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PXFmini, an open autopilot shield for the Raspberry Pi Zero

Posted by Víctor Mayoral on December 28, 2015 at 8:30am

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Following up with the PixHawk Fire Cape (PXF) series that was started a while ago, I'm happy to announce the PXFmini, an open autopilot shield for the Raspberry Pi. This autopilot shield allows anyone to create ready-to-fly autopilots with support for Dronecode’s APM flight stack priced at only 69 €. The shield has been designed with low cost in mind and specially for the Raspbery Pi Zero (it is also compatible with other Raspberry Pi boards). Find below some of its features:

 

A tiny yet powerful design

The PXFmini shield weighs only 15 grams and on it’s 31mm x 71 mm embeds all the power electronics necessary to comply with most of the existing components for drones using its 2xI2C and UART ports.

The design is based on previous iterations with proper APM upstream support and provides 8 PWM output channels as well as a PPMSUM input.

 

A shield for sensing

PXFmini includes a 9 axes IMU (MPU9250), a digital barometer (MS5611) and an ADC for voltage measurements.

 

An improved experience

Forget about breaking those DF13 connectors. We’ve decided to bet on the new JST GH connectors (adopted by the Dronecode Foundation) to provide an amazing new experience. We’ve also partnered with manufacturers to provide DF13 to JST GH converters.

 

Open design

All the schematics are open for you to hack around. They’ll be released as soon as the boards start shipping. Shipping will start in early February 2016.

 

We made a short clip closing the year where we show the board:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXZb2gN9SEg

 

Thanks everyone and merry christmas!

Tags: erle, pxf, pxfmini, robotics, drones, robot
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Comments

  • Marc Dornan December 31, 2015 at 3:07pm

    @Ravi. I agree. I cannot even find a Raspberry Pi Zero to buy (ebay gougers excepted). I think you should offer a bundle with a Pi Zero and a case that fits everything. Most people will be happy to pay a few $$ extra. The price is already lower than comparable FCs.

  • Ravi December 31, 2015 at 6:50am

    @victor, thanx for accepting the suggestion. this will help users get a genuine rasp-pi -zero and not a clone. also save them on shipping cost of pi-zero. header is also a must because there are various types of headers and it is easy to order the wrong one. spacers have to be such that the shield stays parallel  to the pi-zero board.

  • Tony K December 31, 2015 at 5:33am

    Hi, 

    This is a great step. Will you guys include doc support on setting up apm to run with PXFmini ? I see you have doc now for Erle-Brain, would it be the same ? which image do you recommend to run ? You have Debian Jessie ("cyan"), Debian Jessie ("blanco") etc ...

  • Víctor Mayoral December 31, 2015 at 2:49am

    Hi @Ravi,

    Only a single header is needed. All together with the spacers and the corresponding bolts are included with each PXFmini. As for the bundle, I like the idea thanks! We'll probably come up with something.

  • Ravi December 30, 2015 at 6:12pm

    @victor, it would be a good idea to bundle the PXFmini with a raspberry pie 0 along with any header and spacers required. it looks like the set would require a header and two spacers. or you can make them available in your shop as extra items.

  • Víctor Mayoral December 30, 2015 at 5:50am

    Hi @Patrick,

    Sure, we will notify. As for RCOutput, PXFmini makes use of the PCA.

    Although I pretty much like the approach of using microcontrollers to process RCOuput, RCinput and some other aspects, BOM-wise the PCA approach seemed better. AFAIK, using the STM32F103 as an I/O co-processor is something introduced by the PX4 team quite a while ago and later adopted by Raspilot in Linux. I believe this to be a great approach and don't discard having it in the shield.

    @Jerry,

    I acknowledge the fantastic work you did with Raspilot an its openness. I've PM you with regard the PXFmini design.

  • Patrick Poirier December 30, 2015 at 5:29am

    Victor,

    I am still waiting on the notify me line at Adafruit since day one,Element14 and others are out of stock.

    If you get a chance to bundle the Shield with the RPZero please let us know.

    Question: What chip drives the pwm (PCA9685 or STM32F103 or other) ?

    Best Regards,

  • Ravi December 30, 2015 at 2:57am

    as, i said the future of autopilot is towards Linux and ofcourse the raspbeery pie boards. the community expects Linux board or shield directly from 3DR although I enjoy my pixhawks.

  • Developer
    Randy December 29, 2015 at 6:36pm

    A tiny little linux autopilot.  Really great stuff.  I want one!

  • Bjorn Nellerson December 29, 2015 at 11:15am

    @Andrew It's rocking a raspberry pi underneath, so it'll probably at least be usable later one ;)

This reply was deleted.