Here is a preview of my current project, a flight controller with onboard OSD targetted mainly at ArduPlane. The Board incorporates an OSD for FPV similar to that in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybab6q70icI . The OSD video out also provides telemetry via the video start of frame to communicate position data to an Antenna tracker. (Ardupilot Code for the version in the video at https://github.com/kwikius/ardupilot/tree/quantracker_master )
The main application is smart thermal soaring, therefore the board is long and thin to fit in a small fuselage. The connectors face upwards so that they dont stick out sideways and access should be easy from above if for example installed in the fuselage bay cutout under the wing of a Glider style aircraft. The SD card is forward and on top for easy access.
The other feature of the board is that it has been designed to incorporate a Raspberry Pi Zero as a companion computer fitting neatly on the underside of the board as shown in the image below. The Raspberry PI has AV out and an aux avout has been added so that the FPV view can be switched to a view of the Raspberry PI display.
Though the board can be connected to work stand alone, it is also designed to work with my "sub hub" boards: http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/simple-distributed-flight-controller-network , which are designed to allow most electronics and sensors, gps, rc receiver etc to be placed into the wings of the plane, each wing being connected to the fuselage by one 4 way connector thus allowing smaller fuselages, simple assembly and also improving rf separation for GPS RC etc.
Comments
nice - looks like the pi zero is available ...
http://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/ardupilot-flight-controller-with-on-...
@James
Getting the boards has been somewhat of a saga. The first consignment of boards just disappeared, so I had to redo the order. Anyway to cut a long story short, I finally received the boards on Wednesday night:
I will certainly post more when I have made some useful progress.
@Tiziano. Thanks. I sure will!
Currently waiting for the prototype boards.
Count me in Andy!
@Ravi BTW The Raspberry Pi is usually available immediately,e.g from Ebay, as long as you are happy to pay around $20 rather than the headline $4 price.
As I write this it does appear to be available in UK at £4
http://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero?variant=14062715972
@Ravi Thanks for the enthusiasm. Combining a microcontroller and sensor board with a Linux SBC has great appeal. I did toy with the idea of reusing and APM http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/a-new-use-for-an-apm2-x
but decided I would like to continue with my previous work on combining an OSD onboard using an STM32 microcontroller
In the current OSH Ardupilot hardware there seem to be either
1) Boards with a microcontroller and sensors onboard e.g APM, PX4
2) Boards with Linux SBC and a sensor board e.g ErleBrain PXFMini
but there is as yet no official OSH option that uses a microcontroller for the Realtime pin bashing and a separate processor for the higher level functions( other than to use as a "companion computer"( though this has often been discussed on this forum), and that seems to be the best option since it is clear that Linux SBC's waste a lot of their resources trying to run RTOSes, while microcontrollers are optimised for that purpose, while and microcontrollers tend to run out of resources for running higher level programmes scripting etc.
Yes the supply is quite stable now
that's a great idea. you would get video out right from the board with OSD overlay. is raspi zero available?