Posted by anaximander on December 19, 2009 at 11:30am
I'm planning to build a full UAV system based around Arduinos, and the groundstation is one of the areas where I need to pin down some details to make sure it's all doable before I actually start buying the bits. My main question is whether an Arduino has enough memory and/or power to store and handle maps in any way. The idea is to have a small unit like the ArduStation, but with a little flatscreen showing the aircraft's location and course on a map. If possible, I'd also like the option to pan this map around and view/edit/re-order/add/remove waypoints. I don't really mind what format these maps are stored in, as long as the unit can display them with enough clarity to make it worthwhile, and will somehow know the GPS co-ordinates of any spot I select with a cursor (either by looking it up on a stored grid, or calculating it with respect to a reference point somewhere on the map, or whatever).It's really the processing power of the Arduino that's the issue here; I know it's possible to extend the memory with either an SD card reader or a USB port and a flash drive, but what I don't know is whether the Arduino would be able to retrieve and display the relevant area of map, fast enough to be worthwhile, and still have enough power left to overlay a few markers and stuff. The sceen I'd use is most probably the Arduino's TouchShield Slide, which I think has a little internal memory of its own to hold a display driver or something, but I'm not sure about that.
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On my wish list this for a long time, I am kind of hoping a clever person will use a Garmin vehicle unit and use the FMI setup, fleet management interface, at very least place the aircrafts position height blah blah on the screen.
Always struck me as silly to connect a laptop up to get a position that could be shown on a 100 quid very portable device.
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Always struck me as silly to connect a laptop up to get a position that could be shown on a 100 quid very portable device.