The pixhawk 2.1 is the latest and greatest platform for the ardupilot open hardware project.  Designed to be developer friendly, easy to use and incredibly reliable, the pixhawk 2 is the ideal system to use for your next drone project, be it commercial, research or hobbyist.  The pixhawk 2 is designed to be a fully integrated single board flight controller with sufficient I/O for the most demanding of applications.  In addition the sensor performance and reliability has greatly been improved, with triple redundant IMU’s, and the capability to use up to 3 GPS modules.  Based on the pixhawk and through smart design, the bill of materials has been reduced which keeps the overall design simple, affordable and extremely light at only 75 grams per board.

Key Features

• Triple redundant vibration damped IMU with support for up to 3 GPS modules
• All in one design with integrated FMU
• Heating system to fly in very low temperatures
• Lots of I/O ports (see below for full list)
• Separable carrier board to allow developers to build and use their own
• On-board battery backup for FMU and IO SRAM/RTC
• Separate power supplies for FMU and IO
• Servo rail high power
• Linux like programming environment

For a full details please see the pixhawk 2 full specifications

Built using 29 MEMS sensors

The pixhawk 2 includes a triple redundant IMU with a total of 29 sensors:  Furthermore the main IMU is also mounted on a vibration damped system to ensure the sensor readings are accurate.

• 3x triple axis accelerometers
• 3x triple axis gyroscopes
• 3x triple axis magnetometers
• 2x barometers

Lots of I/O Ports

• 14 PWM servo outputs (8 from IO, 6 from FMU).
• R/C inputs for CPPM, Spektrum / DSM and S.Bus
• Analogue / PWM RSSI input.
• S.Bus servo output.
• 5 general purpose serial ports, 2 with full flow control
• Two I2C ports
• One SPI port (un-buffered, for short cables only not recommended for use).
• Two CAN Bus interface.
• 3 Analogue inputs
• High-powered piezo buzzer driver. (On expansion board)
• High-power RGB LED. (I2C driver compatible Connected externally only)
• Safety switch / LED.

EMI Filtering

EMI filtering is provided at key points in the system using high-insertion-loss passthrough filters. These filters are paired with TVS diodes at the peripheral connectors to suppress power transients. Reverse polarity protection is provided at each of the power inputs. USB signals are filtered and terminated with a combined termination/TVS array. Most digital peripheral signals (all PWM outputs, serial ports, I2C port) are driven using ESD-enhanced buffers and feature series blocking resistors to reduce the risk of damage due to transients or accidental misconnections.

Battery Backup

Both the FMU and IO microcontrollers feature battery-backed real-time clocks and SRAM. The on-board backup battery has capacity sufficient for the intended use of the clock and SRAM, which is to provide storage to permit orderly recovery from unintended power loss or other causes of in-air restarts. The capacitors can also be recharged from the FMU 3.3V rail, however this will only function in the event of software existing to support this feature.

Voltage, Current and Fault Sensing

The battery voltage and current reported by both bricks can be measured by the FMU. In addition, the 5V unregulated supply rail can be measured (to detect brownout conditions). I/O can measure the servo power rail voltage. Over-current conditions on the peripheral power ports can be detected by the FMU. Hardware lock-out prevents damage due to persistent short-circuits on these ports. The lockout can be reset by FMU software.

The under/over voltage supervisor for FMU provides an output that is used to hold FMU in reset during brown-out events.

Pixhawk FMU Main Board

• STM32F427; flash 2MiB, RAM 256KiB.
• On-board 16KiB SPI FRAM
• MPU9250 or ICM 20xxx integrated accelerometer / gyro.
•  MS5611 Baro
• All sensors connected via SPI.
• Micro SD interfaces via SDIO

Vibration Damped IMU board

• LSM303D integrated accelerometer / magnetometer.
• L3GD20 gyro.
• MPU9250 or ICM 20xxx Gyro / Accel
• MS5611 Baro
• All sensors connected via SPI.

Pack Includes:

• 1 x Pixhawk 2.1 Standard Autopilot
• 1 x 8S Power Module
• 1 x Cable Pack (including Micro USB cable, buzzer)
• 1 x 3M Assorted Mount Pack
• 1 x I2C port hub
• 1 x Screw Pack