Now that Pixhawk, our new 32-bit autopilot, is shipping, I dug up all of its predecessors just to remind myself how far we've come. That takes me back -- that first ArduPilot was designed by Jordi and manufactured by Sparkfun, long before 3D Robotics was even a company. I still have a fond spot for APM 1, which was the first board 3DR made and is still supported today.
Three of the biggest changes were the shift from thermopile to IMU stabilization between ArduPilot and APM 1 (2010), the shift from mostly fixed-wing UAVs to mostly multicopters with APM 2 (2011), and the shift from 8-bit platforms to 32-bit platforms with Pixhawk (2013).
Comments
A little bit of history, from 2011 (APM1) to 2014 (Pixhawk/VR Brain).
Bests, Marco
Hein: This first version of Pixhawk is designed with a large number of I/O ports for maximum expandability. It's the first of a line of Pixhawks that will come in other form factors, including much smaller.
Chris, Ardupilot and APM made you millionaire, may be billionaire next ! That's the power of open source.
cheers !
Perhaps many of us are Hein ;-)
Then you must all still remember Byte Magazine...Now that and the good old Wireless World Magazines were really great times. Byte magazine inspired me to design a Zilog Z80 based 'PC' with 8inch singled sided 320kbyte floppy disc drives and good old CPM operating system..With the BIOS still all in Z80 assembler...
My how our age catches up with us.
Joe
The Nampilot
I knew Bill and George personally Tom I got my own S100 8080 split octal front panel board personally from George at his house.
It was the first production one and the first board George ever sold and mine was labeled Thinker Toys, his original company name.
I still have that old board and a whole lot of Godbout stuff.
Met the 2 Steves at Kentucky Fried computer when they came to show off their new as yet unnamed 6502 computer.
They were the great old days and here we are again.
Another industry goes from the domain of a highschool graduate applying stuff he learned on his own to the domain of a highly funded university team with formal graduate degrees & lots of formal training on the subject. It might be a sign of the advancement in the level of difficulty required to create something new or a sign of the massive number of people who make autopilots making it take a lot more formal education to enter the business.
Graham Dyer lent me an APM 1.4 a few months ago and I'm hooked, it still amazes me everytime I see his copter or fixed wing flying autonomously of how far this hobby as a whole has come in the last 25 years I have been involved...
@Gary,
Then you must remember Bill Godbout who had a shop near the Oakland Airport. They used his early computer (S-100 bus) equipment in the movie "War Games". I see the Morrow Microstuff on your board, The was George Morrow's hardware.Those were the days:-)
Regards,
TCIII Admin
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