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
And I never said it was. I was referring to an unbranded clone sold on Ebay.
Thanks for the info.... clone it is. Seeing what 3DR has achieved so far is down right amaizing. Maybe someday a Universal "Good Faith Patent" sticker placed on a product will take hold supported by the associated consumers related to it where the inventor/s announces it online as their invention and the patent attorneys and their "legal" fees required for enforcement are left out of the loop and not needed because people respect the GFP and understand a GOOD patent is an inventation to a lawsuit by anyone with more money than the inventor (as is the case 99.*% of the time) that wants to use the legal system in bad faith to steal it for profit where the reality of hiding it to support a lower tech's profits is too often more than just a rumor.
Of course such an idea requires humans with an IQ creating enough self awareness to see the need and value of respecting an inventor's innovation where the inventor gains so he/she is able to move on to create even better ideas produced for all our benefit, not for some thief who's only talent is to copy what it sees to invent mistakes using someone else's knowledge, even when the person who understood it the best says it's wrong. I can't say we have seen this before because it's still happening. If we are ever going to benefit from the best technology available created by the best minds I see no other way than to take the attorneys and legal expenses out of the loop and respect the people in our environment we want in it because they are of benefit to our needs and desires. In the end it benefits the thief as well so its a win-win situation for everyone's enjoyment. It's a crazy idea maybe, but with the right time in the right place... anything is possible IMO.
They can do what they want, but you are bound by the licence...
However, for all the hot air here, everything HAS been published, this is a flight critical piece of hardware, if the manufacturer is confident that their hardware is good, they can setup their own COA and ask for it to be added, just like any other hardware supplier would if they had made a change to the hardware. At this point, you have NO reports of a clone hardware supplier attempting to submit a COA to any of the GCS's
A real world example of this is the fact that a lot of these clones do not have the RTC fitted, which is flight critical for advanced flights on plane.
However, if that clone is identified correctly, then any known issues could be listed... Same for 3DR boards...
This is no different to making users press the safety button, if they don't like it, they could recompile their own branch without it.
If they really don't like the direction of the project, they can branch and start supporting their own version.
btw if anyone notices their crunchylicous video clips transforming into cute puppies and kittens it's probably me just violating the moderator guidelines.
Good news. PX4uploader source have now been added to the MissionPlanner repository.
John, I'm mostly talking about Ardupilot, not MP. I have nothing to do with MP. Is there a binary blob in AP? I haven't seen that.
Nope. I learned about it when you did. I would have to assume there was some discussion, but I'm in the wrong time zone to participate in the dev call so... I dunno.
Actually, I proposed something like this a few days ago on D-D. It would be easy enough to use some #defines for the OTP/COA thing. I could be turned on, or off, or set for any number of different suppliers besides 3DR. And it could default to off. 3DR could host their distributed binaries with it turned on. It would be trivial for other manufacturers to host their own distributed binaries. They wouldn't even need to fork anymore.
They couldn't possibly be required to do less work than that could they?
Still, you guys HAVE to agree with this point:
Somebody cloned the Pixhawk V2.3 board while it was still in beta testing. They put it up for sale before 3DR had even gone into production, because 3DR was doing all the grunt work of validation. Due diligence. After the design flaw with 2.3 was found, that cloner continued to sell those boards. They even changed the Ebay listing to show photos of a genuine 3DR V2.4 board, to obfuscate the true genesis of the boards. But those board are *dangerous to fly*.
Surely you can agree that the developer community should do SOMETHING to stop that situation? Kevin, you of all people should agree, that simply warn and proceed is not good enough when we're talking about fail-o-matic hardware. Because just like their are morons who would fly near a jetliner, there are morons who will fly known-janky crap boards.
Dear 3dr,
I have spent the greater part of the past 20 years working in ISO certified shops. I also have spent most of my free time in that time playing with one many open source projects. I simply do not think the two are compatible. ISO compliance is simply too expensive and controlling to belong in a true open source project. Of course your plans are to eventually make a product that can achieve FAA certification, thus the need for VC and DRMs etc. However, lets face it, it has not always gone over so well with the community as a whole.
@James
That is EXACTLY my point also. Last time I checked it still is DIYDrones MissionPlaner, not 3DR MissionPlanner.
Meaning that the MASTER repository is a community project, where 3DR can add patches. But only patches that serve the community as a whole. So it is actually 3DR that should make a fork, when doing 3DR only features like the OTP-COA.
@Robert
I have to disagree a bit here. The part doing the OTP-COA is closed source.
Actually Kevin, the original PX4 boards are not blocked. JamesxL is a clone manufacturer. That's why he had that problem. I've got a real 3DR Pixhawk V2.3 proto board, circa... September 2013? It's uploading as I write this. No problem.
Paul, most of these statements are factually incorrect. Can you point to which parts of the code are pre-3DR? I know it quite well, and I can't think of any. It's almost all been re-written the past 2 years.
And 3DR has NOT locked up the open source code. The code is open source. It is located right here:
https://github.com/diydrones/ardupilot
Plain as day for anybody to see. Anybody can take the code, compile it, and upload it to any hardware. The only thing you can't do, is download compiled binaries from 3DR's servers, and upload that onto hardware you obtained from another vendor. This is really simple. Why don't you maintain compiled binaries for your own customers? Somebody else already did the hard work for you in forking Mission Planner. Just pay him to maintain the fork, and maybe change the binary pointer to your own server?
I really don't see the issue here.
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