Hardware Overview

DroneOS runs across a small set of hardware layers:

• Flight controller — PX4-compatible autopilot hardware
• Companion computer — onboard Linux computer running the DroneOS stack
• Network link — Wi-Fi, mesh VPN, or cellular backhaul
• Camera / payload — sensors and mission-specific peripherals
• Power / wiring — vehicle-specific integration details

Current reality

Today, the documented and proven real-hardware path is:

• Holybro X500 airframe
• Pixhawk flight controller
• Raspberry Pi 5 companion computer
• PX4 + ROS 2 + DroneOS

That path is the baseline.

New hardware path being added

A Jetson Orin Nano companion-computer path is being added as an additional integration approach.

Important:

• this does not replace the Raspberry Pi 5 path
• the Raspberry Pi 5 method remains the proven documented integration
• Jetson is being added to increase onboard compute headroom for perception and future onboard AI workloads

Hardware sections

Use the pages in this section for component-level guidance:

• Companion computer
• Raspberry Pi 5
• Jetson Orin Nano
• Flight controller
• Cellular / 4G / 5G
• Camera and payloads
• Power and wiring