Mission Planner, what each pre-arm error means and how to read a flight log. Then you look inside the firmware. The simulation puts a quad on a roll test stand with a biased gyro and a vibrating accelerometer, and shows why a complementary filter beats either sensor alone, why the angle loop sits outside the rate loop, and what a badly tuned rate loop does to your motors.
What you will be able to do
- Identify every port on a Pixhawk-standard board and wire a quadcopter's power module, ESCs, GPS and compass, RC receiver and telemetry radio
- Flash PX4 or ArduPilot, calibrate in the right order with QGroundControl or Mission Planner, and set flight modes and failsafes
- Explain the flight stack: sensors, complementary-filter attitude estimate, cascaded angle-P and rate-PID loops, mixer and DShot or PWM output
- Diagnose pre-arm errors and bad flights from PX4 ULog or ArduPilot DataFlash logs, and simulate a tuned and a badly tuned flight stack in Python
Before you start: School physics and a little Python. PID control (course 9) helps but is not required: the loops are explained from scratch.
Lessons
- The big idea: a small computer that flies the drone 400 times a second▶ VideoFree preview
- How it was invented and its first uses▶ VideoLocked
- Where it is used today: boards, ports, wiring and the two firmware stacks▶ VideoLocked
- The equations▶ VideoLocked
- Worked demo and tuning: one loop by hand, then a real Pixhawk from box to first hover▶ VideoLocked
- Build your own, step by step▶ VideoLocked
- Python simulation labLocked
- Practice problems and quizLocked