The APM 1 board is still very popular, especially with fixed-wing pilots, but our world is moving to the smaller APM 2.x boards pretty quickly. So 3D Robotics is clearing their inventory of APM 1 boards with much lower prices.
The full APM 1 kit is now $100 off, at $150
And for all of you with the original (and now obsolete) APM 1 1280 boards, you can upgrade to APM 1 2560, which is fully supported by modern code, for just $49
Comments
I shall quote my kid, "Dang it!"
Hans:
APM1 with AVR1280 chip can do:
Arduplane <= v2.60
ArduCopter <= 2.7.1
All other boards (APM1 with AVR2560, APM2 and APM2.5) can use the current released versions:
Arduplane v2.60
ArduCopter 2.7.3
So as you can see there is only an issue for copters. Currently the AVR2560 chips are 75% or so full, so I would expect them to be supported for the next one and a half year or so.
But that is just my personal opinion.
Darn, youre not planning the same sale with the assembled kit? ;)
@Randy,
Thanks for your answer on arducopter
Could someone provide RAM/ROM occupancy for Arduplane on APM1 ?
Thanks,
JC
Jim: you can see the product comparison matrix here. Basically, APM 2.x has better sensors (especially the baro and gyros), which make the most difference in multicopters. For planes, both perform fine. APM 2.x also has another processor (the DMP, inside the sensor package) that we're not actually using yet but might in the future.
They share the same main processor and memory, so there's no issue with code support.
How about selling a daughter card for the APM1 that has all the same sensors as the APM2.5? :-)
I'm sorry to ask guys, I've been away from the scene for so long.. What's the difference between the APM1 2560 and the APM2.x in terms of capability and features?
Jim
by the way, when I say, "..for ArduPlane it's a lot higher", I mean the amount of free memory for Arduplane is a lot higher (which is a good thing).
tshado,
You can see the free memory (RAM) in the mission planner's status screen when the APM is connected to your ground station. For Arducopter it's just under 800 bytes free of 8k max. I'm not sure what it is for ArduPlane but it's a lot higher. For flash (ROM) which is program space we're about 200k (256k is the max).
Thing you've got to remember though when you look at those numbers (especially RAM) is that we tend to use up what we have because when it's not used, it's wasted . So for example after we freed up about 2k of RAM a few months ago, we increased the size of some of the serial buffers to take advantage of the extra RAM. My point is that from what I've seen over the past couple off years, when we get short on something, we put some dev effort into improving the efficiency. That's how we've managed to fit so much onto such a small chip.
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