Anyone flies linux based flight controllers?

PX4 Autopilot
1

Hi,

If so, what is the board, and linux and px4 versions? I’m more interested in beaglebone ( Board Selection - BeagleBoard ) like (more open) boards.
I just want to understand how well such boards are supported right now.

Thanks,

Alexey

2

Honestly, I have not seen or heard anyone in the last few years, and I would be surprised if it is working. That being said, I don’t know, so I might be wrong.

3

Thank you @JulianOes .

It seems that BBBlue was supported for some time by PX4 ( BeagleBone Blue | PX4 Guide (main) ) and APM ( BeagleBone Blue — Copter documentation ). And it looks like BBBlue was derived from BeagleBone® Robotics Cape ( BeagleBone® Robotics Cape - BeagleBoard ) supported by GitHub - beagleboard/librobotcontrol: Robotics Focused library for embedded Linux computers. Mirror of https://openbeagle.org/beagleboard/librobotcontrol , which could be potentially extensible, sensors-vise, in the future.

Also I see new PocketBeagle 2 ( PocketBeagle 2 - BeagleBoard ) board just got support by APM recently ( PocketBeagle 2 now run ardupilot - General - ArduPilot Discourse ).

I’m wonder if there is an interest in such boards running RT linux, with PRU “Programmable Real-Time Unit”. I see many advantages like more resources to use, easier to develop and possibly running ROS 2 at the same time for much less than say some microcontroller-based.

Regards,

Alexey

4

I assume there might be interest but personally I usually like the split of having the core flight controls on a real time OS on something like the STM32 and then fancier things on a “companion computer” such as Jetson or Raspberry Pi, depending on what it does. The interface between the two can either be MAVLink (external/stable API) or (uORB ROS 2) for a tighter internal API.

5

Thank you @JulianOes

It makes sense splitting bare minimum vehicle control module and say navigation.

What I don’t understand is why to use STM32H743 with 1MB RAM instead of 4 core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A53 1.4 GHz with 512Mb RAM (on Pocketbeagle 2) for the same price plus very big convenience of using Linux environment.

Anyway I will try Pocketbeagle 2 on APM first.

Thank you,

Alexey