This week end we doing first Virtual Robotix Hacking day .
Our Pilot meet Emile and assist to a first course for use VRBrain 4.0 on their drone.
In the morning we introduce the basic functionality of VR Brain and Mission planner and in the afternon we going to field and doing some flight test.
The next meeting will be about the advanced functionality of VR Brain.
After two days of teaching and testing all Drone are on air and we help our Pilot to found a lot o small configuration problem. During the day we test all functionality available in last revision of code available for VRBrain 4.0 Arducopter32 rev 2.91-RC2 all work fine. The code after some bug correction work very well and could be affordable , we need doing some hours of test before to confirm first impression.
Thanks to all guys that support this events :)
Marco join us in our test with his great review of VRBRAIN during a storm mounted on a medium okto coaxial quad.
I´m going to start testing Roberto´s New VrDroidRC Android app.
To have a platform where I can use my Nexus 7 tablet as a combined Ground Station and radio (using AndroPilot or VrDroidRC), I have made a combined Nexus 7 dock and enclosure to mount the electronics. Maybe later VrDroidRC have telemetry and FPV support, so I don´t have to use AndroPilot ?
Here I have mounted a G10 plate and some 30mm standoffs on the back of a Nexus 7 protective back-cover
The other side
The other part, where I have made hole to support an Futaba style TX module and a 3DR 433Mhz telemetry module
From the other side (I´m using an ASSAN TX module in my test setup) In the other hole I plan to Mount a display showing my TX LiPo status
From the side
Front
Running Roberto´s great app :-)
As it is now, it can be used as a mobile AndroPilot ground station (only need an USB OTG cable between the 3DR telemetry radio and the Nexus 7 tablet).
I´m waiting for some Components that I need to make Roberto´s OpAmp adapter that is needed to Connect the TX module to the mini-jack on the tablet.
I also need a battery (plan to use a 9,6V LiFe Tx battery) to Power the TX module + an 5V UBEC to get 5V for the OpAmp module.
I have used a small USB hub between the Nexus and the 3DR radio, so now I have 3 free USB if I want to test other modules..
I´ll continue when my OpAmp adapter is ready - showing how I made it..
When it is ready, I plan to test The App controlling a quad in a SIM, and if it Works my next test is controlling a Q-BOT micro quad.
Thanks to everyone that passed us at the Model Expo Italy Verona ... today 'was a good day ... in the evening we were destroyed ... are now in a hotel near the fair, tomorrow it starts again ... from 9.00 Today I met many friends VirtualRobotix, Diydrones and BaroneRosso and not only that we have gone to find, Rino, who was here at the stand of FIAM, Michael is' doing acrobatic flights with its quad here in the aviary Pad 7, Ale with Joseph, Marco Robustini that I always see with pleasure, Rfale, and many others. My "MEMBERS" today are given in thousands of presentations, Emile, Flavio and Marco Masiero, we flew in the aviary in pair with their drones based VRBrain and Mikrokopter. Tomorrow it's up to Drones "Professional" for video applications and civil protection, etc. etc. etc. ... So who wants to see them live and not just in our video finds us at our stand and also during the day with presentations in the aviary of the main stand. Greetings to all and see you tomorrow in the meantime a video made by Daniele with our drones that tomorrow you will see the truth in action.
Grazie a tutti di essere passati a trovarci a Verona al Model Expo Italy ... oggi e' stata una bella giornata ... a sera eravamo distrutti ... ora sono in albergo vicino alla fiera , domani si ricomincia ... dalle 9.00 Oggi ho conosciuto tanti amici di VirtualRobotix , DIYDrones e del BaroneRosso e non solo che ci sono passati a trovare , Rino che era qui allo stand della FIAM , Michele che sta' facendo voli acrobatici con i suoi quad qui nella voliera del Pad 7 , Ale con Giuseppe ,Marco Robustini che vedo sempre molto voleniteri , Rfale , e tanti altri I miei "SOCI" oggi si sono dati in mille presentazioni , Emile , Flavio e Marco Masiero , abbiamo volato nella voliera anche in coppia con i loro droni basati su VRBrain e su Mikrokopter . Domani tocca ai Droni "Professionali" per riprese video e applicazioni di protezione civile ,ecc ecc ecc ... Quindi chi vuole vederli live e non solo nei nostri video ci trova al nostro stand e anche durante la giornata con presentazioni nella voliera principale dello stand. Un saluto a tutti e a domani nel frattempo un video fatto da Daniele con i nostri droni che domani potrete vedere dal vero in azione
today is an historic day for us, after 3 years from the birth of the Virtualrobotix.com community we finally founded the company VirtualRobotix Italia s.c.a.r.l. formed as a spin off of MpxLab Scarl a private research organization based at Kilometro Rosso of Bergamo (Italy).
