PX4 is an open-source BSD-3 Licensed autopilot system for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) It provides both hardware and software components to control various types of drones, from small quadcopters to fixed-wing aircraft and even autonomous vehicles like rovers and boats.
Some PX4 features are not fully integrated and are still work-in-progress.
- PWM_4 Doesn't support DShot, however PWM_1, PWM_2, PWM_3, PWM_5 and PWM_6 do work fine.
- PWM_4 uses FlexIO2 instead of FlexIO1, needs driver modification for it to work.
| UART | Device | Port |
|---|---|---|
| LPUART5 | /dev/ttyS0 | DEBUG |
| LPUART3 | /dev/ttyS2 | TELEM |
| LPUART2 | /dev/ttyS1 | GPS |
| LPUART4 | /dev/ttyS3 | AUX |
| LPUART8 | /dev/ttyS4 | RC |
Note
Nov 7th, 2024 as of now PX4 main includes the nxp_tropic-community target
First you need to setup your build environment. The PX4 user guide provides a Developer Environment guide. There you can select the corresponding guide for your platform, Ubuntu, Windows, macOS.
After setting up your build environment enter the PX4-Autopilot folder and type the following command to build PX4
make nxp_tropic-community
The Teensy comes with it's own bootloader, allowing to flash PX4 through USB.
Teensy provides a Teensy Loader gui flashing for more information checkout this guide. The file you want to flash is located under PX4-Autopilot/build/nxp_tropic-community_default/nxp_tropic-community_default.hex
On Linux you can also flash PX4 directly from the make build system.
Make sure to install the teensy-loader-cli application first.
On a Ubuntu based system you can use the following command
sudo apt install teensy-loader-cli
Connect the board through USB and then press the physical button on the Teensy to put it into bootloader mode.
Flashing the board is simply done by the command below
make nxp_tropic-community upload_teensy
A succesfull flash should like like this.
peter@desktop-peter:~/src/firmware$ make nxp_tropic-community upload_teensy
[0/1] uploading px4
Found teensy bootloader
Teensy Loader, Command Line, Version 2.2
Read "/home/peter/src/PX4-Autopilot/build/nxp_tropic-community_default/nxp_tropic-community_default.hex": 1809658 bytes, 22.3% usage
Found HalfKay Bootloader
Programming........................................................................................
Booting
peter@desktop-peter:~/src/PX4-Autopilot$
Once PX4 has been flashed on the Tropic Community VMU, Connect the Tropic Community VMU to your PC through USB and launch QGroundControl to configure your Tropic Community VMU.
For more information on how to configure PX4 checkout the PX4 configuration guide
The first revision of the Tropic Community VMU rev.A has been tested with PX4 has been tested on a small quad in autonomous flight.
