Developer

MinimOSD in DIYDrones Store!

Hello guys!
I'm very happy to tell you that the MinimOSD is now in stock in the DIY Drones store!
3689439887?profile=originalAnd more: It goes with a nice customized CharSet and an open source OSD firmware already flashed! ;)
The firmware is Arduino compatible and it uses the original APM MAVLink messages to bring out with some nice features.
Here you can see the Artificial Horizon being tested on HIL side by side with the XPlane AH gauge.

Let me talk a bit more about the firmware that goes flashed on the board:
The current open sourced OSD implementation is part of the ArduCAM OSD project which has support from all the DIYD Dev Team.

The requested APM MAVLink messages are grabbed, translated and it's displayed pretty fast.
But... why it supposed to be fast?
Firstly, the OSD class descends from BetterStream from Mike Smith, which turns it able to format and print better than the Arduino's avr-libc variant does.
Second, the CharSet was rearranged to match the ASCII table. It eliminates the need for a "translation" layer.
There is also a smart way to write individual panels with less SPI transactions (that is conventionally used only to write the full screen at once).
The MAVLink parsing uses a reduced number of buffers, which fits better m328p's resources.
Those things above improves considerably the OSD job.

Our friend Jani already wrote the EEPROM routines to make it configurable. So, it has the base for an external configuration tool.
There is much more work to be done for adding functions and improve it.
We're pretty sure that it will be improved a lot in the hands of the awesome DIYD comunity.

Well, let's talk about features:

MinimOSD is able to work attached to the ArduPilot telemetry port in two modes:
1 - as master i.e. requesting rates of all required messages from APM (both TX and RX from OSD board are connected);
2 - as "sniffer" i.e. just listening to all the messages requested from the GCS (only TX from OSD board is connected).

The firmware auto-detects PAL or NTSC and adjusts the panels.
Until now it has this panels:

  • MAVBeats pulse
  • Altitude
  • Speed
  • Battery voltage
  • Battery Remaining
  • Throttle
  • Number of Visible Satellites
  • GPS Fix data
  • Latitude
  • Longitude
  • Artificial Horizon
  • Heading (0-360)
  • Compass (N,E,S,W)
  • Pitch
  • Roll
  • Distance to home*
  • Direction to home*

*Based on spherical coords with geographic distortion corrected;

The hard work continues... but, the fun is already granted, of course!

Grab yours right now and happy flights! ;)

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Comments

  • Moderator

    Its out of stock already :( When might another batch be available?

  • Sorry for the newb questions, just getting into ArduPilot. So with the minimosd, telemetry is sent via the MavLink protocol to the ground station via the video channel? Setup parameters would still have to be sent by USB or and xbee link?
  • Developer

    @Jhon, as Leonardo said MinimOSD is a dedicated OSD which translates MAVLink data from ArduPilot Mega telemetry port. So, you'll have the same accuracy that you verify on the Mission Planner or HK GroundStation.
    To eliminate all the noises from servos, you should use the default power setup, which has two power stages apart (digital and analog). Important note: On the two stages setup, if your video link runs at 12V, take care about attach it in a favorable cooling condition i.e. on a place with a good air flow.

  • Hi Jhon, as my previous post, this osd do not calculate any voltage. It get all information directly via mavlink from APM, so the voltage calculation is processed by APM. This is a board to just get mavlink data and display in an osd format.

  • q bit expensive i think, but looks nice. Anyway i must say i always found max7456 to be a very intrusive OSD for FPV. 

    how good its the accuracy of voltaje and how good does it handle switching noise from camera regulators? 
    simpleOSD from flytron was a quite simple board, with almost no components on it, like minimOSD and had a very very bad voltaje accuracity, always dancing and so on, and also was like no filtered at all, because was unable to get any satelitte with a kx171 G2, witch is a camera with high levels of noise. 
    for example RVOSD is much more bulky but is ultra filtered and very well designed.

  • Sandro, excellent idea... Simple and small. In a nutshell it just translates the existing mavlink feed to a displayable video format. Super. Bought one.
  • OK, thanks, I just placed an order :)

  • Developer

    @eagle123, happy flights with your brand new OSD!

    @Dror, it works pretty fine. Some guys from the Dev Team have tested it on ArduCopters with GoPro cameras. I do prefer to use the Optional Setup (for critical cooling conditions) for ArduCopter. The only difference is that GoPro cameras have it's independent battery.

  • OK, so the next question: is the h/w stable?  I have an ACM1 card waiting to be built into a quadcopter, it will probably take some weeks or even more until I get to do it.  So I can wait for the s/w update and order the MinimOSD now - as long as I'm certain the h/w itself is OK.

  • Developer

    @Dror, the short answer is: Yes it is. It will work the same way it already works on Mission Planner.

    The long answer is Yes, but has some temporary restrictions. Let me try to explain it: You can notice even on MP that --at least until few days ago-- two telemetry resources from ArduPlane still need to be included on ACM. The first is the usage of the voltage divider from IMU board in order to feed MAVLink messages with infos about battery voltage and battery remaining. The other one is to set properly the "type of drone" on the MAVLink header, so we could enable the "Flight Mode" panel which is already coded, but is commented on the firmware waiting for that implementation to auto-switching internally between ArduPlane and ArduCopter (remember that we don't have a drop-down menu to select it like on MissionPlanner). Like I said it's temporary. I believe that Jason can fix that soon. Probably, it's just because he needs to prioritize the navigation control development.

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