Here is a photo of the toast ... Unfortunately, some of the members were not present but we expect in the next picture to be all.
We are 15 founding members (quite a number...) and others will join shortly and we are all driven by the will to transform their passion into a work.
Our mission is to facilitate the development of air, terrestrial and marine robotic technologies for the recreational, research and professional use.
We will take care of many things
inventing and developing new technologies made in Italy and offering them to the world
training of pilots for professional applications
develop and certificate drones
Offer specific services as Aerial Video and Photography
…And many other bound only by our imagination
The first public event of VRI will be at the “ModelExpoItaly” of Verona (2-3 March 2013) , where we will have a 36sqm booth!
If you need more info on how to join our initiative or need to know more details about our mission you can contact us at info@virtualrobotix.com
oggi e' stata una giornata storica , dopo 3 anni dalla nascita della community Virtualrobotix.com oggi è nata la società cooperativa VirtualRobotix Italia Scarl , startup tecnologica ... costituita come spin off di MpxLab Scarl un organismo di ricerca privato con sede al Kilometro Rosso di Bergamo. Ecco la foto del brindisi ... purtroppo alcuni dei soci sono dovuti scappar via subito dopo l'atto dal notaio .. contiamo nelle prossime foto di esserci proprio tutti
I soci fondatori sono 15 un bel numero ... a breve se ne aggiungeranno ... mission della struttura agevolare lo sviluppo di tecnologie robotiche volanti terresti e marine sia nel settore ludico , della ricerca ed innovazione che nel settore professionale.
Il primo evento pubblico di VRI sarà il ModelExpoItaly di Verona dove avremo uno stand !!!
Ci occuperemo di tante cose , dall'inventare e sviluppare nuove tecnologie made in italy e proporle al mondo , alla formazione di piloti per applicazioni professionali ,sviluppare droni certificati ecc ecc .
Da oggi esiste una realtà creata da tanti appassionati che hanno voluto fare della loro passione il loro lavoro
se qualcuno vuole avere info per aderire alla nostra iniziativa o per conoscerne i dettagli ci puo' contattare ainfo@virtualrobotix.com
The project "ArdUFO : un drone au service de tous" was selected during the December holidays for being presented at the "Palais de la découverte" at Paris, on February 9th 2013, as part of the "Olympiades de Physique France" contest.
The UAV was created thanks to Roberto Navoni and his magnificent card : VR BRain !
The day ended with the awards ceremony. After some speeches of the selection board, the awards were finally released, and we finished with a second price !
We now decided to continue with the C.Génial contest, to perform our project.
Stefan a member of VirtualRobotix community from spain , doing a great job , one years ago send me first revision of openpilot revision of firmware for VRBrain.
After some times of development yesterday , doing me a great news, Stefan send me the VRBrain patch for TauLab project , a fork of openpilot project fully compatible with VRBRAIN.
He add the support of VRBrain directly inside the main code of autopilot and also inside the CGS as is possible to see in the screenshot.
He doing also first flight test :
this is the first video doing in indoor
and outdoor
The test is doing in a windy and cold days.
In this attachment you found the file for upgrade the bootloader of vrbrain and use TauLabs project.
