I've been using this one in beta for a few months and I'm really impressed. Now it's available to everyone on Indiegogo. FlytPod combines PX4 and ROS in a very easy-to-use SDK, with an onboard HTML-based ground station and a powerful Odroid-based computer with a long-range Wifi access point. A great deal at $399 for the early bird special.
Whether you are building a drone for Agriculture, Inspections, Surveys, Delivery or Emergency Response, FlytPOD will help you accelerate your development. It comes with a hybrid architecture and a reliable sensor suite for safe operation of drones. Further, its powerful processor, communication system, support for variety of payloads and framework for developing onboard and offboard user apps will give you a headstart in building advanced drone applications.
RUN ADVANCED ALGORITHMS ONBOARD
The octa-core processor allows for implementation of computationally intensive algorithms. This opens doors for AI techniques with Computer Vision, Machine Learning enabling intelligent onboard decisions.
BUILD INTERNET OF DRONES
FlytPOD’s communication architecture allows your drone to connect with other drones, share data with ground devices, be it mobile, laptop or wearables and also connect to the cloud. Build internet of Drones with standard connectivity interfaces over WiFi, 3G or 4G.
INTEGRATE YOUR PAYLOADS
FlytPOD’s hardware interfaces are designed to support a variety of payloads so that you can equip your Drone with specialized sensors or actuators as required for your application domain.
RUNS ITS OWN OPERATING SYSTEM-FLYTOS
FlytOS is an Operating System for drones. This provides a solid foundation and a framework for developers so that you only need to focus on your business logic and you can quickly build apps specific to your domain.
FlytOS is based on Linux and ROS (Robot Operating System) making it an ideal platform for research and commercial drone applications. It comes integrated with proven PX4 autopilot codebase and provides high level functions for drone autonomy through FlytAPIs in ROS, CPP, Python, RESTful and Websocket.
BUILD SIMULATE DEPLOY
You can develop web or mobile apps for drones in your favorite development environment using the open FlytAPIs. The apps can be tested in FlytSim - 3D Simulator before the drone even takes off. FlytSim supports all the FlytAPIs and the simulated drone includes a RGB camera mounted on a 3-axis gimbal along with a front-facing RGBD camera. After successful testing in simulator, you can easily deploy the apps on FlytPOD.
The exhaustive documentation and forum will help you get onboard and will support you through your development journey.
HYBRID ARCHITECTURE
FlytPOD has a hybrid architecture with a real time flight controller and a high power processor for advanced functions. The critical flight stack is handled by the real time controller and is decoupled from the user apps enabling fail-safe.
RELIABILITY
For reliable state estimation, FlytPOD comes with a suspended IMU for vibration damping, an external magnetometer and support for RTK GPS. FlytPOD PRO also offers triple redundancy for IMU, dual pressure sensor and dual GPS for applications requiring higher reliability.
BUILT-IN FUNCTIONS & APPS
Several built-in functions and apps complete the user experience and provide a solid foundation to for your own applications.
The main technical specifications are highlighted below. Click here for a detailed list.
FlytPOD comes fully loaded with all the essentials to get you started with your drone app. For applications that demand higher reliability and superior performance, FlytPOD PRO offers sensor redundancy and faster eMMC upgrades.
Comments
Hi alex,
I am sorry, I couldn't get you. Are you asking about the FC as in the hardware or software? The FC board inside the FlytPOD is our proprietary board using STM32 running fork of PX4 customised for our board. Regarding the power, FlytPOD has built in power redundancy for the onboard flight controller. You just need to power the FlytPOD, rest would be taken care by us. You can call FlytPOD as a custom cape, when just the hardware is concerned, but FlytOS which runs on top of FlytPOD is the ultimate game-changer. Check us out at our website.
Hi kyle,
We did put in a lot of effort making sure that the hardware as well as our software makes the job of developers easy. So thank you for acknowledging it, means a lot to us. Please back us and as we proudly say - 'Join the Drone Revolution'.
Hi Sharvashish,
I very much hope you are right as I am certainly interested in it.
But the reality is most people just want a functioning flight controller with already developed extra capabilities.
What you seem to be promoting is a very advanced developer platform with what looks to be very good development tools.
I am just afraid there aren't enough serious developers in total to meet your sales goal.
I know you already have some impressive applications running and possibly if you can promote your product to the end user who could actually use and benefit from those applications, it might expand your market sufficiently.
Believe me, I want you to succeed, because this appears to me to be a really great tool which I would very much like to use personally and if it were simply available for sale, I would buy it in a heartbeat.
But because it is at least to some degree apparently dependent on your "selling" what seems to me to be an unrealistic number of development systems, I feel compelled to wait and see if you can actually accomplish that goal.
A Catch 22 if there ever was one I know, but I have watched a lot of Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns come and go and I have seen the problems associated with them.
Your "Elephant in the room" is simply the size of the potential developer market.
The product itself is great, I just wish you could find other funding options.
Best Regards (and Best Wishes for your success),
Gary
Seems like a pretty awesome product!
Hi Gary,
We have come a long way since we launched our beta program this year in the month of February. By the time we finished our beta campaign, we had received more that 250 beta signups. This is what made us believe the market however niche it may sound, still is mature enough, for us to launch such a pre-order campaign and cater to all those people in needs of such a device and platform. We hope people from the diydrones community would pitch in for us, and help us making the campaign a big success.
This really is a great product.
However, it is a product with a very narrow market which will make meeting it's goal very difficult.
I hope they can still afford to produce it even if they do not reach their goal.
@sharvashish das, I already have a odroid xu4 and would be interested in the flight controller you are using. Seeing as how it is communication through a serial communication is the flight controller powered separately from the xu4? Is this a custom cape/hat of sorts?
@pascal, yeah you are absolutely right, the FC is completely decoupled from ODROID. ODROID simply sends setpoint/waypoint commands to FC. In an event of ODROID failure, the FC would still keep the drone stable, waiting for the user's RC to take over(if its detected) else would trigger a fail safe mode.
Very appealing product. What if a problem occurs on Odroid part ? I guess the FC continues to work independantly.
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