I mean, I'd like to buy just the guts, and put them into my own airframe. Seems like this would be a good way to compete with DJI - you could get a lot more 3DR platforms out there that way, on airframes of all shapes and sizes, and let your platform users do the bulk of the airframe development. 3DR would still make their own airframes, but Solo Platform users wouldn't be restricted to whatever you offered, and you wouldn't have to develop a number of airframes to please everyone. Your airframe inventory would be lower, but your overall market share would increase.
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Now, I understand the reason to looking for mechanical engineer;-)
@Rob, do you have any info or tips on how you connected the PH2 to the quad? Maybe some useful links on documentation? Where you using the imx6 as well, or just the PH2? Now that I have everything broken down I am trying to figure out just what would be the best way to tap into the PH2.
This is what I was looking for.
Dale,
I don't think so. If you look at this blog post from ChrisA, it looks like 3DR is mostly getting out of the "DIY" market. I can't speak for ChrisA or 3DR but I think they want to do fewer things better.
On the upside, a lot of other smaller companies have sprung up in the past couple of years trying to fill the gap. Companies like AUAV.co and the makers of the NAVIO2. I think what's important is that we turn to these smaller manufacturers for the innovative autopilot hardware we need.
Actually, we will release a stand-alone autopilot/wireless package in 2015 that has all the features of the Solo platform with even more power. It's for developers, consumers and VARs (we don't really think of it as a "DIY" market anymore, since it's a cloud-connected platform designed for advanced autonomy, computer vision and data analysis, rather than hobby use).
This will not be the same hardware as the current Solo, but it will be compatible. Like Solo, it will be based on the Dronecode full-stack software platforms and will work with both Dronekit and the Solo SDK.
As Randy says, our open source HW and SW policy has achieved its hoped-for result and there are now many manufacturers making Dronecode-compatible autopilots for the DIY market. There's a lot of innovation in that space, and the price/performance continues to improve at an incredible pace. WIth our own hardware, 3DR is moving towards higher-performance platforms, which are aimed primarily at prosumer and enterprise markets, but on the software side we do everything we can to ensure that products and companies of all sizes and target markets can thrive in this ecosystem.
That is great to hear, am I correct to assume it will be something along the lines of the Snapdragon Flight robotics development platform?
First look at the Snapdragon dev kit. (I am looking forward to the ARF kit)
https://www.intrinsyc.com/snapdragon-embedded-development-kits/qual...
It looks like a functional Snapdragon Flight quad will be demoed at CES (early Jan '16). Perhaps, this could leap-frog the Pixhawk2 + iMX6.... Then again, they can simultaneously serve different market segments.
Cool! Thanks for the reply, that's exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for.
Now, is "we will release in 2015" a typo? Because there's not a whole lot of 2015 left.
Yes, sorry. 2016 ;-)
Hi Chris,
Glad to hear about it. But can we still use the Arducopter firmware with these new 3dr stand-alone autopilots?
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