Posted by Roberto Navoni on February 17, 2013 at 12:30pm
After more than five years of experimentation the comunity of VirtualRobotix decided to grow up and turn into a cooperative company. In the coming months in Italy, you can use our drones not only for scientific or fun, but also for commercial purposes. Within VirtualRobotix we have assembled the best Italian companies with the ability to develop drones, very appasionate and expertise, today I present to you, the first professional product: a frame in full carbon developed by the group that designs SpecialDrones.
In these video is possible to see different configuration , and the advanced application where our frame can do great performances
Now is possible to buy this frame for develop professional drone , we are searching partner to promote it worldwide.
In the last months on the market appear a lot of low cost micro quad , they are very nice toys i like a lot play with it . But the main problem is that the standard electronic is not hackable and i cannot use my radio for control the quad. So i decide to evaluate if was possible interface a quad toy frame with my VRBRAIN.
The main tets that i doing was the payload and discover that was possible to going in air with a payload of 100 gr. VRBrain in Naked configuration is only 21 gr
The other problem was how i can manage the motors ? So i doing a bit of retro eng and discover the electronic need to my vrbrain for control the dc motors. I don't use esc for interface the motors of quad
After solve the electronic problem i start to check the patch to firmware and found how can change the pwm parameter for control the dc motors.
Other problem was the battery , normally the quad toys use a 1s battery but the standard input voltage is 5volt. So i check the schematics of vrbrain and found a 3volt input , put on the 1s battery a small 3.3volt stabilizer and put the output on the gps output 3.3v .
After last patch i thought that i'm ready for first fly , but last things was the radio ... fortunately my Jeti receiver work also at 3.3volt so it work , i have only a signal on my radio about low level voltage ... :(
The final result was this : I'm happy to present VR Pico Drones , basically it use standard arducopter32 2.9 on my VRBRAIN and support all standard functionality available in arducopter , stable , acro , loiter , rtl and auto navigation . So this is smallest Arducopter drone available on the planet :) This is only first prototype the wheight is 110 gr. My idea is to doing some optimization on board and have a 85 gr drone capable of 10 minutes of funny fly.
After some days of hard work this is my first fly test . I'm very happy of this first results :) The main target of this development is to use VRBRAIN for learning to fly during winter days in indoor. I play a lot with simulator but fly with a real copter is better. (sorry for audio , is in italian , the next will be in english :)
A small testimony of "Italian industrial archeology " some company try to resist . Now that everyone thinks that is possible to produced only in china ... Italian Makers say No! You can 'and you must try to do something more here in Italy !! Virtualrobotix is a farmless company , so we use small company near us for going in production or some great partner around the world :) There's the little mounting backstage box of VRBRAIN
The first test was doing by a 3d printer but for produce a pcs it need 4 hours ... with a molder only 30 sec for 4 pcs ...now i need to sell it :) Help me to solve my problem ;)
Hi VirtualRobotix! We met you at Modena Makers, it was a very interesting experience, we had the opportunity to see your amazing technology!
We present you Axemblo, the new open source construction system for professional DIY Robotics. Axemblo system is based on Aluminum, a lightweight, ultra-resistant and recyclable material. With Axemblo you can create fantastic Robots, Rovers, mechanical arms and supports for Electronics Boards (VirtualRobotics board fits perfectly).
Axemblo is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License to enable students, researchers and the community to expand the system. Looking forward for a collaboration with you. We would also love to hear from the community it would be very useful for us to know what they think about our system.
Great work VirtualRobotix
During Modena Makers we meet the founder of Axemblo project . We decide to support their project and try put on their Rover a VRBRAIN with ArduRover2 firmware.
In these months Virtual Robotix community present in italy our Drone tecnology , this week was in Modena and present VRBrain and last revision of Arducopter32 rev 2.9 .
In our stand we had a lot of peoples for two days and we was more success also respect of presentation of 3d printer :)
At these link can you see the presentation of VirtualRobotix at Modena Makers this week 19-20 January 2013
Our target is traver around Italy first and then the other country in europe to enroll new developer and present the great work doing by developer of our community .
The new Arducopter 8-32 bit firmware have a lot of great new functionality and is incredible that all this work is Opensource , when we explain this concept to the peoples that we meet in these events thy are very surprise.
