DIY Drones

Chris Anderson

Buy bare boards and components for a DIY ArduPilot

You'll soon be able to buy ArduPilot already made, but for those of you who would rather build their own, here are the necessary parts:

You can buy the boards here.

Eagle (PCB and schematic) files are here.

A pdf of the schematic is here.

Once you've made the board, instructions on setting the fuses and loading the bootloader are here.

A few notes on building the board: Aside from all the surface-mount components below, the only through-hole components you need to solder on are a 5-pin breakaway connector for the FTDI port (first five pins next to the GPS connector), the two 2x3 ICSP connectors, two 3-pin connectors for channel 1 & 2 output, one 3-pin connector for the power select and three pigtails (female-to-female servo connectors cut in half) for CTRL and channel 1 & 2 in. The other two channels (3&4) are not currently used. IMPORTANT: the power selector pins must have a jumper cap placed on two of the pins. Use the two closest to the servo-out ports if you're going to power the board from the RC receiver via the RC-in cables (that's what I've done in the picture above), or use the other two if you want to power the board with a separate regulated 5v power source. If you don't put the jumper cap on these pins, the board will have no power!

Components: ICs:


Capacitors:

Diodes:

Resistors:

Other:

Others things you'll need if you don't already have them:

Tags: ardupilot

Share  Twitter

corey Comment by corey on December 9, 2008 at 8:18am
ardupilot needs the fma copilot as well, right?
Chris Anderson Comment by Chris Anderson on December 9, 2008 at 9:01am
Yes, and you need a plane, too ;-) I'll update the post (which was really just about the board) to include others things that people may not have thought about.
Michal Comment by Michal on December 9, 2008 at 1:29pm
Will EM411 GPS work instead of EM406?
Chris Anderson Comment by Chris Anderson on December 9, 2008 at 3:27pm
We've never seen an EM411 (actually I've never heard of it), so I don't know. If it uses the same connector as the EM406 and spits out standard 9600 NMEA it should be okay.
Michael Comment by Michael on December 10, 2008 at 3:01pm
Hi Chris,

Any idea when they will be ready for sale? Also, will shipping to Australia be available?

Michael
Nick Sargeant Comment by Nick Sargeant on December 14, 2008 at 10:39pm
How about using this GPS: ?
Is uses the same chip as the LS20031and at the moment it can be bought for $57.95 (a modest $2 saving) The possible advantage of this is it has a SAW filter.
Also, for those of you are into fpv and have an OSD (Eg Dragon, blackstork IFOSD), you will likely already have this GPS.
Cheers,
Nick
Nick Sargeant Comment by Nick Sargeant on December 14, 2008 at 10:40pm
Oops, here is the link.
Chris Anderson Comment by Chris Anderson on December 14, 2008 at 10:43pm
Nick,

I've got one of those. Unfortunately, the ceramic antenna is too small and it's not as good at picking up sats as its big brother. For OSD it may be good enough, but we need greater reliability for autopilots.
Nick Sargeant Comment by Nick Sargeant on December 14, 2008 at 10:54pm
Ah, Ok.
Chris, i know you are constantly asked this, but are talks going with your manufacturer?
Are you any closer on an ETA for the ardupilot?
Chris Anderson Comment by Chris Anderson on December 14, 2008 at 11:12pm
Same answer as always: before the end of the year, I hope.

Comment

You need to be a member of DIY Drones to add comments!

Join this Ning Network

© 2010   Created by Chris Anderson

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Privacy  |  Terms of Service

Sign in to chat!