Pixhawk not being recognized by Windows 10

Gatormurica

Member
Hello everyone. I hope all is doing well.

I have a pixhawk flight controller for my f450 frame. I have got it all put together and wierd up. I have installed mission planner and I believe the USB drivers were downloaded with the mission planner. When I plug the USB cord into my computer, windows tells me that the USB device is not recognized and in my task manager, it states that the device malfunctioned and is not recognized.
Has anyone had a similar issue?
How can I go about fixing this issue?
 

makattack

Winter is coming
Moderator
Mentor
Hmm... I'm afraid I'm still using an old MacOS and Windows7 systems to access my pixhawk. I'll have to try it tonight with Windows 10. I'll report what I find...
 

sprzout

Knower of useless information
Mentor
This may sound odd, but have you tried a different USB cable? Not all cables are data cables; some only carry power. I found this out the hard way the other day when trying to transfer a book to my Kindle.
 

makattack

Winter is coming
Moderator
Mentor
@sprzout is likely onto the most likely cause. I did a fresh install of qGroundControl (my preferred app for controlling PX4 platforms since it's more of a multiplatform software vs Mission Planner and also supports both branches apm & px4) using an old PX4v2 board from AUAV that's been waiting to go on a yet to be built flying wing. It connected with the version of Arduplane I had installed, and I ended up upgrading it to the latest firmware (3.9.4) and reconnected. I also installed the latest https://px4.io/ 1.8.2 fine.

207084-ba28b4722ab12ceb4d6aaf2c5c9be636.jpg
 

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Gatormurica

Member
Well, I bought a data USB cord and it still is not being recognized by windows 10. Is there anything that I can do? I am having trouble figuring this out.
 

makattack

Winter is coming
Moderator
Mentor
Pixhawk uses different drivers and they are automatically installed by either mission planner or qgroundcontrol. I believe they are just arduino USB drivers. If you have an arduino board, you should try seeing if you can connect with that. If you can, the pixhawk should connect. Look in the windows device drivers utility and see if it's listed under USB devices when it's plugged in and powered. If you have a 3dr telemetry radio pair, you can try hooking that up to the computer to see if it recognizes that as well. Same drivers.
 

Merv

Site Moderator
Staff member
Can I connect it to mission planner or airplane without it being recognized by windows?
I’ve never had a Pixhawk but the older APM used a serial port not USB. Windows did not recognize the board, you had to to it manually, pick the correct port, speed, parity. It took a lot of effort but when your got everything correct,it worked. That’s what you have if your documentation talks about a COM port,

When I say it didn’t use USB, you used a USB cable & plug, but The connection has to be done manually, it’s not plug & play like USB is. USB (Universal Serial Bus), windows just makes the connection for you.
 
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makattack

Winter is coming
Moderator
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Merv is correct, it's a USB interface, but it doesn't use the standard USB drivers, and thus, wouldn't show up under the USB Interfaces part of device manager. Instead, is shows up under the serial and com ports section of device manager. My bad. I was on my phone and couldn't verify earlier. Here's a screenshot of what I see when I connect mine:

pixhawkUSB.jpg