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quanton flight control

Posted by lilvinz on February 2, 2013 at 11:30am

I am proud to have the opportunity to announce hardware availability of a new target for TauLabs.

quanton flight control rev. 1 <-- shop site (on stock, worldwide shipping)
3689500596?profile=original

System information and components:


For those who don't know about TauLabs, please look here.

3689500693?profile=original

OpenPilot firmware on pre release hardware:

https://vimeo.com/51772080
https://vimeo.com/51772080
https://vimeo.com/51776478

TauLabs firmware on final hardware:
https://vimeo.com/58572704
https://vimeo.com/58536514
https://vimeo.com/58536515
https://vimeo.com/58668541

 

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Comments

  • Roy Brewer February 4, 2013 at 2:47pm

    So I guess if I want to engage the team with any flight controls or IMU questions, there's no point posting to the OP forums anymore, is there :-)

  • OlivierD. February 4, 2013 at 10:02am

    Hi James, this is exciting. I have been waiting for an OP board for ever and I have pretty much given up on it now. Tired of waiting after the countless delays as they sort out whatever kink pops up.

    I have two quad frames I am putting together and would like to try the Quanton on one of them. 

    This is very exciting and well priced too. Gonna pick one up right away! 

  • James Cotton February 4, 2013 at 8:58am

    I should also comment that our control loops are all running very quickly and with low latency and a lot of the flight modes give a lot of freedom to fly the way you want (e.g. attitude mode, axis-lock, weak-leveling, rate mode, virtual bar).  I haven't flown it, but basically this board should have all the nice flight characteristics that made CC3D so popular with the benefit of altitude hold, position hold and eventually RTH etc.

  • James Cotton February 4, 2013 at 8:55am

    Jason - short version, yes another board.  If what you want to do is get flying autonomously today then APM or Autoquad are probably your best bet.

    However this board will fully support all the autonomous work we are doing at Tau Labs and probably will be doing some position hold / altitude hold within the week (just gotta get vinz testing it).  This is an active front we are really pushing on so expect fast progress.

    As to why you might choose our software stack over others ... well obvious I'm biased.  However, I think the code is top notch so provides a really solid basis to build upon.  We've got a few controls professors working with us which should hopefully pull in the needed expertise.  I think our GCS is really easy to use and makes configuration a relative snap (no recompiling etc).  However don't let me mislead you - in terms of demonstrated abilities we still are playing catch up with the ardu platform.

  • CheBuzz February 4, 2013 at 12:05am

    Tau Labs is a friendly fork of OP.  Previously if anybody disagreed with the powers to were, they were almost universally banned and ran out of the project.  In contrast, I have witnessed quite a few disagreements while in Tau Labs, but they were discussed and nobody was asked to leave.  Almost always the project comes out better off due to the intelligent discussion that followed.  That's my idea of a friendly software project for what it's worth.

    I have been in quite a few different projects over the years.  Some good and some bad.  Tau Labs so far has been one of the really good ones.   A lot of thought has gone into setting things up for success.  For example, we leverage a lot of github's services so that we keep the costs down.  That way when somebody like lilvinz comes along and makes cool hardware and wants to sell it through his company, we aren't worried about somebody "stealing our revenue stream!"  Instead, they are congratulated and their contributions are welcomed.  Tau Labs is working under a proper non-profit organization right from the start.  Just a few examples, but I suspect you will be seeing some great things in the near future.

  • Jason Wise February 3, 2013 at 11:09pm

    Ok call me average Joe, but what does this mean for me? Another board vs my APM2.5 and my CC + KK + Cirus AIO Pro + Naze32 + others, what path do I take?, My fav is APM GPS with all the trimmings, does this offer me more options?

  • James Cotton February 3, 2013 at 1:21pm

    Depends who you ask but from our perspective it was because we didn't like where the project was heading (e.g. people getting kicked out of the core team without discussion, closed repositories, the kind of disdain like I posted above about people doing anything not ordained by the leadership, pre-ordering hardware that wasn't working properly without discussion with the development team, and finally transferring all the leadership into the hands of people with no technical knowledge).  

    We spoke out (vocally) against these issues and were eventually asked to start a fork and banned, so we did.  Most of the developers subsequently left and joined Tau Labs.

  • wraith February 3, 2013 at 1:15pm

    sounds like sower grapes, why did u guys get banned

  • Rana February 3, 2013 at 8:08am

    Thanks lilvinz !

  • lilvinz February 3, 2013 at 8:03am

    Rana,

    currently the OpenPilot firmware is not in the state to properly support quanton.

    On my github page you can find an OpenPilot port with binaries for quanton but

    it does not make use of most of the sensors. When OpenPilot catches up i might

    find some time to work on that port again.

    Your order will be shipped tomorrow and i would recommend removing your paypal transaction

    id from this board.

This reply was deleted.