Flight Controller or Flight Computer?¶

Although these terms are used interchangeably, there is an important distinction between flight controllers and flight computers.

Flight Controllers¶

In general, flight controllers are usually small devices programmed on a microcontroller, designed to run a very tight loop of general-purpose data collection code.

Here are common examples of microcontrollers that are used in flight controllers: - Arduino - STM32 - ESP32

Flight controller software generally focuses on collecting sensor data, logging data, and transmitting data via USB, radio, UART, or similar protocols. The code loops quickly to ensure dependent systems can respond to real-time events fast enough.

A common example of a flight controller is an altimeter, which has code running on a small microcontroller to read sensor data and determine in real-time when to fire the pyro channels to separate the rocket and deploy parachutes.

Flight Computers¶

Flight computers are devices that use a general-purpose operating system like Linux or Debian, and are designed to facilitate and command specific mission logic.

You might find these devices used as flight computers: - Raspberry Pi - NVIDIA Jetson - Radxa ROCK

Because flight computers run on commonly used operating systems, they are more comfortable to work with and debug. Unlike flight controllers that run a defined set of code immediately when powered on, flight computers must be told what program to run, enabling you to write test scripts to help debug on the hardware.