3D Robotics

PhoneDrone Android board finally in production!

3689426428?profile=originalThe 3D Robotics PhoneDrone Android/RC interface board is finally in production! Pre-orders are starting now and it will ship on Oct 17th. From the product listing:

 

It's a way to connect any Android device (2.3.4 or higher) to the world of RC and UAVs.The board has 8 channels of RC in and out, with PWM-to-PPM conversion and multiplexing between RC and Android control. You just plug the Android's phone USB connector into the board and you have two-way communications with RC gear and any other board, such as APM.

 That means that you can switch between RC control and Android control or mix the two. An example would be "fly/drive by wire". You steer your vehicle via RC, but an Android phone does the actual control using its onboard IMU. On a car, that would allow every turn to be a high-speed controlled drift, for instance (we may show something like that at Maker Faire).

Or, with a UAV, you might have the Android phone doing high-level image processing and object tracking, sending mission commands to an autopilot board such as APM. You might also want to use the phone's long-distance wireless instead of an Xbee for two-way telemetry.

 This can either replace APM if you've got equivalent code running on Android, or compliment it with the Android device doing image processing or long-distance wireless comms.

 

It took a while to get a pick-and-place smart feeder for one of the components on this board, so apols for the delay. We're good now ;-)

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Comments

  • I have long been seeking a decision on the APM two-way communication using GPRS or 3G network. Is it possible to use this product for a two-way communication (telemetry)?

    Can anybody give me examples of how things should work and where to start ?

    Thanks !

  • 3D Robotics

    Thanks, John Arne. Updated!

  • Developer

    Chris: You PPM encoder link is the old ppm encoder. I pushed the new one just now (New PPM encoder).

  • Ahmed, see copter-gcs for example.

  • 3D Robotics

    Ahmed: no, but there are other APM-compatible GCSs that do run on Android. Search the site

  • Chris Can we run mission planer on android?

  • 3D Robotics

    Adam: No. Just Android data and RC

  • Developer

    Does this board support video in?

  • 3D Robotics

    Yan: yes, it's a standard ADK device (see info here) with our custom RC interface (PPM encoder) software pre-loaded on the 16u2 chip. Tutorials will be released when the product ships.

  • Do you have software or firmware with it? What does each pin do? Do you have tutorials to explain how to use it?

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