Pixhawk autopilot

On this page we have collected some important stuffs we have had use of when assembling our Pixhawk systems.

Passthrough receiver signals

Passthrough is a feature of a Pixhawk which allows you to pass the signal from the receiver through the Pixhawk and out to on the Pixhawks PWM and AUX outputs. Pixhawk does one-to-one mapping of the radio channels to it’s outputs (PWM signal) which can be illustrated like this:

RadioChannel1 -> PixhawkOutput1
RadioChannel2 -> PixhawkOutput2
……………..
RadioChannel7 -> PixhawkOutput7
RadioChannel8 -> PixhawkOutput8
RadioChannel9 -> PixhawkAUX1
RadioChannel10 -> PixhawkAUX2
…………..
RadioChannel14 -> PixhawkAUX6

To enable and use passthrough feature follow these steps.

  1. Connect RC receiver to Pixhawk using the guide on 3DR Wiki
  2. In the Mission Planner set the RCx_FUNCTION paramerter to “1” for the RCx channel channel number you want to pass through. E.g. RC8_FUNCTION=1 will pass through Radio channel 8 to Pixhawk PWM Out 8. RC10_FUNCTION=10 will do the same for Radio channel 10 and pass through on AUX.
  3. Save parameters in the Mission Planner
  4. Arm your Pixhawk (press and hold arm button) .

IMPORTANT. Your GND pin from Pixhawk output rail should be connected to your servos, gimbal controller or whatever device you want to connect to and to it’s GND pin.

NOTE: AUX5, AUX6 pins are by default disabled (only AUX1-AUX4 are enabled by default). You can enable them (if needed) by setting BRD_PWM_COUNT=6 in Mission Planner.