Comment by Giles Barton-Owen on November 28, 2009 at 8:05am

Is the software good enough to be a serious contender with thermopiles yet? Or has it already surpassed them?

3D Robotics Comment by Chris Anderson on November 28, 2009 at 8:34am

When it comes to simply knowing what "level" is on any aircraft, thermopiles are hard to beat. But for other things, such as controlling the angle of bank, handling environments with poor IR contrast (overcast days), and simplicity of installation, IMUs are better. If all you want is an autopilot, the current thermopile-based ArduPilot is fine. But over the next year or so, the entire industry will shift to IMUs, for the above reasons, and I would expect that by the middle of 2010, the IMU-based solutions will have passed thermopiles in almost all respects.

(We'll have a simple upgrade process for ArduPilot owners to switch to an IMU. Unless people are willing to wait half a year, we recommend that they they get ArduPilot now and switch out the sensors to IMU-based ones later when they're available.)

Developer Comment by Pete Hollands on November 28, 2009 at 8:37am

I'm flying William Premerlani's UAV Devboard with the new (Beta) Matrix Pilot firmware - which is Bill's initial code extended by Ben Levitt. It is fabulous.

The plane know's it's complete orientation at all times. (except when still, as the gyros set their heading from the GPS Course Over the Ground).

Comment by Giles Barton-Owen on November 28, 2009 at 11:51am

So I should just get Thermopiles for a basic Wild Hawk installation?

3D Robotics Comment by Chris Anderson on November 28, 2009 at 3:56pm

Giles, yes. Thermopiles are tried and true. You'll be fine with them and six months from now, when our IMU autopilots are out and stable, you can upgrade. As Peter mentioned above, you can use the UAVDevBoard now, but if you're not a PIC programmer already you may find the code process somewhat complicated.

Comment by Earl on November 29, 2009 at 10:08pm

Chris,
Will this work as the IMU in 6 months for the ardustation ?
Earl

Comment by Dimitar Kolev on November 29, 2009 at 11:38pm

Hey Chris, I just want my 20USD back :-)
Just joking of course, I order mine 2 days before - ArduIMU(I guess V1.0), but what I see now from order confirmation is I will get ArduIMU+ V2 - so really thanks you send me the last version.

Comment by Baphomet on December 9, 2009 at 6:13am

Is this version with or without the high pass filtering components? I want to buy that IMU but without the hardware bug (still not too much practice with SMD desoldering). If it have the high pass filter, are you going to offer in the future the arduIMU without the resistors and the bridged cap?

Thanks indeed. Could be a very interesting product

Comment by Jacob on December 9, 2009 at 6:50am

You might want to read the description again:

"Note 2: this IMU improves upon the first release in that the high-pass filter, which was reducing the effeciency of the DCM code, has been removed."

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