Congratulation TEAM :) We are doing great work !!!
This last update about VBRAIN add ON. In the picture you can see the first prototype of VR Neuron (Down) near the VR Brain (UP) . As you can see te board have the same mechanical design of VR Brain . The board is very compact 6x4 cm VR Brain 7x4 VR Neuron. You can put VR Neuron above and VR Brain up , connect the board by serial port and the use VR Neuron to connect the World :)
Above the board there is PAD for connect by an Header a breadboard or directly thw wire for add yor specific applciation. On the PAD there are available a lot of input output port 27 GPIO , SPI , I2C , Serial port .
In the next days will be more update until official presentation 9 November 2012 at Makers Italy .
In the last six month i decide to implement a new revolutionary design that could be usefull for add a lot on new functionality to our drones.
In the past we only work on micro controller : AVR , SAM3X, STM32 , great platform the last STM32f4 is best micro controller for manage our drone : acro and stable flight , loiter , waypoint navigation ecc ecc. But if i want to put on it a o.s. i start to have a lot of problem : small memory footprint available , not enough ram slow speed processor. So a lot of proposal .... ChibiOS , Nuttx . But what is better and opensource of the worlds ? No doubt It's Linux :)
In my professional work i used a lot of micro controller and micro processor , but all ,too complex to be hackable as a STM32. Until i start to play with a great Italian product , the first that put an Android on a wearable PC .
I like a lot the micro inside it and decide to use that microprocessor for my next opensource design.
I'm happy to present the first design of VR Neuron . It will be official present the 10 November 2012 at the Makers Italy exibithion so who would see our great new design are welcome to meet us at Makers Italy in Milan.
These are preliminary technical info about VR Neuron :
Freescale Imx Arm9 microprocessor.
64 Megabyte Ram
Flash until 32 Gbyte Flash on SDIO bus
456 mhz clock
DUAL BEC 5V Input
1 for CPU
1 for USB channel
1 Pal Video Output
2 Audio Channel Output
1 Input audio channel
26 GPIO (LCD BUS)
2 i2c bus
1 SPI MISO MOSI SCK
2 serial Port
1 USB Host 2.0 channel
Only 6x5 cm half of Raspberry PI
The operating system that i choose for my development is ArchLinuxArm , the powerfull of this design is incredible , i play a lot with the kernel and add a lot of usb device : wifi dongle , 3G dongle , webcam and install a lot of application and test it : apache2 , mysql , mjp-streamer .
So on this platform is possible to do anything of application , it's available python , gcc , i ply with mavlink_proxy and it work fine ... i connect the VBRAIN serial port to VNeuron and by wifi connect mission planner to VBRAIN and see live the telemetry of my quadcopter online.
With the PAL output could be possibile to develop a great OSD application or with oudio you can implement a tele presence systems ... the limit will be only fantasy :)
So i'm very exited about this project and i hope that you like it and join us in development.
Emile and Roberto are progressing on the port and test of the VRBrain with the Arducopter
code now we are working on rev 2.7.3-4.
In this video is possible to see the test of Emile Hexa . It's the first flight and we testing the stability , loiter and alt hold and return to land with approach activated.
We have succesfully flown and tested latest features and came up with some benchmarks to compare the different architectures using Arducopter firmwarre.
Results are pretty impressive and although all the glory goes to the Dev team for the latest firmware a special note goes to Roberto with his new VRBrain design.
Our goal was to have an already "ready platform" where actual developers could start coding on a 32bit platform without loosing the actual code simplicity.
We started with the STM32F1 CPU, running at 72MHz with no FPU and then jumped onto the STM32F4 168MHz CPU which supports hardware FPU on the chip.
Our latest improvements were on the CPU side and we were able to activate soft FPU calculation without the need to modify actual code.
