- It's a "development platform", not a fully-featured working autopilot. Although there is firmware available for it, it's designed to be a standard hardware package around which you can develop your own autopilot code.
- The firmware comes pre-loaded, and works pretty much as advertised. I tested it on the ground, so it was hard to tell how well it actually stabilizes a plane, but the elevator seemed to respond properly to tilting. The rudder didn't, but that was probably because it was trying to turn the "plane" to a destination and I wasn't playing along ;-)
- That firmware is written in assembly, so good luck to you! It seems to do pretty much the basics of what you'd want an autopilot to do (and I mean basics--there's no provision for waypoints, and it's just a "fly home" autopilot at the moment), but if you want to tweak it you'll have to do learn PIC assembly (not super hard, but still: what's wrong with C?!)
- It includes a 4-degree-of-freedom IMU: two gyros and one two-axis accelerometer.
- As the two-axis configuration suggests, it's designed to control just two channels: elevator and rudder. A third channel is used to turn it on and off.
- It's got a good SiRF III GPS module on board, although you'll need to add your own antenna through the included SMA connector.
- At $299, it's not cheap. But when you consider that a simple set of accelerometers and gyros will set you back $109, the addition of GPS and a PIC processor, all nicely integrated on a board, is probably worth it. But it still seems about $100 overpriced to me.
- You need some additional hardware to work with it: the main thing is an ICD2 interface to program the onboard PIC chip and for debugging. That will set you back another $120.
- The documentation looks excellent, with a lot of theory on control and aerodynamics as well as a lot of help on PIC assembly language and development suggestions for the platform.
- Bottom line: this looks like a good, albeit expensive, way to learn about IMU-based autopilots. It's not really an autopilot itself yet, but could be made into a relatively low-featured one pretty easily. I think it's accurately described as a "development platform", so if you're in the market for that and can afford a $300 lesson, I can recommend it as a unique and well-made way to get started.
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FMA is not badly affected by mountains in my experience, but see Dean Goedde's thread on RCgroups (some of the more recent comments) for more.
1) No. But there is for the new board. And it's the same price with much better features. Why not use that instead? I'm confused...
I really like the look of the ardupilot, and especially the price. It's almost too good to be true. My hat's off to Chris and everyone working that project. But, I live near some tall mountains and am surrounded by tall pines, which I think will seriously mess with an FMA autopilot. My flying platform, for now, is a sailplane with lots of dihedral, so I think this little package would be a great fit. I'm really warming-up to the idea of the arduino, but I've done coding in PIC assembly, so that wouldn't be too much trouble.
So, I just have a couple of questions.
1. Is there any firmware out there that is C-based?
2. Does anyone have one of these boards that they want to unload cheaply? (I'm offering $100).
Thanks, and yes, I know that there is a really awesome new version of it--but this one just seems like a perfect fit for my application.
what about the new version of the autopilot development board made by Bill??? Any news???
@Curt: very interesting that board but it really expensive!!! Anyway it is surely interesting to know if someone has tried it out..
Bye!!
Dave
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8454
It certainly looks possible to assemble a full IMU based autopilot for well under $900 in hardware costs ... it would be a bit of a daisy chain of connectors without some extra connector board and packaging work, and would be bulkier than a purpose built system, but would give you a ton of flexibility and compute power to go along with everything else.
On their site I cannot find any other IMU board apart 5 and 6 DOF...
See you
Dave
No they aren't. It depends on what you want to do... Furthermore, if you program in C you shouldn't have many problems.
Anyway thank for your reply, I found your suggestions and your experience very helpful...
See you
Dave
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