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Buy bare boards and components for a DIY ArduPilot

Posted by Chris Anderson on December 8, 2008 at 1:00pm

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
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Comments

  • Danilo Marques Figueiredo November 17, 2009 at 7:15am
    Hi Chris,

    For the ardupilot with Atmega 328 is the same components list os Atmega 168?

    Regards.
  • Faisal Shah November 10, 2009 at 7:02pm
    Are the eagle schematic and layout files available for the shield board? I wanted to get the footprint for the MPXV5004DP differential pressure sensor.
  • Magnus February 2, 2009 at 10:14pm
    I tried to look in the eagle files, but i couldn't solve the puzzle. How many of the servo inputs are routed to the Mega168 or the ATtiny? And how many outputs from the Mega is routed to the Mux?

    /Magnus
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson December 14, 2008 at 11:12pm
    Same answer as always: before the end of the year, I hope.
  • Nick Sargeant 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?
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson 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 December 14, 2008 at 10:40pm
    Oops, here is the link.
  • Nick Sargeant 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
  • Michael 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
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson 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.
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