UAV DevBoard

A three-axis IMU-based autopilot board

This is the home page for the SparkFun three-axis autopilot development board developed by Bill Premerlani. This board comes with a dsPIC30F4011 CPU, an MMA7260 three axis accelerometer and 3 LISY300AL gyros already soldered as shown in the picture. It is intended for the do-it-yourselfer. By itself, it can be used to develop a three axis IMU controller. With the addition of an EM406 GPS receiver it can be used to develop a UAV controller for an RC car, plane, or boat. It comes with self-testing firmware that serves as a starting point for you to develop your own control and navigation firmware.

You will need a hardware programmer to download firmware into the UAV DevBoard, such as the ICD2 offered by SparkFun.

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Note: All firmware is available for both the previous "green" version of the UAV DevBoard with the ADXRS401 gyros, and the new "red" version with the LISY300AL gyros. Each zip file has both a corresponding "green" project and a "red" project.

A guide for getting started with PIC programming, and what to do if you get ICD2 errors.

Source code (C) for MatrixNav RTL firmware for either the red or green board is here.

Documentation for MatrixNav RTL firmware is here.

Source code (C) and documentation for AileronAssist RTL firmware for either the red or green board.

Firmware and documentation for the roll-pitch-yaw demo for either the red or green board.

The direction cosine matrix discussion forum is here.

Several technical papers by Mahony on the theory behind computing and using direction cosines.

A draft of an explanation of the direction cosine matrix algorithm.

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We highly recommend the following items to accompany this product:

• 20-Channel EM-406A SiRF III GPS Receiver
• USB/RS232 ICD2 for programming and debugging (you'll need the low-level hardware debugging)
• An RC car, plane, or boat
• If you've never played with GPS before, we also recommend getting an ET312 evaluation board just so you can instantly view and understand the SiRF NMEA or binary communications protocols

Features:

• Connection for a 20-Channel EM-406A SiRF III GPS Receiver
• PIC dsPIC30F4011 Controller (with onboard 3.3V and 5V glue logic)
• 16 MHz on board oscillator and 120 MHz oscillator built into the dsPIC
• MMA7260 three axis accelerometer
• 3 LISY300AL gyros
• 4 Input, 3 output PWM points
• 6-Wire ICSP debug header
• 2 Separate colored status LEDs
• 3 General purpose switches
• On board 3.3V and 5V regulators (150mA max)
• 10m Positional Accuracy / 5m with WAAS
• GPS Outputs NMEA 0183 and SiRF binary protocol
• Spare USART connection for debugging
• 4 Spare digital I/O pins for debugging

Dimensions:

• 1.5x2.8x1.0 (max) inches
• Weight: 34 grams (controller&GPS)

Supporting documents for the green board:

• GPS UAV2 Manual Part1.pdf for the "green" board
• Hardware schematic for the "green" board
• Self testing guide
• Self-testing code (C) for the "green" board

Supporting documents for the red board:

• Hardware reference manual for the red board.
• Schematic for the red board.
• Self testing guide
• Self testing source code (C) for the red board.

Discussions:

• Main discussion forum
• Scouser's flight experience with the UAV DevBoard
• GPS cable discussion
• Servo PWM pulse rate
• UAV DevBoard clock options
• Robust estimator of the direction cosine matrix
• Applications to CCPM RC helicopters

Blog posts:

• UAV DevBoard is back in stock
• GentleNAV RTL firmware revision & IMU progress
• roll-pitch demo firmware
• roll-pitch-yaw demo firmware
• Wait for MatrixNav
• MatrixNav is released.
• EM406 dynamic response NMEA mode.
• EM406 dynamic response binary mode.
• MatrixNav rev2 is released.
• AileronAssist firmware is launched.
• DCM IMU Theory : first draft