Order your FlytPi Kit here
We, at FlytBase, are on a mission to empower drone developers and help them accelerate development of drone applications. Over last few months, we have introduced a suite of products, including, FlytOS, FlytSIM, web/mobile SDKs, FlytBase Cloud, FlytConsole. We have been working hard to improve the user experience to further simplify the drone application development process.
Releasing the Internet of Drones platform is a step in that direction. By offering industry’s first Drone-API as a service, we have opened up a new world of exciting possibilities.
One of the key concerns of our users has been the complex process of initial setup. Both, the software installation, and hardware setup, is quite time consuming. Simple things, like, an adapter to power the companion computer on a drone, are not easily available. To address this pain point, we are introducing a ready-to-use companion computer kit for your custom drones, the FlytPi Kit.
FlytPi is a turnkey companion computer that comes pre-loaded with FlytOS Commercial Edition for Pixhawk/ Pixhawk Mini/ Pixhawk 2/ Cube Autopilot. With FlytPi, you can simply connect your drone autopilot with a specially designed cable and enhance the capabilities of your drone.
The kit also comes with a dedicated power module to power up FlytPi, Autopilot and Electronic Speed Controllers (ESC) using a single drone battery. It offers a hassle-free connection with the Autopilot, thus saving time and effort in getting your drone applications built and deployed.
Here is a list of features and specifications of FlytPi:
Features:
- Plug & Play Companion Computer. Hassle-free connection with the Autopilot.
- Pre-loaded FlytOS Commercial Edition.
- Supports both Ardupilot and PX4 flight stacks.
- Pre-Installed FlytOS Sample Apps (See description below)
- FlytConsole – Web based GCS.
- Access to extensive drone APIs for navigation, telemetry, and payloads.
- FlytSDK for Mobile/Web applications.
- Regular performance updates and bug fixes.
- FlytSIM Simulator to test drone apps without drone hardware.
- Priority Email and Chat support from FlytBase experts.
Add-on features:
- Instantly connect your drone to FlytBase Cloud.
- Real time access to drone navigation, telemetry and payload data over 4G/LTE.
- Integration with 3rd Party Apps.
- Cloud Simulator to test your applications.
You can order your FlytPi Kit on our store page.
As we continue to roll out exciting products for the drone community, your feedback is extremely critical. It helps ensure that we understand your problems and built the right solutions tailored for your requirements. Please feel free to send us your queries, suggestions, and comments at support@flytbase.com. You may also use our forum for your technical queries.
Comments
Hello Marc. Thanks for the tip :-)
Well, the key value proposition is the time and effort that it helps you save. Most users spend over 12 hours in getting all the parts and setting up a companion computer on their drones (including s/w setup). Software setup/configuration is often frustrating and is the deal-breaker -- esp for those who are not used to working with Linux. FlytPi helps these commercial users save all this trouble, and focus on the real work.
Plus, it is cheaper to buy FlytPi, than the cost of its parts (secondary value proposition, in my opinion).
For the research/DIY guys (who are good at s/w, or have that kind of time available), it is best to just download FlytOS for free, and get going!
(Still waiting for my 7A Ubec to arrive from Banggood for my Odroid XU4)
Got it, so, since you are selling the commercial license for $299/year, this is effectively a commercial license bundled with a Raspberry Pi and its friends for an extra $100.
Hello Andreas. Thanks for your comments. Let me try to help you out here. We are not in the business of selling companion computer kits. We offer FlytOS for free to researchers/DIY community, who are using it for educational/personal projects. They are free to download and use it on the hardware of their choice. All the documentation to do this is available online. We do charge for commercial use of FlytOS.
FlytPi is targeted for our commercial users, who have been struggling with acquiring the right hardware, and with setting up the software, etc. It helps them save a lot of time and focus on building their applications of interest. The licensing fees for FlytOS commercial edition is included in the kit, which makes it a lot cheaper than the sum of parts.
Regarding comparison with other products: we are not aware of any other product that offers web/mobile SDKs with simulator, cloud APIs, user-management, authentication/security, log management, payload management, and all the other features bundled with FlytOS. Of course, FlytOS supports the widest range of hardware options, and is regularly being updated with many more features. We are building a professional/commercial product, which is also available to DIY/research community (for free). It is fundamentally different from several "patchy" DIY solutions that exist elsewhere.
I hope that helps.
Guys, I have been following your posts with great interest and they are indeed very cool but, um, $399 for a Raspberry Pi 3 in a box, a flashed SD card, a power module and some cables? Since the cost of the hardware is around $100, does this mean that for roughly $300 the customer buys a flashed SD card and a pre-made cable so they don't have to solder four connections as explained here?
Looking at your pricing info, I presume the companion side software is not all open source. On the other hand, the software in the FlytPi kit is Commercial Edition, which offers the same features as personal edition (possibly open source) plus support. The cool bits (indoor nav, collision avoidance, machine learning) are reserved for commercial plus and are presumably not open source.
So, unless I am mistaken, for roughly the price that Erle and Emlid would sell an actual Linux autopilot, you sell a companion computer and its accessories? Have I missed something?