The main reason I chose a Navio was because the APM trend is “develop till the RAM fills-up then depreciate it”. APM 2 is already obsolete and the Pixhawk is already getting low on memory. Still so many useful features outstanding and the memory is almost depleted.
Looking at 3DR’s direction, following the big DJI, the autopilots are moving to full embedded PCs AND expect another full processor at the ground station/controller.
I saw the PixFalcon and yes for small racing quadcopters it really makes sense as a competitor to Naze and other popular mini boards. It will certainly run for a while, but at which point will the APM developers add so much code that it just doesn’t run on the old (Pixhawk) processor anymore. There are only kilobytes of RAM on that thing.
I know you are talking about driving the PixFalcon with a local connected RasPi for the heavy processing. But that is totally outside the loop and will be limited to MAVLink over a local USB or serial connection.
If people just want that, or something smaller, maybe the Reach and PixFalcon are a better combo (don’t know the price yet though). But I prefer the full capabilities in the smallest package (HAT + RasPi is smaller than PixFalcon + RasPi). Also I’m playing around with getting Windows working with it so I’d prefer to use an autopilot processor board which Microsoft support (really hope they support the Edison).
If Emlid made a Reach+Navio board that would be cool, and VERY small. If Microsoft got Windows running on it I would be even happier. They seem to be pondering it at the moment. Perhaps the next generation Edison would make it.
Anyway, here’s my list of things I prefer about Navio:
- GPS (main chip) included (and cable cheap).
- WiFi capability and other USB device possibilities, can’t do that with PixFalcon.
- Possibility to replace FPV with web cam.
- Wifi also brings the possibility to eliminate the 3DR radio, within limits (that will suffice for many).
- Big enough to support whatever 3DR make for their Solo, so when any PixHawk 2 is released (if 3DR still play together with DIY Drones/open source) then hopefully we are future proofed one generation at least.
- Full speed local access to any of the sensors/ports, for any of your customizations. Possibility to write hooks into HAL source code so back-door to APM also possible.
- All the other free ports and GPIOs of the RasPi.