Basically the STM32F4 supports three types of FPU:
no-fpu: uses standard libraries and emulates floating point calculation
soft-fpu: uses hardware floating point instructions but floating point function parameters/return values will be passed in core registers and not FPU registers
hard-fp: all function parameters/return values are passed to the FPU core registers bypassing the core register
These are basic results for the main loops in the Arducopter code:
Arduino 2560 on APM1-2:
Main loop time taken (microseconds):
Min: 4380 us
Max: 6592 us
STM32F1 on Multipilot32F1 V1 and V3 (72MHz no FPU):
Main loop time taken (microseconds):
min: 656 us
max: 1104 us
STM32F4 No FPU on VBRAIN and MP32F4V3 and VBRAIN (168MHz FPU available but not used):
min: 315 us
max: 492 us
STM32F4 soft FPU on VBRAIN and MP32F4V3 and VBRAIN (168MHz with soft FPU enabled):
min: 210 us
max: 315 us
Basically we are at least 20 times faster than current Arduino Hardware although we share 90% of original application code.
Also with the same CPU (F4) we can go 2 times faster without changing one single line of code (almost).
Better performances (at cost of re-writing the code) could be with hard FPU .
So this performances is impressive :) We have a lot of power for start to try more complex algorith as EKF or UFK inside standard Arducopter32 library architecture. If there are some hardcoder that want try to work on this task are welcome . Will be all support from FOXTEAM :)
We yet try the OpenPilot EKF on VBRain and it is very smooth ... but not so differernt of last DCM implementation. Thanks Tridge :)
In this video is possible to see a vbrain installed on a custom frame that use great component : SmartDrone motors and propeller the time of flight is around 27 min.
This is the video of first flight of special revision of firmware for VBRAIN that use the FPU acceleration the benchmark is about this revision of code.
after 2 month of test I'm happy to inform you that the VBrain is ready to fly.
The platform is a result of 4 years of work on ARM autopilot platform. It's last evolution of Multipilot32 platform. I'm very happy that this is the year of ARM and we are here to present our last creation : Simple , Smaller and Ready to Use.
VBrain is a good choose for OEM ready to use hardware platform.
The VBrainautopilot features include:
168Mhz ARM CortexM4F microcontroller with DSP and floating-point hardware acceleration.
1024KiB of flash memory, 192KiB of RAM.
MEMS accelerometer and gyro, magnetometer and barometric pressure sensor.
8 RC Input standard PPM , PPMSUM , SBUS
8 RC Output at 490 hz
1 integrated high speed data flash for logging data
1 Can bus 2 i2c Bus
3 Serial port available one for GPS 1 for serial option 1 for serial telemetry.
3 digital switch (ULN2003).
Jtag support for onboard realtime debugger.
1 Buzzer output.
1 Input for control lipo voltage
Include in the standard Vbrain Package there is VBrain GPS module , the module support MTEK 3329 gps , Ublox module , Fastrak IT600. On the module is available optional magnetometer. You can disconnect the board and put it far from brushless motoros to solve the problem of noise on mag signal.
Physical Dimension 6x4 cm
Will be available a case
It's first Universal Arm hardware platform . On it is available different kind of firmware : Open or Closed source . The main firmware available is Arducopter32 , last revision is 2.7 In the next day will be available a full fly test. This platform is fully compatible with different kind of RTOS : FreeRtos , ChibiOS , Nuttx , CooxOS .
Our first target when start to develop our hardware platform 2 years ago was to develop a simple and powerfull ide.
We develop VRIDE PRO that is a special distribution customize by FoxTeam and LaserLab guys. The Ide use Eclipse as Editor, GCC as compiler , GDB and OpenOcd as Debugger.
Our Team are working also on PX4 enviroment , first target was to port Arducopter32 on PX4 and PX4 enviroment to Vbrain and MP32Fx platform.
The hardware is compatible also with other opensource firmware as AutoQuad AeroQuad and OpenPilot. A lot of work are doing on IDE and firmware to share it on our platform. We try to work to a new Opensource Standard based on high performances STM32F4 micro controller.
The price for VBRAIN with GPS Board (MTEK 3329 rev) developer revision is 199 euro.
It's also available a ready to use board with 3 days of support by team viewer at 270 euro.
There is also available a oem version of product.
