Posted by Chris Anderson on September 22, 2009 at 12:36pm
At last, the long-awaited ArduIMU is available! You can buy the hardware here (the first batch sold out within minutes, but he's making more quickly). The software is in beta, and you can find it here. It is, as promised, $99, making it the first sub-$100 AHRS in the world!
Proper documentation is coming soon, but here are the highlights:
Features
-3 Axis Accelerometer
-3 Axis Gyroscopes
-Arduino Compatible (Atmega328 onboard)
-Source Code included and Open Source!
-Power LED (Green)
-Status LEDs (Red, Blue, Yellow)
-SPI port available for more sensors.
-GPS port (uBlox ready!)
-Code based on Bill Premerlani's Direction Cosine Matrix
This is actually considered a full Attitude Heading Reference System, because it is IMU hardware plus the software to interpret the sensor readings and convert them into absolute attitude and heading information. The output is a serial ASCII string with raw sensor values and the DCM matrix values. You would use this with an autopilot board to convert those matrix values into commands for the your control surfaces.
The board works without the GPS module, but in that case the yaw readings are unreliable. If you add the GPS, the yaw is corrected. We will be releasing a magnetometer module to do the same thing indoors.
Another great piece of work!
Quick questions - do you think (Chris, Jordi, probabably Remzibi and HappyKillmore) it will be possible to work together with Remzibi OSD and using GPS in Remzibi kit (with some hardware and software patching of course). It guess it will be quite complete piece of equipment then :-)
are the sensorboards on the little blue motherboard identical with the Breakout Board Expandable IMU ADXL330/LISY300 v2 and two of the Breakout Board LISY300 GYRO 300deg/sec from the webshop ? If yes, would it be possible to get such a motherboard alone because I bought a set of those sensorboards some time ago and I'd be happy when I can use the boards for this purpose.
To Chris and Jordi, since there are so many users out there using the Ardupilot 168/328 together with horizon XYZ sensors, why not make a special IMU version with 3 analog outputs,....i do not wish to order another AP version so fast...just got mine a few months back,...and i bet there are others thinking like me !
So, is that so difficult for you guys to take some care of us ?
I'm currently trying to incorporate the HM55B compass module into my RC car project with Ardupilot. I love the MUX feature on the board and also got it to talk to he parallax GPS using the built-in SX chip to offload the NMEA parsing. I feel like the compass module will help with truck/boat type projects since my platform is often "at rest" where the GPS course-over-ground data is not reliable.
The one downer is Arduino will allow only one library to use the Timer. So I needed to choose between Virtual Serial, Servo Library or Jordi's Servo code. In the end, I used the Virtual Serial to read the GPS and re-wrote the servo control using delays and loops.
Hopefully, your magnetometer version will be an upgrade to the present IMU i.e. plug in the module and update the software?
What have you used the board for so far ? I guess that is a good question to ask, just reference ? Or have you put it in something and tested it in flight ?
Yes, that's 50hz, not 50Mhz. It's determined by servo refresh rate (no point in doing the calculations faster than you can act on them). The GPS is only required to correct yaw; the other dimensions are self-corrected.
The board design was based on the best tested gyros available at our price point during the development period. But the board is designed to be modular so you can swap in better gyros as they become available. The code and core processor board will remain the one constant.
Comments
Quick questions - do you think (Chris, Jordi, probabably Remzibi and HappyKillmore) it will be possible to work together with Remzibi OSD and using GPS in Remzibi kit (with some hardware and software patching of course). It guess it will be quite complete piece of equipment then :-)
are the sensorboards on the little blue motherboard identical with the Breakout Board Expandable IMU ADXL330/LISY300 v2 and two of the Breakout Board LISY300 GYRO 300deg/sec from the webshop ? If yes, would it be possible to get such a motherboard alone because I bought a set of those sensorboards some time ago and I'd be happy when I can use the boards for this purpose.
Erwin
So, is that so difficult for you guys to take some care of us ?
Gil
I'm currently trying to incorporate the HM55B compass module into my RC car project with Ardupilot. I love the MUX feature on the board and also got it to talk to he parallax GPS using the built-in SX chip to offload the NMEA parsing. I feel like the compass module will help with truck/boat type projects since my platform is often "at rest" where the GPS course-over-ground data is not reliable.
The one downer is Arduino will allow only one library to use the Timer. So I needed to choose between Virtual Serial, Servo Library or Jordi's Servo code. In the end, I used the Virtual Serial to read the GPS and re-wrote the servo control using delays and loops.
Hopefully, your magnetometer version will be an upgrade to the present IMU i.e. plug in the module and update the software?
What have you used the board for so far ? I guess that is a good question to ask, just reference ? Or have you put it in something and tested it in flight ?
Yes, that's 50hz, not 50Mhz. It's determined by servo refresh rate (no point in doing the calculations faster than you can act on them). The GPS is only required to correct yaw; the other dimensions are self-corrected.
The board design was based on the best tested gyros available at our price point during the development period. But the board is designed to be modular so you can swap in better gyros as they become available. The code and core processor board will remain the one constant.
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