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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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  • ren January 6, 2009 at 2:30pm
    congrats Chris and Jordi!
    a job well done

    when I went to SparkFun just now they were in stock again so I order all 63
    I hope I don't upset anyone ;oP
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson January 6, 2009 at 2:26pm
    @ian: Many thanks! That post is now updated with those additional examples.

    Looks like the critical mass is forming around Arduino, Propeller and the various ARM7 chips (Paparazzi, etc).

    One rarely sees the words "Linux" and "friendly" together. My hat's off to you ;-)
  • ian January 6, 2009 at 2:05pm
    @Chris: I have no familiarity with Ning. I suppose a Wikipedia page might work.
    I have a rather scattered text file I should go through, but off the top of my head:
    http://www.mikroquad.com/bin/view
    http://ng.uavp.ch/
    http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=944087
    http://seanreynoldscs.com/WashUAV.aspx

    I might wait a month or two to see how others get along with all the various options before taking the plunge. Paparazzi seemed to have the most features an the only platform capable of fixed wing or quadrotor control, an it seems to be linux friendly, so I may give this a go. But vicacopter and several others look impressive too. I'd like to play with video, waypoint navigation, etc.. Thanks for setting up diydrones - I looked few years ago an only found one limited heli project an thought I don't have the enough spare time to get this running, I'll check back later, now the problem is too many choices. :-) I suppose a critical mass will eventually build behind a few of the projects an this will point the way in a few months...or maybe there will just be more projects :)
    Mikroquad.com
  • 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.
  • tychoc January 6, 2009 at 1:48pm
    Chris,

    Here are some pictures of a LabVIEW based program I wrote to control a tracking antenna based on GPS data transmitted from the plane. Yes, I do have access to all LV versions and toolkits :) Didn't you get a copy from Ray Almgren?

  • 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. :-)
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