I'm in LA hanging out with Jordi and geeking out over the ArduPilot 2.0 code. You're going to love this--it's got all the capabilities of the FMA Co-pilot built-in, including a "fly by wire" option that just helps you stabilize the airplane when you're flying manually. In autopilot mode, it's now closer to AttoPilot in capability (save datalogging, which we'll save for ArduPilot Pro) and has a similar set-up procedure
it's optimized for the EasyStar but can also fly aircraft as different as the Funjet. Stores IR calibration info and home lat/lon in EEPROM so you can restart the autopilot without having to reset those values.
Right now we're still having you enter waypoints int the Arduino code, but Jordi's developed a desktop app/Ground Station that will make that process easy for you, with no need to see the code. It won't be ready next week, when we'll release ArduPilot 2.0, but do look for that in the next month or two.
It's amazing how much Jordi's managed to squeeze out of the Atmega with careful use of interrupts and registers. We thought we would need two processors to do all of this, but we're doing it in one. There's a lot of capability in that little $24 board--and even more to come!
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