A new version of 4Gmetry is now available on store: 4Gmetry II (504 € 439€) This is the second version of the original KIT proposed on diydrones blog just five months ago. I want to say a big "thank you" to all our 4Gmetry group members, and to the precious feedbacks of our happy customers. Thank you!
The new 4Gmetry II includes all the necessary components to connect your drone (or fleet) to the internet via 4G/LTE. But it's not only the ready-to-fly solution for lazies developers who don't want to buy components separately! 4Gmetry II is more than the sum of the parts, it's a powerful companion computer for developers and professionals.
FEATURES:
- 4Gmetry II features a Samsung Exynos5422 Cortex™-A15 2Ghz and Cortex™-A7 Octa core CPUs which makes it a very interesting solution for inflight image analysis applications or computer vision, for a very interesting flying weight.
- 4Gmetry II is built on top of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and comes with ready to connect it to your favourite VPN (it's literally a flying server!). In this way you don't need expensive M2M SIMs or dynamic IP (but every possibility remains up to you).
- 4Gmetry II naturally interfaces with H.264 cameras - including the famous C920 - so you can easily stream video to your target server/laptop. The quality will be a compromise of framerate / resolution accordingly to your 4G/LTE carrier performance and quality (in US, Italy, Australia, Germany, France, Canada, UK the 4G quality reported by our customers is mostly good).
- 4Gmetry II is optimized for and tested on APM 3.2.1 over Pixhawk. However 4Gmetry accepts MAVLink messages from virtually any source.
- Note for beginners: you CAN install custom software on 4Gmetry, the user is not "locked-out"in any way. Simply connect 4Gmetry to an HDMI monitor with an HDMI cable (not included) to get the Ubuntu GUI at your service.
With 4Gmetry you can control your drone/fleet in real time from an unlimited distance over 4G/LTE Internet; use this at your risk and in respect of the law in your country.
UPDATE: We're extensively testing Coriandola - the Cloud Control Station - to remotely manage and orchestrate a fleet of vehicles giving only high level commands in your browser. The goal is to integrate it in the next version of 4Gmetry ;)
Comments
@Hein, my phone based smartphone system (FlightZoomer) basically transports MAVLink and works fine with edge.
No email received Silvio...
@Roberto ciao!
I owe you a 4Gmetry KIT, I've just remembered. There are a lot of places where 4G is not supported, and obviously 4Gmetry is useless there. On the other hand there are places where 4G goes 60Mbps. So yes, 4Gmetry needs 4G ;)
RC override is not an issue, simply because the typical 4Gmetry user wants:
Low level commands (RC channels) are not very important as the typical use case is BLOS, and the best navigation system in most cases is point and click. RC override is automatically done only at startup to set throttle to zero, auto takeoff, prevent Pix4Flow failures on takeoff (as on 3.3-rc8, 3.3-rc10) and will assist Thomas' IR Lock during landing. VPN perfomance depends on VPN packets settings, however it's generally not enough for good videos.
@Euan you've got an email from me.
Hi Silvio,
how're you ? i did a lot of test in last 3 months with different kind of companion computer , vpn and 3G/ 4G link ... my opinion is that kind of configuration is good for DIY but not for RTF user . Too much difference and a lot of place where 4G is not supporterd so the latency of trasmission became very high. The other problem is that on APM the ovverride channel is not pefected supported by the firmware .. i think that it need some improvment related to failsafe and switch from ovverride to manual control . What is the performance of system with vpn and without vpn ? Are you check it ?
Best
Roberto
+1 on the software only pack. Assuming it's sensible pricing.
@Hugues @JB thanks for this precious feedback, I wish you could engage deeper in 4Gmetry, even partners or resellers. Thanks.
@JB you explained perfectly what I was thinking too. Silvio could market two packages at different prices: one more expensive for the non DIY who just want something plug and play (or as close as can be) and a second cheaper which follows your suggestion of an image to download (more for the DIYer)
@JD interesting! Let's schedule a Skype asap. Are you based in Australia right?
@Martin
I didn't mean the development SDK, I meant the development of code that is done for UAV by other enthusiasts is mostly in Linux and not Android. If you want to do it Android then there's a lot of things that you need to do yourself from scratch, rather than just installing an already existing module on Linux. Overall I see Android as the best GUI platform to develop in and Linux the best OS. Out of principle I wouldn't invest my time into MS or iOS. But that's just me...I'm not a real coder anyways, just a hack.
@Silvio
Maybe an alternative business model for that would be to supply your SD card image as a download for a fee say $20-$30? You might get a lot more customers adopting it then (and make more money off it overall - download hosting and distribution is next to free), as for most users this is the equivalent of an hours worth of work. I'd say that would be a fair trade of effort and good value for money. Then you could diversify and make images for different hardware, like Raspi, BBB and iMX platforms and expand on features that nobody has yet etc. Just an idea.
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