Hello guys!
I'm very happy to tell you that the MinimOSD is now in stock in the DIY Drones store!
And 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! ;)
Comments
ah sorry all working now. Wrong Vin/Vout
I received my MinimOSD and just solder all connector. Im using PAL camera so I solder the PAL pad. But I don't get any images from the OSD or camera it just blank. Do I missed something? Do I need to upload the firmware?
@Binzi, you made your own one!!! So, you've tested all the code stuff, from the CharSet updating to the compilation of the code and firmware uploading. That's nice! Please, let me know if you have found some difficulties on following the wiki to feed your board with all the "bits and bytes".
@Grips, I thought your video would be the first, man! :P
Did you get yours? I hope you saw my reply --few days ago-- telling about JDrones stock.
@Dave, great that it's working for you too! =)
Please, check if the Mission Planner is showing the same for you or not. So, we could have a clue on what's going wrong.
i have been following this thread but im still kinda in the dark about what kind of OSD this is?Does it send the video through the XBEE or do you need a separate frequency is this supposed to be used with goggles/screen, or can you view it through your laptop ?? allot of questions i know... thanks
@Graham, Aahhh... now that's the info. So, it has a respectable internal boosting. Thanks by those infos.
@Graham, TSLRS is great! I'm wondering why it has that super-cooling cage. Do you know if ChainLink or DragonLink runs super-hot? I'm thinking on buying a ChainLink due it also has an input for head-tracking. Do you have any advising about ChainLink?
@Vaeddyn, no problem. Those headers are a power pass-through to the camera, but it also feeds the second stage(analog) of MinimOSD. The first stage (digital) draws its power from the APM's telemetry port.
If for any reason you want to feed the entire MinimOSD with the same source, you can "tie" the two stages by setting two jumpers on each side of the board like explained on this wiki page.
Just so I don't misunderstand, then, that's just a power pass-through to the camera, the OSD draws its power from the 5v rail of the telemetry port? Thanks for taking the time to answer, by the way, I appreciate it.
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