I have built a 20 foot airship that I fly manually with my Horus X10S.
It has 4 thrusters for movement control:
Motor 1 is a horizontal thruster for fwd/aft horizontal movement driven by an 80a blheli32 esc.
Motor 2 is a vertical thruster for up/down movement driven by an 80a blheli32 esc.
Motors 3 and 4 are lateral thrusters that provider left/right horizontal movement AND for rotation of the airship in the YAW axis (these are 30a blheli32 escs).
I am happy with its flight characteristics and wish to take the next step into automated flight.
Most important is a precise hover mode with heading hold. I would like to achieve position hold that is as good as my DJI Phantom 4 pro.
Next, I want to fly manually as with my Phantom 4 such that:
- My altitude transmitter ‘stick’ is commanding the set altitude, not the vertical motor power level.
- My ‘yaw’ stick is commanding the heading to hold, not yaw thruster power level.
- My ‘fwd/rev’ and my ‘left/right lateral’ stick is commanding power level until released, then position hold is re-established.
And then finally I want to set up waypoint flights similar to the way I can do with my Phantom 4 and Litchi.
As far as FPV goes, I want to install a fwd and a down facing camera that I can switch between them with a transmitter switch.
My research has pointed me to the PixHawk controllers as a good staring point, but I am unsure if I will be able to assign the 4 thrusters that I control for fwd/rev, left/right, up/down and yaw movement to the PixHawk outputs such that the PixHawk can assign them to the correct axis of movement which the PixHawk controls. So, question #1, can the PixHawk controllers be mated to my thruster system?
I was thinking a PixHawk 4 mini connected to a ‘mRo GPS u-Blox Neo-M8N Dual Compass LIS3MDL+ IST8310’ would be the optimum PixHawk system. Question #2, is this combination good for me, if not, what would be a recommendation?
Question #3, what FPV system would be good to install for about 1km range?
Thanks,
Dale