Just came across this Pixhawk clone, so thought I would share.
http://witespyquad.gostorego.com/flight-controllers/rtfhawk-2-4.html
Ready to Fly Quads is a reputable distributor, and I have made a few purchases from them already. They already have a clone of the APM2.x, that has been somewhat successful. Will this new clone be just as good. for under $100USD, might be work a try.
Comments
Sorry, but this is absurd. The Arduino IDE is a JAVA GUI which controls an (open source GNU-) Atmel toolchain. With AtmelStudio there already was an IDE and compiler on the market long before Arduino. So for any reasonably qualified developer, hacking the JAVA IDE together would be really no big deal.
Of course, chip developers publish toolchains and specs - they want to make it easy for integrators to use the products but IMHO you are way overrating the importance of the Arduino project for Atmel.
Nowadays, Atmel sponsors Arduino but I really doubt that was so in the beginning of the project. I assume it was rather so that Atmel jumped on the train when they noticed that the project became successful and can be an image booster.
I've never heard of parallax but in the 90's, German Electronics Shop chain Conrad had a very interesting system called "C-Control" which was similar to Arduino and pretty successful. It was pretty expensive, though and didn't have the kind of support system like you nowadays have with Open Source projects like Arduino, with forums and such, so it didn't boom that massively. But I still have my C-Control stuff and every once in a while take it out and tinker with it.
No we are getting a bit too much in the conspiracy-theory corner for my taste...
Besides, my point about Arduino is:
"Arduino" is the board, the concept and the IDE. The "chip" is an off-the-shelf standard embedded processor. The "chip" is no special Arduino thing.
@Monroe:
I don't think that the Arduino sales actually make a significant part of Atmel's overall business... And the ATMEGA chips were on the market LONG before Arduino was born. Plus, Atmel has their own IDE and development system - AtmelStudio.
I don't know if Atmel actually supported the Arduino project but I know that there was no need for Atmel to do so.
@Jethro:
That US company which also "developed" the GPS/compass module for RCT did this LED-Panel. But it works only for APM, not for Pixhawk.
This is pretty good of RCTimer, do they actually read DIY Drones?
RCTimer
And Arduino is open hardware!!! All boards are licensed under CC or OSHW licenses - otherwise they can't use the Arduino name.
http://arduino.cc/en/Main/FAQ
Arduino is not a just a chip. The "chip" is the Atmel ATMEGA168, 2560, etc.
Arduino is the concept of the board (easy access to all signals plus the shield concept) plus the bootloader (open source) plus the libraries (open source) plus the IDE.
The whole combination which makes developing embedded systems ridiculously easy for just about everyone made (makes) Arduino's success.
That's exactly the whole point of this story. 13 pages of hatefull thread for such a stupid thing.
While you're on the boat of open source, there's also moral rules on the other side. Taking such a decision to lock a functionality on a stealthy manneer whatever ridiculously simple to bypass it is, of course won't happened well.
@Rob,
You know that's what happened to me after i bought some OpenPilot Revo. Couldn't do anything easily on my own because schemes where not published as it was promised because of their "cloning paranoïa". Lack of hardware available, no alternative boards compatible to the project and way to make your own, made me go to Taulabs side. You probably already knows the drama ;).
Taulabs is a really nice open projet by the way, with talented guys. Could be better than Ardupilot in a few but still lack of things on the nav side that are on the good way to be polished.
Ahah, you've got the point. I was just trolling on this one.
Saw chinese new user coming on RCG to show its premium priced board without any additional information &, crap pictures looks suspicious to me.
There's other interesting little boards that comes shortly. And I enjoy the fact we will have the choice depending of my use.
I use a clone too for my dev & testing. But I woul probably not trust it on my big uavs.
I would never buy a 200$ board for that. I could totally buy one for some of my fleet later. Or one from a competitor if there's a better one. We enjoy competition.
I'm pretty sure clones won't never kill 3DR. They have their purpose too.
Look at WhiteSpy, this young boy is bringing to you a bunch of multiwii users who would never switched to this project considering the price difference. Those are future mature users too. If the project is good there's no reason they won't stay & who knows, perhaps buys 3DR products.
Guy, I think this is a bit of a utopian view of the issue. There's a saying that I believe in "A democracy can only survive until the people realize they can vote themselves money." There's a corollary there. I think an unfortunately high number of customers will take the short-term or selfish view, that they should buy the cheapest hardware they can find. Let somebody else pay for development. That works until the guys actually paying for development go out of business.
I have to imagine a lot of people who are complaining weren't around back 3 years ago, when everything was open, and free, and anybody could push anything to master. No organization, no controls, no quality checks. It was a free-for-all. And it was really really open. But it didn't work.
It sounds like Monroe has been around the block a few times on this. ;) This is my first OS project. But I could see the writing on the wall.
There's nothing wrong with an OS HW manufacturer making a profit. If the profit was exorbitant, then that wouldn't be cool. But 50-100% markup on BOM? That's pretty reasonable.
I've seen what happens to project where... one guy has to fund a production run out of his own bank account, then sells at cost. Then one run gets messed up with a mistake, and he has to pay for the fix himself, and perform the work on each and every board himself. Hardware availability was throttled by his ability to not lose his house. So, he could never satisfy demand. The internet forums were full of "This is going to be awesome! The program is so great! I just wish I had hardware to run it on. I'm still waiting. Been 4 months now..."
My stance on the OTP topic is very simple. Warning about clone hardware before uploading firmwares has merit both technically and safety related.
But denying firmware uploads has no technical merit. Only commercial ones related to 3DR. And that's my BIG issue. 3DR was supposed to make money on the hardware and everyone agreed on this from the start. But using parts (MP and APM-MP) of the software to generate 3DR hardware sales was not the deal.
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