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APM Oil Pan!

Posted by Jordi Muñoz on March 1, 2010 at 2:30am

Is 2:22AM (when i started writing this) and i can't sleep, so i decided to write this post.

I been working "hard" and the fastest i can to finish this thing, theres only one step remaining in order to start the "mass" production of this board.

This is how the last step will be done:
-A unique assembled board will be shipped from California to Spain.
-Then Jose Julio in Spain will open his "Surprise Board" and make us the great favor to all of us of checking the board integrity and the harmony of all the components on it (thanks in advance JJ).
-That includes checking some new components i can't mention right now.
-If Jose Julio says 'Si", then i will start the mass production.

By now SparkFun is straggling trying to supply all the components and test bed for APM. It will be released soon.

The board is kinda of big right now. This board will be called the "huge" version. When the code becomes very mature i will create a an smaller version of the APM and APM Oil Pan without the multiplexor on the APM and without the bulky FTDI chip on the APM Oil Pan, so i can save 30% of the size. This one will be called ArduPilotMega "In my way" version. ;-)

Oil pan stands for the old shield name. The difference is that the shield goes into the bottom of the ArduPilotMega board.

I decided to let the community guess the rest of the specs for ArduPilotMega Oil Pan, because write stuff in English make me drowsy. The best guesser will receive a $50 certificate. ;-)


Come 2:56AM!!



Tags: apm, oil, pan, shield
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Comments

  • Darren March 3, 2010 at 8:28am
    Jordi... after reading all of these posts, My guess is: Winners... we all will be soon with that board;)
    Hope you have fun on vacation, you deserve it!
  • Developer
    Jordi Muñoz March 3, 2010 at 8:05am
    Sandro, yeap! You are correct.

    All, so who is the winner?
  • Developer
    Sandro Benigno March 3, 2010 at 6:37am
    I guess there is a chip with 16 Mbits of flash at right of the ADC converter. Maybe an AT45DB161D, for log purposes. :P
  • Developer
    Jordi Muñoz March 2, 2010 at 10:51am
    Andrew,

    Yes somebody mentioned but was point to the absolute pressure sensor port. ;-)

    Morli,

    Well is recommended but you can always use any uBlox you want.
  • Admin
    Morli March 2, 2010 at 3:17am
    just Kidding Jordi, guy has to make a living too , we should all know that by now, coming back to your pricing,
    woww , now that is price package no one can complain about. Very good work and very very attractive price package, now it is upto coders and testers to make this The most popular Diy AP package ever or so far. I am all for it as soon as it ready. Meanwhile I have small question regarding GPS, does this setup not require the GPS shield of yours? Thanks for keep us all in loop. Cheers
  • Andrew Burns March 2, 2010 at 1:36am
    Magnetometer or compass? Those are probably better away from stray power interference but they've been mentioned :P

    Good work with the autopilot, I can't wait to get my hands on it, need it for the aussie outback UAV comp this year so the sooner the better even if there's no code out for it yet :P
  • Developer
    Jordi Muñoz March 1, 2010 at 8:34pm
    Only remains the function of the "BM06B", i guess is pretty easy, only one sensor remains that has to be external, the GPS will attached to the APM board (not oil pan).
  • Developer
    Jordi Muñoz March 1, 2010 at 8:33pm
    Ok everybody lets face it, Freddy Gauss guessed the average of the parts. Do you agree with me?
  • Developer
    Jordi Muñoz March 1, 2010 at 8:28pm
    Is shipper than the original ArduPilot Setup because is $89 gps + Shield Kit $50 + ardupilot $24.90 + Ir sensors $115 + FTDI $20= $298.90 dlls

    This APM setup will cost Ardupilotmega $59 + Pan Oil $139 + GPS $89 = $287 plus you will have IMU, servo switch, datalogger, 12bit ADC (better resolution), Ftdi build in, full support for 8 channels, switches and the possibility to expand. I guess is the smartest autopilot in terms of simplicity and price. The damn problem will be the code XD, but we have a team of rocks stars! Ready to start typing at the speed of light! We already have library's for every part of the hardware.
  • Developer
    Jordi Muñoz March 1, 2010 at 8:20pm
    Not so much... because i used cheap components. So i guess would be around $139dlls, but you don't need FTDI cable, plus infrared sensor, plus shield, and blah, blah, so at the end should be shipper than an original ardupilot. The nice part is that you can adapt the expensive sensors like magnetometer, GPS and absolute pressure sensor later. In case you want to use ardupilot as a weather station hehe. Some quads don't need GPS.
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