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3D Robotics

ArduPilot now available to buy!

Posted by Chris Anderson on January 6, 2009 at 9:00am

Great news! ArduPilot is now available to buy at Sparkfun. The price is $24.95 (or buy 100 at $19.96 each ;-)). Note: there is a limited number available now, but Sparkfun can make more pretty quickly so get your order in now and they'll be filled from backorder in the order they were received.

[Update on availability from Sparkfun: ~15 coming out of production today/morrow. 63 more PCBs ready. Waiting on xtals (probably about a week).]

You'll also need an EM406 GPS module, and for all but the most stable planes, an FMA Co-Pilot, so unless you already have those items, the total cost of the autopilot will be around $155.

Huge thanks to Nathan Siedle at Sparkfun for helping us get through the production snafus and otherwise taking this project under his wing. Now let's win his autonomous vehicle competition with an ArduPilot-guided plane!

Tags: ardupilot
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Comments

  • jonny January 6, 2009 at 1:59pm
    Come on guys pull yourselves together and stop pretending to be jealous, some of you are giving cause for concern! Well done Chris, clearly, by the speed these things have sold out not everyone has fancy sofware or the ablity to use it.
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson January 6, 2009 at 1:52pm
    Yes, I did get a copy and that's what Jordi used. So we're fully able to develop in LabView. But as an open source platform it leaves a lot to be desired, because other people can't fully participate unless they've bought the dev kit. Open source projects should have open source tools.

    It's a shame, because we really like LabView and find it a perfect prototyping environment. We just can't see how to build a community around it.
  • Christopher Macdonald January 6, 2009 at 1:28pm
    i made one on a protoboard lawl
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson January 6, 2009 at 1:24pm
    @Ian: a wiki is a good idea, but I'm not quite sure how to set one up in Open Social (which is what Ning uses). Do you know how?

    In the meantime, if you can send me links to the projects we've missed, I'll add them to that post (which is linked in the top box on the home page here)
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson January 6, 2009 at 1:21pm
    @Tychoc. It's not that hard, just another big honking bit of software to install and worry about. If you've got the expensive LabView dev kit (as I assume you do) it's easy to add features, but if you don't it's not ;-)

    Our alpha executable (mostly designed to run with Jordi's AMR7-based simulator) is here. Not a full ground station yet, but you'll get the idea.
  • ian January 6, 2009 at 1:20pm
    @Chris: Thanks, I had not seen this post, it is very helpful. A wiki page that lists the different projects as you have may be helpful for others to contribute - perhaps with features an degree of completion(?). Where would be an appropriate place to post this? Several projects I've seen are not listed here, an then several others I've not previously seen are also listed. Certainly no shortage of platforms to consider, it's actually a little bewildering. :-)
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson January 6, 2009 at 12:37pm
    @tychoc. We did use LabView, but we're thinking about switching to C# to use Tom Pycke's groundstation code. LabView is very easy to develop in but hard to distribute. If you distribute the executable people need to download the runtime engine, and if you distribute the code they need the expensive development environment.
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson January 6, 2009 at 12:35pm
    @Ian: Arduino is indeed limited, but we believe that the excellent IDE and community around it more than makes up for its limitations. We are committed to staying with the Arduino track (which will become more powerful as Arduino evolves with the more powerful AVR processors) for this reason.

    The way we compensate for the limitations of the individual Atmega chips is by dual- or triple-coring them. For instance, ArduPilot Pro uses two Atmega168s, and will probably grow to three as we add SD card datalogging.

    As you can see here, DIY Drones community members have made autopilots from every chip you mentioned and a lot more. So there's a lot to choose from--one size doesn't fit all. Maybe one of the more powerful chips is better for your needs. But we like Arduino for our projects on the basis of ease of use and simplicity.
  • Moderator
    Gary Mortimer January 6, 2009 at 12:15pm
    Well done Chris, some of us have been watching for a while top job.
  • ian January 6, 2009 at 11:12am
    Hi, not sure if this is appropriate place to post this (?).

    But, have you experieced problems with the limited speed/memory of the arduino platform? I am looking to experiment with UAV's (either fixed wing or a quadrotor) an have been considering which microcontroller to invest time in to learn. It seems the Parallax Propeller, newer PIC's or an ARM7 would offer more wiggle room than stuffing everything into one thread on an Atmega168. Just curious what your experiences have been with this platform. I noticed other projects are using multiple microcontrollers such as Vicacopter (multiple PIC's) uavp (ARM7 w/ AVR's), yet mikroquad seems to be getting by with a single arduino core for a quad. I'm not adverse to OO code, so that aspect of the propeller does not scare me. I'd love to buy this board if I thought it would be a good long term strategy. I'm trying to balance minimizing initial investment of time to having a stable craft (i.e. relying on other's code), an have a microcontroller platform that is a good long term investment of my time. Do you plan to stick with the Arduino for future UAV development? Thanks.
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