I just ran across this this morning on Engadget, Wired online. It immediately struck me as almost a "holy grail" of tablets to use for a ground control station. It has plenty of buttons, and 2 joysticks. We already have the excellent Andropilot app. Now we have built in controls... Maybe we should pool some money to send one of these to Kevin Hester.
The only problem is the specs are a little lightweight:
- 7" 1024x600 display, no mention of brightness
- Android 4.1 Jellybean
- Arm Coretex A9 dual-core 1.6 GHz
- 8GB Flash, 1GB Ram, with a microSD card slot
The really good news is it's only $170. It's definitely worth experimenting with.
I'd kick in $20 to send one to Kevin Hester if he's interested in developing it for AndroPilot use. Anybody else?
Comments
...or you can just put one of these on a normal tablet:
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/461394162/Joystick_It_Arcade_Game...
If only this one had a bigger screen it would be perfect!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-lGo9Oujso
A video of the Archos Gamepad as well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycrt_USEBCs
Hi Kevin,
i have sent you 20 bucks.
Regards,
Linus
@R_Lefebvre, NuShield seems to be very appropriate for outdoor LCD display usage.
Yep. I solved this with a dedicated Throttle Hold switch on my box. Arm, and then release the stick, nothing happens. Flick the switch up, throttle stick is now active. Flick it down, throttle signal is "down" and motors shut off. Also, no more accidental mid-air motor shut-downs. Yet you still have a completely rational "kill it now!" switch, with a red LED on it when it's active. It won't arm with the switch up, either. There's no surprises.
@Kevin - Thanks
@R - Its not when you are flying that it is a hassle, its when you are not flying. Throttle is constantly at mid stick unless you are holding it necessitating having some separate motor arming mechanism. Even then, you have to hold the stick down whenever it is armed and you don't want the motor to spin up...
That's pretty much what I expected. Just about any control is better than a touchscreen control.
Again, I think you have to compare the specs with the price. $170 is incredibly cheap. People pay $50 for a crappy Turnigy radio. This does SO much more!
When we have solid FBW capabilities, which is coming in the next release, those crappy sticks will be good enough.
This is another great example of low-cost consumer electronics being able to show-up expensive dedicated systems from the pros. We always just have to wait a few years to catch up. You know how much a custom box that can do this would cost?! I can hardly get a generic plastic case to build it with for less than $150.
Hi,
Is this going to work the same way/use the same code?
http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/feature.asp?t=how_to&c=45227
Glad to hear that this tablet is better than expected after the french reviews...
Some more observations, I tried playing some games mapping the controls to the sticks, and overall they are OK. The short throw and stiffness makes them on/off but 360degrees so to speak.
But compared to flying an AR drone with Ipad onscreen controls, the gamepad physical sticks beat it by a long long ways, the sticks are much better than any virtual joystick.
And the thing comes with a way to map the joystick to any app that uses on-screen joysticks :).
So overall considering the price I think it would be a worthwhile platform to try as a GCS, but one thing I still need to dig up a cable for is using it as a usb host. It only has one port, and thus it cannot be charged if some slave device is plugged in to the port.
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