[This original ArduPilot board, now called the "Legacy ArduPilot" is no longer produced or officially supported by the DIY Drones dev team, and this page is maintained just for historic reasons. However, there are still many users of it out there and it still works fine. The user group for Legacy ArduPilot users, for both thermopile and IMU use, is here.]
ArduPilot is a full-featured autopilot based on the Arduino open-source hardware platform. It uses infrared (thermopile) sensors or an IMU for stabilization and GPS for navigation. It is the autopilot used to win the 2009 Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition.
The hardware is available from Sparkfun for $24.95. An expansion board ("Shield") kits that includes an airspeed sensor, a 3.3v power regulator for 3.3v GPS modules and other sensors and cables and connectors for easy attachment of the XY and Z sensors, is available from our own store for $57.20.
User f
ArduPilot features include:
- Can be used for an autonomous aircraft, car or boat.
- Built-in hardware failsafe that uses a separate circuit (multiplexer chip and ATTiny processor) to transfer control from the RC system to the autopilot and back again. Includes ability to reboot the main processor in mid-flight.
- Multiple 3D waypoints (limited only by memory)
- Altitude controlled with the elevator and throttle
- Comes with a 6-pin GPS connector for the 4Hz uBlox5 or 1hz EM406 GPS modules.
- Has six spare analog inputs (with ADC on each) and six spare digital input/outputs to add additional sensors
- Supports addition of wireless modules for real-time telemetry
- Based on a 16MhZ Atmega328 processor. Total onboard processing power aprox 24 MIPS.
- Very small: 30mm x 47mm
- Can be powered by either the RC receiver or a separate battery
- Four RC-in channels (plus the autopilot on/off channel) can be processed by the autopilot. Autopilot can also control four channels out.
- LEDs for power, failsafe (on/off), status and GPS (satellite lock).
Resources:
ArduPilot requires the free Arduino IDE to edit and upload the code to the ArduPilot board.
The code is currently optimized for the Mutiplex EasyStar three-channel powered glider and FMA sensors, but can be modified for other aircraft and sensors. It uses the rudder/ailerons and elevator to maintain level flight and navigate to GPS waypoints. It supports a desktop setup utility and ground station software. It also includes a "fly-by-wire" mode that simply stabilizes RC flight. The main code is ArduPilot2.x.zip in the download section of our Google Code repository, where x is the latest version.
What you need to make a fully-functional autopilot:
- ArduPilot board
- Shield expansion kit with airspeed sensor
- GPS module (uBlox5 recommended)
- XY and Z sensors or ArduIMU+
- FTDI cable for programming
- [Optional] Two Xbee modules for wireless telemetry. This one in the air and this one with this antenna on the ground/laptop side. You'll also need two Xbee adapter boards. You can connect the airborne Xbee adapter to Ardupilot Mega with jumper wires.
Open source extras:
- If you want to build your own board from scratch, the necessary files and component lists are here.
- [Note: you shouldn't need this, since this code is loaded on the ArduPilot board at the factory] Latest multiplexer code (for the board's second processor, an Attiny, which runs the failsafe system) is here.
Instructions for loading this code are here.
Recommended UAV setup:
Airframe option one: Hobbico SuperStar (49" wingspan, $95, shown above). This is an inexpensive, good flying high-wing trainer with ailerons. It can be hand launched in a park or take off from a runway, and replacement parts are readily available in case of a crash. If you want much better performance with this aircraft, you can upgrade it to a brushless motor, speed controller and a LiPo battery. [If you don't already have one, you'll also need a balancing charger and power supply.] Note: any stable aircraft with both ailerons (for stabilization) and rudder (for navigation) can work, so feel free to experiment with what you've got.
Airframe option two (recommended for ArduPilot 2.x): EasyStar (shown above). Performance can be improved with the modifications described in this post.
You'll also need:
- A six or seven channel RC transmitter and receiver, with at least one toggle switch (ideally three-position but two-position will work, too, although you will have to mix channels to have access to both autopilot modes in the air), such as the Futaba 7C.
- Some servos (at least three for ArduPilot 1.0; at least two for ArduPilot 2.x) and at least three female-to-female servo cables to connect the RC receiver to ArduPilot.
Cool optional extras for your UAV:
- A GPS logger to record your mission and play it back in Google Earth
- A tiny video camera to record the flight
- A wireless video setup to see realtime video from the air
Comments
When we do the code for Mega we will not have this hardware restriction. In that case the easiest way to set it up would be to mix a 2 position switch and a 3 position swith on your transmitter giving 6 distinct values for mode selection.
Regarding the six potential modes available in Ardupilot... What if one installs a "special" switch (with 6 positions) on the RC transmitter on the channel used as CTRL for the Ardupilot?
This way the positions would be: 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, 100% and each of these positions would have to be recognized in the Arduino code in a similar way that currently the three positions of the CTRL switch are recognized and identified with the current 3-flight modes...
Would this be doable?
I don't know if 6 position switches exists but I could certainly build one for my Tx. Provided that I have this switch, would a simple change of code make all 6 flight modes available?
Thank you,
Florin
Thanks for the report, and I'm delighted it's working so well for you. We find that different thermopiles from different sources behave, well, differently! We'll try to see if we can characterise the right values for the different sources (paparazzi, FMA, DIY Drones) so people can just choose one.
After 100 waypoints and more i know its stable :-)
Only change the sensors sensitive to the values from
2.5.03 (from 90001 to 6000) because are to nervous/sensitive.
Great work !!!
Best regards from austria !!
If that still doesn't work, it probably means we have indeed messed up the EM406 code in a recent rev. I'll dig one of those out and see if I can figure out what we changed...
I'll dig up an EM406 this evening and test it out--maybe we broke something on that GPS in the latest code rev--we're pretty much uBlox only over here. In the meantime, you might try an earlier version of the code, such as 2.3 or 2.4 and see if that makes a difference.
'if(Serial.available() >0) //OK, let me see, the buffer is empty?'
is never becoming true. Inserted a print line for the Serial.available and it turns out it is set to 0. There have been a few cases where we got a GPS lock but after restarting the system we can not seem to recreate the process of the GPS getting a Lock.
It looks like others have given you some advice on the Google maps display issue. We've never seen it on any of our machines, but a few others have had this issue. I recall that the answer usually turned out to be about access permissions or firewall issues. You might want to try again with your firewall turned off and see if that's it.
As for your other questions:
1) See this post for the current status of Remzibi integration.
2) There are three modes available in any session, out of a total of six potential modes. We may enable a way where you can have access to all six by adding the bind plug jumper (which we don't use anymore for ground configuration) to chose which set of three you want, but you would still have to do that on the ground.
3) Yes. That comment about needing to unplug the GPS refers to older code, now outmoded. The manual always reflects the current code.
were you already through those instructions ?
You can read some more info here and here.
Best regards,
Ric
I have a question that deals with the waypoints themselves. When using the ConfigTool it lists all the waypoints out on the left in a list. I would like to know what is the format of that list when it is sent to the ArduPilot?
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