We are Ready for pre order the first batch of production will be available in 3 weeks some sample is yet available.
I doing the recording of waypoiny using the switch that is possible configure on mission planner on channel 7.
Before to start to recording is possible to delete the waypoiny in eeprom with Disarmed Motor , then switch in AUTO mode and selected then switch channel 7 the same that you use for add new waypoint.
So then you go in stabilize mode and fly where you want to put first point , second ecc until last.
When you switch on eeprom write lat lon and altitude for every point. Keep atention that in first point the quad doing a strange roll fasta change ready to controll the quad.
When you put in Auto Mode , the quad rotate his noose towards the next waypoint , don't worry :) The important is that you know how control the quad if you need to return in stabilize manual mode :)
This is the quality of auto navigation in a windy day on waypoint i see an max error of 2-3 m
At the end of flight i download my log and convert it in KMZ file and check it in Google Earth. For check the quality of flight i save the waypoint and then i prepare manually a KMZ and import it in the Google earth.
In my test i verify that hit waypoint with an error 2-3 m . I think that it's good :)
our lab continue to work and improve our platform , we are working on next generation RTF and OEM platform.
The new brand will be VR BRAIN 4.0 the revision of produvt will be MP32FX V4. Put a BRAIN in your DRONE :)
The new design will be based on experience doing with MP32FX V3 and NAVY 2012 . Same great sensor MPU6000 , HMC5883 , MS barometer and STM32F1 or F4 as micro controller and Data Flash onboard for save realtime data logging .
The design will be more compact , only all in one board with put a gps on it or connected by a cable
There are also interesting news about new exclusive ST MEMS sensor supported by VR Brain but will be more news available in the future :)
For special low consuption application will be available also L1 revision of micro.
So with this new board will be available also the new VR IDE PRO .
The main adavantages of this new ide is the direct support of .PDE file so will be more simple mantain the aligment of arducopter project and support of relative path so will be more simple de zip and use enviroment without need to redefine the path ecc ecc in the eclipse.
The last revision of firmware available is ACopter32 2.5.5 updated with last revision of Arducopter 2.5.5 and fully compatible with mission planner.
The firmware that use VRBRAIN is the result of Great Work of Arducopter Dev Team that continue to improve the main code add function and quality of flight . Work of FoxTeam that continue to develop great library for STM32FX hardware and implement same revision of class and library for this great ARM micro controller, and Beta testing group that check in fly the new revision of code. LaserLab Team that every day continue to improve Hardware , Firmware and Tools for develop great open and closed source project on Multipilot platform.
Thank guys for your hard work :)
This is the link of new VRIDE is 4 part download all then dezip it.
New developer and user are welcome , this will be ideal platform also for oem developer : Autopilot and Gimbal Control systems :) The performance of VRBRAIN with ST F4 micro controller could be until 30x resource available respect at standard AVR micro controller (arduino)
First early Flight Video only for test that all work fine ... a windy day and need to setup PID because with more power the old one is not good:
Dear Friends, i'm happy to inform you that our new product Multipilot32F4 and NAVY 2012 is ready for beta testing for a special price of 199 euro. We presented it at the beginning of year .We finish to port low level library from STM32F1 to STM32F4: We rewrite old libmaple for STM32F1 by scratch porting all lib to STM32F4. (thank's Alberto V for his work on library) So the AP_LIB have same interface of standard AP_LIB for arduino and the Arducopter32 is very similar to original revision for Arduino platform , share 98% with original code.
SENSOR BOARD: #define CONFIG_MAG MP32NAVYSENSOR //standard board #define CONFIG_MAG MP32NAVY2012 //new board with GPRS and dataflash Once uploded please follow these steps:
1. In CLI mode SETUP --> erase and Reset. 2. Calibrate Radio 3. Calibrate compass by arming (without propellers!) and turning the copter on all axes. 4. Level and check that all variables are consistent.
The default parameters are based on my quad and my experience.
Please tune for your copter. This firmware was tested with VRIMUFULL + MP32V3F1 + MPU6000 and VRIMUFULL + MP32V3F1 + STANDARD SENSORS
