Very interesting seeing this go forward.
Should be in the shop soon.
Jose Julios quad will take some beating though, quite the thing.
Keep an eye on the store for the release.
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Very interesting seeing this go forward.
Should be in the shop soon.
Jose Julios quad will take some beating though, quite the thing.
Keep an eye on the store for the release.
You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!
Comments
I want to buy it!!! when will you have available??
10x!!
Lew, you are dead right. Although we use SPI between the main board and the AHRS, the serial is there for use with other platforms that want a high end AHRS but don't speak SPI, also the serial is there so it can indeed be used as a INS without the main board.
Its not my design or architecture and don't quote me on this but as I understand it both the pressure data and the GPS data will be passed to the AHRS for processing with the other sensors, this helps for the dead reckoning EKF Paul BB is writing. Again don't quote me but part of this was so that the processor on the main board could parse the nmea at 10Hz and process it before passing it to the AHRS over SPI. This came out of some software modelling that was done so that both processors would be used optimally.
I guess what I'm trying to say is when the AHRS is used with OpenPilot, the GPS data required is processed and then is passed over to the AHRS via SPI if the filter in use requires this and effectively turns the AHRS in to an INS.
If the AHRS is used with another platform as an upgrade and connected over SPI, serial also exists for the GPS if required.
What I'd like to see is the GPS plug into this, rather than the main board. That way, the AHRS board can output all the necessary coordinate data. Since the STM32 has multiple USARTs, this is entirely possible.
Please note - I am not one of the developers (at this time). Therefore, do not take my reply as being "official."
Michael, we are a non-profit project and not a business. This was covered in our DIYDrones podcast: The whole idea behind OpenPilot is to do some good in the world and that is our "profit" rather than financial. I believe UAVs can do some good in the world beside being military drones and doing that good is the aim of OpenPilot.
Additionally, the project is made up of volunteer coders who do not get paid, why should anyone make a profit off the hardware that needs their code to run? This of course is a personally opinion and my personal ethics so not up for debate of course, it is the way we have chosen to go and it fosters community.
If we were a for profit business I don't think it is sustainable, if you factor in all the testing and massive amounts of work we have done just to get the hardware right and select the best parts. This R&D is not cheap which is why it is annoying when people just copy us without giving any credit. Additionally we want only one set of hardware out there, so we are taking our time and getting it perfect, this goes for the whole project: it must be right and will be right before a public release. Nothing worse than to buy something and then have a revised version come out a week later, this will not happen with OpenPilot!
Yes, this is a stunning price for a 9DoF AHRS especially a very powerful one, it is a game changer for sure and we are really proud of it. The prices are set to sustain the project going forward, the R&D costs have been donate to the project by me and the prices are set so the project can run fine, have no fear we are here for a very long time. All parts are done by a professional RoHS certified assembly house and everything is factored in, we also have donations in our store for people that want to help but don't have time.
The confusing thing for people is the fact we sell the hardware, we do this simply to keep the quality up and the costs down for people. I just hope people appreciate it and get involved.
@Sandro, not my area in the code, I do know we support SPI and USART on the AHRS, what I can say is we are a project that has tried to think of everything and we have some stunning people doing the architecture, it would have been easy to just cobble something together quickly but that is not our style. Again being a non-profit project has the advantage of no commercial pressure or rush to market allowing us time to get things right.