Pixhawk 6C Flight Controller

Pixhawk6C is the latest update to the successful family of Pixhawk® flight controllers made by Holybro, featuring STM32H7 cpus, vibration isolation of IMUs, redundant IMUs, and IMU heating.

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Where To Buy

The Pixhawk6 flight controllers are sold by Holybro

Features of Pixhawk6 Series

Pixhawk 6X

Pixhawk 6C

Pix32 v6

Key Design Point

Additional Redundancy

Low profile

Cost effective

Modular design, allowing customized baseboard

Cost effective

Modular design, allowing customized baseboard

Processor

STM32H753

STM32H743

Clock Speed

480 MHz

IO Processor

STM32F103

IMU Redundancy

Triple

Double

Double

IMU Temperature Control

Yes

Barometer Redundancy

Double

N/A

N/A

Power Monitor

I2C

Analog

Analog

UART

8

7

7

CAN Bus

2

GPS/Copass Ports

2

UART Flow Control

3 Ports

2 Ports

2 Ports

Additional I2C

Yes

Ethernet Support

Yes

No

No

SPI Port

Yes

No

No

A/D

6.6V,3.3V,RSSI

RSSI

RSSI

UART Mapping

  • SERIAL0 -> USB

  • SERIAL1 -> UART7 (Telem1) RTS/CTS pins

  • SERIAL2 -> UART5 (Telem2) RTS/CTS pins

  • SERIAL3 -> USART1 (GPS1)

  • SERIAL4 -> UART8 (GPS2)

  • SERIAL5 -> USART2 (Telem3) RTS/CTS pins

  • SERIAL6 -> USART3 (USER)

  • SERIAL7 -> USB (can be used for SLCAN with protocol change)

RC Input

The RCIN pin, which by default is mapped to a timer input, can be used for all ArduPilot supported receiver protocols, except CRSF/ELRS and SRXL2 which require a true UART connection. However, FPort, when connected in this manner, will only provide RC without telemetry.

To allow CRSF and embedded telemetry available in Fport, CRSF, and SRXL2 receivers, a full UART, such as SERIAL6 (UART3) would need to be used for receiver connections. Below are setups using Serial6.

Any UART can be used for RC system connections in ArduPilot also, and is compatible with all protocols except PPM. See Radio Control Systems for details.

PWM Output

The Pixhawk6C supports up to 16 PWM outputs. All 16 outputs support all normal PWM output formats. All FMU outputs (marked “FMU PWM Output”) also support DShot.

The 8 FMU PWM outputs are in 4 groups:

  • PWM 1, 2, 3 and 4 in group1

  • PWM 5 and 6 in group2

  • PWM 7 and 8 in group3

FMU outputs within the same group need to use the same output rate and protocol. If any output in a group uses DShot then all channels in that group need to use DShot.

Battery Monitoring

The board has 2 dedicated power monitor ports with a 6 pin connector. The Pixhawk6C uses analog power monitors on these ports.

Compass

The Pixhawk6C has a built-in compass. Due to potential interference, the autopilot is usually used with an external I2C compass as part of a GPS/Compass combination.

GPIOs

The 8 FMU PWM outputs can be used as GPIOs (relays, buttons, RPM etc). To use them you need to set the output’s SERVOx_FUNCTION to -1. See GPIOs page for more information.

The numbering of the GPIOs for PIN variables in ArduPilot is:

FMU pins:

  • PWM1 50

  • PWM2 51

  • PWM3 52

  • PWM4 53

  • PWM5 54

  • PWM6 55

  • PWM7 56

  • PWM8 57

Analog inputs

The Pixhawk6C has an analog RSSI input pin:

  • Analog 3.3V RSSI input pin = 103

Connectors

Unless noted otherwise all connectors are JST GH

See Pixhawk6C pinout

Loading Firmware

The board comes pre-installed with an ArduPilot compatible bootloader, allowing the loading of xxxxxx.apj firmware files with any ArduPilot compatible ground station.

Firmware for these boards can be found here in sub-folders labeled “Pixhawk6C”.

Layout and Dimensions

See Pixhawk6C dimensions