Great news! The companion computer section of the PX4 documentation just received a significant update in the form of a getting started guide to the Holybro Pixhawk Jetson Baseboard. Special thanks go to community member Farhang Naderi, Research Assistant, University of Rhode Island, for putting this guide together. We would also like to thank Holybro for sponsoring the work to bring it to the community. Naderi’s guide will take readers through the process of setting up Pixhawk and a companion computer with PX4 to unlock the potential for advanced capabilities.
The Holybro Pixhawk Jetson Baseboard utilized in the guide is designed to integrate the NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX/Nano with the Pixhawk Autopilot Bus (PAB) specification. It allows developers to leverage the computational power of the Jetson platform to perform complex tasks such as real-time image processing, object detection, and path planning.
The guide provides detailed instructions on how to get up and running with the board. Here’s what you can expect.
- Board layout overview
- Jetson Board Flashing
- Package installation and updates
- PX4-Autopilot setup
- Development environment configuration
- PX4 Firmware Build and Flash
- ROS 2 Installation
- XRCE-DDS Setup
- Agent installation and configuration
- Ethernet Configuration
- Pixhawk-Jetson communication setup
- Network settings using nmcli
- Pixhawk Configuration
- Testing and Verification
We encourage all community members to explore this new guide and let it inspire them to create new projects involving companion computers. Feel free to share your results with us and Farhang on social media.
Farhang’s work on this documentation is a testament to the collaborative spirit of the PX4 community. We’re thrilled to see community members taking the initiative to improve our documentation and make PX4 more accessible to all.