Why are we called “the Cube” and not “Pixhawk”

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Many years ago the Ardupilot hardware team to joined forces with The PX4 hardware team and collaborate in bringing the Pixhawk one and two to market as a “Joint” ardupilot PX4 project.

Unfortunately just as Pixhawk 2 was supposed to come to market, pressures from a Platinum Dronecode member company meant that Pixhawk 2 was put on hold in favour of a platform that would totally fail.

Dronecode then proceeded to attempt to destroy Ardupilot, and the Pixhawk 2, and voted to effectively remove Ardupilot from Dronecode.

We stood up 100% for Ardupilot, which had the effect of burning the bridges between our development of the Pixhawk series and the PX4 team who stayed with Dronecode, even after the disgusting actions of the platinum members.

At this point CubePilot came onboard and assisted our team in getting this hardware to market, and 3DR/Dronecode then partnered with Holybro to bring out a rebranded pixfalcon.

Rather than mending bridges, after the failure of the snapdragon to take a market share, Dronecode partnered with other hardware vendors to make new flight controllers.

Unfortunately, then the silly marketing came in, with the Pixhawk 3, then 4, then 5 etc…

Though we have full rights to use the Pixhawk name, the lack of enforcement on the Pixhawk brand, and the total destruction of the combined Ardupilot PX4 hardware team, it has become nothing in the market, and is now used by anyone that wants it.

This is why we switched to “cube”

The Cube is not FMU v anything anymore,

The Cube is NOT BASED ON FMUv3 the cube is based on my original design which the FMUv3 is based. That may appear as a semantic point, but the copyright of the Pixhawk 2, and the FMU v3 and the Cube all belong to me, not Lorenz or the PX4 team.

Why is this all important?

When you fly your aircraft, you want to know what and who is at the heart of it.

Genuine is a Pixhawk 1 from 3DR, a Pixhawk 2 from 3DR, and a cube from CubePilot
Anything else, is you gambling

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Just as a note, we use Pixhawk and cube interchangeably in our docs, as we are the real deal.

Over time this will decrease

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Very helpful to choose right product. I personally know many people getting confused with Pixhawk, pixhack and other numbering. Hope everyone are clear with what they are dealing with.

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Hi,
This clarification does makes sense, however, I believe a much stronger action must be taken into account, for presenting the huge distinction between cube and the rest of the pack.

I am saying this as only a very new person in the hobby where I followed the path of online information only with lots of heart breaking disappointments, from the Pixhawk clones to PX4 to Ardupilot until finally ending with the Cube and never looking back.

But, so many threads spilled on so many forums where “noobs” like me, are trying to figure out, which is which.

Just my two cents.
Gal

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Thanks!
We try our best to give the best quality Autopilot on the market, and we admit our mistakes. Thankyou for choosing the cube!

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Great post, thanks for the background and the hard work on this.

Been trying to refer to it as the Cube rather than Pixhawk in peoples minds over the last few months my self.

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Much appreciated!

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Good post, I only wish one could be honest about the cryptic “pressures from a Platinum Drone*ode member company”

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This may have been explained before… why the spider on the image of the cube in MP?

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That’s not very cryptic… but I’m not naming companies…

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Good to know your side on the matter, thanks.

I always refer people to this article if they want to know about the splitup: https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/ardupilot-and-drone code/11295

The way it happend, and how firm the break is sad to me. But it makes sense to split because of the wildly different interests.

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I just want to say… Cube Rocks. It just works very well. I love the whole echo system. So, well done Sir. Keep up the good work.

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