Holybro Pixhawk 5x and modalai's flight core

Suvasis M

hi,

What are main differences between Holybro Pixhawk 5X and px4 based flightcore?

Filght core looks very small compared to Pixhawk 5X. Are they comparable. I checked the

board of modal and holybro's pixhawk5, there are some differences, can you pls elaborate the difference?

Thanks.
suvasis

modaltb

They both run PX4 and fundamentally do the same things.

The Flight Core form factor is smaller, as we designed this against particular size constraints, so we lose a couple connectors/interfaces, so that's where I'd look for deltas first for your use case.

Flight Core doesn't have an IO module, and it's limited to 8 PWM channels.

Flight Core can't be powered off USB where some others can, instead needing to be powered off the power module we offer with the kit.

https://docs.modalai.com/flight-core-datasheets-functional-description/

What kind of use case are you targeting? That could help us find potential deltas that could be an issue.

Vinny

Hi Suvasis,
As Travis hinted, we are a subset of the FMUvX designs, as we are more optimized for size and weight, and single-PCB use cases.
We do not have any of the large expansion headers for the IMU board or the base board. We do not have "redundancy" power domains FMU claims to have, and we do not have as many power input options. We also do not have the Mag on-board which we know creates a headache for some, but we know from experience an external mag placed high on a mast away from the electronics is much better, so we did not want to waste money and space adding it to the PCB to just always override it. We also have some mix of connectors (DF13 and JST GH) to maximize simplicity connecting to Voxl as a companion computer.

If you want, and if it is useful, I have a table comparing the hardware features to FMUv6 (not v5).
If that will help you, let me know and I can put that here.
Thanks!

Suvasis M

@Vinny

Thanks for more clarifications.

I was comparing:
https://github.com/PX4/PX4-Autopilot/blob/main/boards/holybro/pix32v5/src/board_config.h

and
https://github.com/PX4/PX4-Autopilot/blob/main/boards/modalai/fc-v2/src/board_config.h

table comparing the hardware features
I will appreciate if you can share.

The Modalai flight core is tiny compared to pixhawk5x, I wanted to mix and match flight core with voxl(which is essentially snapdragon) or Nvidia Jetson processors for drones or robot.

Thanks.
suvasis