Phoenard; The project currently running on Kickstarter.
It has lot of peripherals built in which is more than capable to be your next Drone controller.
10-degrees of freedom sensor, Accelerometer, gyro, magnetometer and barometer are included and powered by ATMEGA2560, identical to the one use on APM. Plenty of PWM GPIO pins are also available. The GPS, GSM and GPRS module are embedded by default as well on board.
The full color LCD might be handy as well for changing some settings on board rather than from pc. Moreover it is battery powered and portable, very comfortable to bring along.
Lastly, its operating environment allows you to store thousands of arduino sketches/program on board. Similar to developing apps on smartphone. So switching between controlling different drones is very easy.
Although the super early for 99 Euro has been sold-out, the early bird is still available for only 111 Euro!
Link:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2080282237/phoenard-the-arduino-compatible-prototyping-gadget
Comments
Given that I've already taken a run at creating a ground station with the AVR, I can tell you now that if you are going to attempt to use all of the peripherals on that board in addition to the LCD display, you'll promptly run out of clock cycles. I would strongly recommend looking at basing the cpu architecture around the arduino due so that you can take full advantage of the entire board and the ever increasing code base out there already...
I meant overpriced as in an ATmega2560 has a quarter the performance of STM32s and costs 1.5x as much.
FWIW I think the price is reasonable for what it is, but it's just a waste of money. The ATmega2560 was a poor choice for the APM even years back when it came out. They've now realized that and ditched it, and I'm sure they now wish they'd have listened to me long ago. To be using this in new projects is just ridiculous. They're great if you want to flash some lights or fool around with basic electronics projects, but you're not going to do anything cutting edge with them.
Phoenard is essentially made to be an Arduino compatible prototyping tools and DiY gadget at the same time.
Only at the later stage they notice that it has similar peripherals as the APM drone controller (ATmega2560, MPU6050 HMC5883 + magnetometer, barometer and GPS). So it was not meant and made since the beginning to be a Flight controller, I even post the title with a question mark. Some beginners/rookie might find it sufficient for them, but I'm sure many experts think that it is underpowered.
Overpriced is a bit subjective depends on what you compare to. From hardware perspective, APM 2.6+GPS without the 2.8" TFT LCD, GSM/GPRS, Bluetooth, Audio chip, and battery on-board cost much more than the Phoenard.
Worthless project. I always can't believe when crap like this gets funded.
Wake Up! It's 2014, and you're building something NEW with an overpriced and underpowered 8-bit processor? WTF!?!
I think a proper all in one unit would have capability to run android droneplanner 2, as well as a second screen with a 5.8ghz diversity receiver for FPV. So essentially an android device with a built in 433mhz radio for mav link, and a second screen for FPV footage via a built in 5.8ghz diversity receiver. It would need an ability to record video to SD card, and outputs for headsets also.
Technology is old and underpowered? I must agree.
But as a Drone controller and prototyping tools that is more than enough; as APM is using the identical microcontroller(with much less peripherals) as well yet many people loving it.
And here is official respond from the creator why they decided to use 8-bit AVR:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2080282237/phoenard-the-arduin...
very .... very underpowered.
may be a product strategy ?
sell lots of controller using this processor and then make a new one using a powerful processor.
Only an Atmega and GPRS. No ARM or 4G/LTE. The price is good, but the technology is old.