Up to now I have been flying drones with the Pixhawk 1 controller hooked up to the NEO-M8N GPS receiver. I want to now upgrade to the ZED-F9P. I have the following questions about this upgrade.
Is the F9P unit compatible with the signal levels and protocols used in the PX4 flight stack?
Will it plug into the GPS UART port, and is there a cable available?
How does it communicate with a ground station?
Can I use an mRobotics telemetry radio?
Thanks,
Joe
Hi Joe,
I will try and answer your questions as best we can in the order you asked them here:
Is the F9P unit compatible with the signal levels and protocols used in the PX4 flight stack?
- It should. The ZED-F9P uses the same u-blox protocol (UBX 7) as the NEO-M8N so you should not have any issues with communication protocol between it and your Pixhawk.
Will it plug into the GPS UART port, and is there a cable available?
As the [[Hardware Overview](https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/gps-rtk2-hookup-guide#hardware-overview) section of the Hookup Guide covers, the only serial output on the ZED-F9P breakout that has a connector is the USB port. That uses a USB-C connector that might be able to be converted but most likely you will need to solder connectors/wire to whichever UART port you wish to connect to the Pixhawk. We do not have any wire assemblies or cables that would mate exactly with the GPS UART port on your Pixhawk.
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How does it communicate with a ground station?
You can pipe RTCM data to the module from your base station or correction source however you would like. We cover this in more detail in the Hookup Guide I linked above. [[This tutorial for the NEO-M8P](https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/gps-rtk-hookup-guide/all#connecting-the-gps-rtk-to-a-correction-source) covers that as well. Our [[What is GPS RTK Tutorial](https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/what-is-gps-rtk) is another good resource for all things GPS RTK
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Can I use an mRobotics telemetry radio?
I am afraid that is not something we can answer as we do not carry any mRobotics products. I would recommend either reading through mRobotics' documentation for the telemetry radio platform or contacting them directly. [[u-blox's documentation for the ZED-F9P](https://www.u-blox.com/en/product/zed-f9p-module) may also help you find an answer for that question. We also have all relevant documentation for our breakout and the ZED-F9P module in the "Documents" tab on the [[product page](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15136).
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