CubePilot and Pixhawk carrier boards
The board your autopilot plugs into, designed for the airframe you actually have rather than the development rig.
Fit
When this is the right choice
Choose it when
- You are building on a proven autopilot and need airframe-specific I/O
- Mechanical constraints rule out any off-the-shelf carrier
- You need radios, GNSS and payload interfaces integrated rather than cable-tied on
- The program needs an ITAR-free, EU-designed supply chain
Look elsewhere when
- A standard carrier fits your airframe — buy it, do not build it
- You need a certified avionics stack, which is a different discipline entirely
Engineering
What’s actually hard about it
The parts that decide whether it works on the first spin, and the parts that cost a respin when they are wrong.
Radio co-existence
GNSS, cellular and telemetry in one airframe, competing for space and ground. Planned in the block diagram or discovered at pre-compliance.
Vibration and IMU mounting
The autopilot needs isolation to produce usable attitude data, and the board needs rigidity to survive. Those requirements fight.
Power under transmit transients
A cellular modem’s peak draw must not disturb the GNSS reference or brown out the flight controller.
Rigid-flex where nothing else fits
In a cylindrical body there is no room for board-to-board connectors, and every connector is a launch-shock failure point.
What we have built on it
A three-board rigid-flex carrier for a tube-launched fixed-wing UAV, following a component-level teardown and clean-room re-implementation of a Cube Orange+ class carrier.
Relevant services: Carrier board design Reverse engineering RF & wireless
Got a board to design — or one that won’t boot?
You talk to the engineer who would do the work. Reply within one business day, and we’ll sign your NDA before you go into detail.