Sky-Drones is proud to announce the release of SmartAP MAX - perfect solution for the variety of drones applications with outstanding reliability and flight performance. SmartAP MAX provides maximum capabilities in minimum dimensions.
- Miniature: Compact size and light weight makes integration of the flight controller into any type of the drone quick and easy
- Advanced: Rich set of functionality, multiple redundancy of all sensors, temperature stabilization of IMU and fault-tolerant control algorithms
- Xtandable: Impressive number of the I/O interfaces allows easy integration of the third party electronics almost with no efforts.
CONNECTIVITY
Various number of the interfaces allow to connect peripherals and integrate with the third party electronics.
Full compatibility with all Sky-Drones products including GNSS, RTK GNSS, Telemetry, Power Module and PDB supported.
Integrated OSD allows connecting the camera and video TX directly to SmartAP MAX.
INTEGRATION
All standard interfaces supported including high-frequency PWM outputs for ESC, PPM and SBUS inputs from RC Receiver, FrSky S.Port telemetry output for real-time info on transmitter screen and SBUS output.
VIBRATION-DAMPENED TEMPERATURE-STABILIZED IMU
Provides up to 10 times better flight performance compared to the other systems
SMARTAP GROUND CONTROL STATION
SmartAP MAX is fully compatible with SmartAP GCS - powerful mission planning and configuration tool.
RTK READY
Integrated support of SmartAP RTK for enhancing positioning precision to centimeters level.
SUPPORTED CONFIGURATIONS
More information and ordering here or feel free to contact us for more information.
Comments
Too bad you do not open your hardware to run Ardupilot, you could make a fortune...Nobody wants a proprietary autopilot which brings only constraints, limitations and licensing issues.
I'm specifically talking only about the ICM20602 from Invensense; gyro/accel and not "other MEMS" This chip has an order of magnitude improved temperature stability over the ubiquitous MPU6000. Don't take my word for it just talk to Invensense. They have studied temperature compensation too. For the really persnickety people, the ICM20602 does have correction registers which allow for compensation of the operating range. However, computing the correction coefficients (only about six needed) requires running the specific part ON THE PCB through a temperature chamber... With this chip in a multi-rotor, the amount of error is inconsequential. Latest flight controllers are using the ICM20602.
Note the MS5611 specifically has a temperature sensor for the purpose of making temperature corrections.
Agree with Dan, there are a actually a few to ways to have compensated data:
- Constantly maintain the same temperatures as at calibration (the easiest option)
- Calibrate for the whole temperature range and store the approximation coefficients of polynom for later live recalculation (super difficult to calibrate and resources-consuming to calculate)
- Use the factory calibration values (unfortunately, not available for cheap sensors since they're not calibrated at the factory)
So I guess the temperature compensation is quite useful and the trend that more and more autopilots using that confirms it.
@Thomas Butler: The bias of accelerometers, gyros, barometers, and other mems sensors is affected substantially by temperature. If not corrected, your IMU will be telling you 0.3 m/s/s, 3 deg/s etc when at rest. If you want an accurate state estimate, you need to compensate for temperature by calibrating over a large temperature range or estimating the bias online, but preferably both. Non-low-cost sensors are calibrated in the factory.
IMU heating is used to bring the temperature into the calibrated temperature range which is useful in colder environments.
Thomas, we ran a few tests and there is a clear difference in gyroscope and accel bias when the temperature changes more than 20 degrees C.
Auturgy, absolutely agree, ms5611 is sensitive to temperature and stabilization really helps here.
Tsahi, neither PX4 nor Ardupilot, we run our custom firmware.
Nice,
Is it based on PX4 arch ?
what SW can run on the device ?
Regarding temperature stabilized IMUs. This is from the horses mouth at Invensense:
Regarding heating the IMU.
From: David Almoslino (DAlmoslino@invensense.com)
“There is information regarding temperature compensation in the ICM-20602 datasheet/register map. Please refer to register description of Registers 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, and 11 in the Register Map. We do not have a table of temperature coefficients. Regarding temperature compensation for the ICM-20602, for the most part, the offset
over temperature of this part is really good, and for most applications, temp comp is not necessary.”
In addition,
“Temp comp may be helpful if you are able to measure the slope of each individual part that is soldered down to a board and correction is applied specifically for that part. If you have the time and resources to do that, you just to refer to the description in the register
map to apply the slope correction.”
Draw your own conclusions as to the efficacy of heating the IMU, but the fact is that it is of no real benefit. The amount of offset error due to temperature is nil.
Time to put to bed the hype about "heating" the IMU...which started with the Pixhawk 2.