The UAV Dev Board was an early entry to the DIY autopilot world, designed by Bill Premerlani along with SparkFun.  The hardware went through 5 revisions over the years to incorporate better and better sensors, with the 5th generation, the UDB5, serving pilots and developers well for a long time, along with the companion firmware project MatrixPilot.  But eventually, SparkFun stopped selling the UDB5, and the MatrixPilot community needed a new hardware supplier.

Meanwhile, I've been wanting to fly my autopilot code in smaller and smaller planes, so I decided the time was right to finally design and build my miniaturized UDB5 board.  After lots of prototyping and testing, and starting up my own little web shop, I'm now selling UDB5mini autopilots over at Octopilot Electronics.  (Thanks to MacroFab for building these boards!)

Here are photos of some example UDB5mini-based builds, including my 24" Bonsai mini flying wing, complete with 2.4GHz FPV with MatrixPilot's native OSD, long range radio, and 2-way telemetry, Pete Hollands' self-pitch-stabilizing Multiplex Flying Fox, and Pete's tiny, autonomous Sonic Mini.  For the Bonsai build, I cut away the strips of PCB containing the mounting holes to make the board even smaller. 

If you haven't flown with MatrixPilot before, here are some compelling reasons to give it a try:

• Programmable flight plans using a LOGO-based flight language, complete with conditional branching.  People have built their own thermaling programs, smart RTH, and all sorts of fun flight patterns.

• Solid, but minimalist hardware and firmware design keeps things simple, stable, and small.

• Developer-friendly codebase allows using MatrixPilot's libraries to easily build your own projects, like a self balancing robot, autonomous sailboat, model rocket stabilization unit, etc.

• It's all open source and open hardware!

We joked about using FPV gear to try 3rd person snowboarding last April 1st.  And then we made it happen!

3rd person RC flying: old hat.
1st person RC flying: cool! but done.
1st person snowboarding: fun! and done.
3rd person snowboarding: at long last.

Finally, this 4th quadrant is filled-in. I tried it so you don't have to! Watch the video to see how it went.

Maybe next season we'll try again with an autonomous follow-copter as the camera platform!

We're excited to have UDB boards once again available for purchase over at SparkFun! [UDB5 from SparkFun]

This latest revision of the UDB switches over to using the MPU6000 digital accelerometer+gyro chip, which has been performing even better than the very solid UDB4's analog sensors. It is otherwise a very similar board the UDB4.

Along with this new hardware release, we've also released MatrixPilot 4.0, which includes new hardware support for this board, and also for Nick Arsov's AUAV3 board.  MP4.0 also improves cross-tracking and navigation accuracy, among other goodies.

Thanks to all the developers for their work adding support for new hardware, refactoring the code, and constantly improving performance! 

SparkFun released a new version of the UAV Dev Board today.  It comes with a new, faster processor with much more program memory and RAM, and loads of extra digital and analog IO.

MatrixPilot 3.2 is already fully compatible with the new board, including support for the expanded set of RC Inputs, Servo Outputs, analog inputs, PPM Input, and even the native OSD.

The gyros have even less drift than on the UDB3, and thanks to Bill's continued research and development, the dead reckoning IMU is rock-solid.

Another nice feature is that SparkFun dropped the price down to $100!

This is a screenshot of part of one of my MP3.0 test flights from yesterday.  The plane was programmed to fly figure eights, using the UDB Logo program below.  The GPS track is shown at 1Hz, and the dead reckoned IMU track is shown at 4Hz.  The plane had taken off very recently when it started this track, so it was still calibrating for the wind speed. That's why the first side of the eight (blue) is a bit less pretty than the 2nd half of the eight (yellow). Each circle is programmed to be just over 100m in diameter, but I used a 20m waypoint radius, so the circles became much smaller.

There are a few things to notice here.  One is that the dead reckoning is pretty darn close to the GPS track.  The other noteworthy point is that the wind was blowing at almost 20mph, and the UDB adjusted its navigation gains dynamically as it turned into and away from the wind, to keep the course over ground in line with the flight plan.  Thanks to Bill for both of these improvements!

Here's the quick and dirty UDB Logo program I used for these eights:

SET_ALT( 60 )
SET_ANGLE( 0 )
SET_POS( -20, 50 )

REPEAT_FOREVER
       REPEAT( 18 )
               RT( 20 )
               FD( 20 )
       END

       REPEAT( 18 )
               LT( 20 )
               FD( 20 )
       END
END

The MatrixPilot dev team is happy to announce that version 3.0 is finally out the door! This update includes a hefty code reorganization into modular, reusable libraries, along with some important new features, and refinements to our dead reckoning and wind estimation algorithms. The code should also now be much easier to hack on as a basis for using the UAVDevBoard for other purposes.

Thanks to all the developers and testers who helped out with this release!

More info over at our wiki.

What's New in MatrixPilot 3.0

• Support for up to 8-channel PPM RC Input on a single pin, freeing up other pins for other features, including up to 9 RC outputs. Compatible with this board from the DIYDrones store.
• Added a new mission description language based on LOGO.
• Allow sending waypoints (or UDB Logo instructions) mid flight over the telemetry channel.
• Much improved Navigation, due to improvements in Dead Reckoning and wind estimation.
• Improved camera-targeting logic and precision.
• Added an RTL Hold feature that keeps you in RTL mode once it's been triggered, until you flip your mode switch. This helps avoid chaos if you're flying at the edge of your RC range.
• Support for a still-experimental native On-Screen Display using this board from SparkFun.
• Improved autonomous landing control.
• Improved flight analysis tools.
• Code restructuring into shared libraries makes building your own UDB-based projects much easier!

Just in time to run on your new UDBv3, the UDB development team is excited to release version 2.5 of MatrixPilot! This version adds tons of new features, including inverted stabilization, camera targeting, more configurable waypoints, wind speed estimation, dead reckoning, and hardware-in-the-loop simulation. Big thanks go out to everyone who has written and submitted code, tested bleeding-edge versions, found bugs, and asked and answered great questions.

More info over at our wiki.

What's New in MatrixPilot 2.5

• IMU based "dead" reckoning.
• Support for waypoints at absolute positions, relative to startup, or relative to a fixed location.
• More configurable waypoints / flight patterns.
• Stabilize inverted flight.
• Stabilize vertical / hovering flight.
• Beginnings of automatic landing.
• Camera stabilization and targeting.
• Support for automatic detection of, and adjustment for average wind speed and direction.
• Support for using a magnetometer for yaw stabilization.
• Improve robustness of waypoint following when losing the transmitter signal.
• Hardware-In-the-Loop simulation using a UDB and X-Plane.

• Combines the functionality of MatrixNav and AileronAssist into a single firmware.
• Supports navigation using both ailerons and rudder.
• Increases the number of Radio Input channels (from 4 to 5), and Servo Output channels (from 3 to 6).
• Supports controlling Delta wing and V-Tail airframes, in addition to Standard airframes with or without ailerons.
• More responsive to switching between Manual, Stabilized, and Waypoint modes.
• Supports using the new uBlox GPS for faster navigation responses.
• Super-basic camera stabilization code.
• Adds serial telemetry output in a variety of formats.
  • Supports telemetry output in our own UAV Dev Board format.
  • Supports telemetry output using an Ardupilot Ground Station compatible format.
  • Supports NMEA output to a Remzibi OSD.