I've been using my RasperryPi's more and more with Dronecode software, including with the fantastic Navio2 autopilot shield and the slightly more basic Erle 2. I've also got Erle's new PXFmini shields for the Raspberry Pi Zero, but unfortunately no Zeros :-( Since the release of the new version with a camera port (which I need) they're out of stock everywhere. Fingers crossed they become available soon. In the meantime, enjoy Erle's post on Hackaday showing how to get a PXFmini flying:
DESCRIPTION
This project builds a Linux drone with the Raspberry Pi Zero using a BOM (Bill of Materials) of less than 200 US$. The drone uses a PREEMPT_RT patched Linux kernel, a Debian-based file system and Dronecode’s APM flight stack compiled for the PXFmini autopilot shield.
DETAILS
- Drone made with the PXFmini autopilot shield for the Raspberry Pi (available from here).
- Open schematics
- APM/ardupilot flight stack compiled for the Pi Zero (sources, instructions)
- Linux drone using a Debian file system made by Erle Robotics specially for the Pi Zero (available here). Includes a catkin workspace with the Robot Operating System (ROS) Indigo.
- Docs about the PXFmini
Comments
solution?
@benbojangles: sharing a single i2c line for imu, baro and mag is not really a good setup.
Thank you, I had a plan a couple of months ago to begin the project and build as I progress; there are some decent people starting to come along and take part, offering feedback, code, personal experiences, I even think someone might be looking at porting QTgstreamerhud to Raspbian. It's all trial and error, and success means progress. The aim is to eventually have UDT video/telemetry which is used with lightbridge, but of course it is on the bucket list, and I personally have no solution to that at this point in the project. I'll keep going, as I think an opensource digital video/telemetry system is valuable to all (also cheaper).
Cool
Btw Kudos for your companion computer stuff
lol, I hear there is another production run ready for tomorrow
Ben, I am waiting in line at Adafruit since day one.. If you can get me one, I'm taking it :-)
Nonetheless, this is not a very powerful unit, the processor is running around 40% just to get the ArduCopter running, so adding just a simple streamer can get the Preempt skipping the beat, it will be a matter of tweeking the priorities within the process and make sure that you do not crash the USB driver, that is, from my experience the weakest element in this setup because it is has a bad habit of crashing in heavy traffic.
The other weakness is that the whole setup is quite heavy for a 250 class. I couldn't get much ''punch'' and the fly was quite short (2-3 minutes).
So hopefully I'll get the sucker and give an update.
Nice, how about an update to that mini-zee article but now including pi camera & UDP? :)
LOL .. Been there, done that.... under 100$
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/mini-zee-a-100-diy-smart-drone-...
Nice, I love DIY - learning & experiments :)
The Zoe PiCopter does it already
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