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Raspiolt : yet Another Rpi cape flight controller WIP, designed in China

Posted by Jerry Giant on March 31, 2015 at 8:32am

 Hi, dear Diydrones members, today I’m happy to demo yet another raspberry based Ardupilot compatible flight controller expansinon board design.

 

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Features:

  • Pixhawk compatible Power/GPS module interface
  • Integrated ublox m8n GNSS module
  • CSI camera ribbon compatible PCB profile
  • PX4IO forked project for dedicated PWM I/O with STM32 MCU
  • Emlid™ Navio+ inspired solution for ardupilot HAL
  • FULLY open source software and HARDWARE

 

Goals:

  • Single package for FPV solution
  • Yocto distro with minimum firmware footprint
  • Deliver in May, 2015

 

Why we did this because we believe in open sourced project will be a great tool to learn from the best, and to be even better. We are young Chinese engineers, please no stereotype.

 

I’ve been assist @zhangkaiqi working on this project for a while now. We had a breadboard wiring prototype flying happily now and we want to push this endeavor a litter further. As earlier Navio+ test reports from Emlid shows that PWM consumed about 20% of RPI B+’s cpu time, we want to test another solution by putting PX4IO (pixhawk’s co-processor part) on RPi.And we are inspired by @PatrickDuffy’s (Diydrones member, not twitter) FPV solution on Rpi with ubnt™, so we want to build a flight controller has all the good features we can get from a Rpi, so we combined them together.

Today we have the first PCB design sign-offed to the fab, and later this week hope to have a smoking test (first time power on a PCBA). We hope people with talent to join us with software design process and we hopefully to send some samples to volunteered engineers, testers and early bird costumers.

 

We promise to open source all project files, including Eagle Cad schematic/layouts, after we have the first batch PCBA running complete. We need initial product generate some revenue to support out later developments.

 

I’ll update this thread for the project, please commit for your ideas and feature request.

Thanks for people who contributed to this community made this possible. 

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Comments

  • barban June 29, 2015 at 9:51am

    @Jerry Any update about your project? I would like so much to test your early prototype pcb, when available.

  • Pritam Ghanghas April 8, 2015 at 2:07pm

    @Jerry

    I can't PM you untill you accept my friend request on diydrones.

  • Jerry Giant April 1, 2015 at 9:29am

    @Philip, @ScienceBeer is the principle designer of Raspilot. According to design the hardware is compatible, and according to Emlid’s recent software development, it will run in realtime.

     

    @Randy, many thanks . Hope this design will deliver.

     

    @Pritam, early prototype will hand-soldered. It will be very time consuming and error prone, so it will not meet our confidence for flying responsiblely. We welcome you for further contact.

     

    @Emlid, a clone production will be much easier, with not layout required.

     

    @Stephen, we are work in progress. Emlid is worth trying.

     

    @Pritam, I have a DJI s900, and I have never give a thought to putting a parachute on it. I have seen a EDF solution, with Lipo battery, bench test looks good... I think it worth give a trial for super-cap driven EDF solution. With Linux on board, design a parachute ejection policy will be easier, I hope.

     

     @David, OSD with Rpi Gstreamer is already tested and working good. Refer to @PatrickDuffy’s posts.

     

    @Andrew, we are using PX4IO version with i2c connection. We had a early paper design to build a SPI-UARTs hub, but not implemented in this verison. We are considering to build a USB-Serial converter with static /dev/tty numbering adapter for peripherals. 

  • Developer
    Andrew Tridgell April 1, 2015 at 9:22am

    Nice to see another Linux solution!

    are you talking to the STM32 using a UART (like Pixhawk)? If so, how many UARTs will end up being available for peripherals?

  • David Skipper April 1, 2015 at 6:39am

    @ Jerry,

    Will this have build in OSD ?

  • Pritam Ghanghas April 1, 2015 at 5:34am

    if it can meet the heartbeat deadline, i think it can meet the control loop deadline as well.

  • Pritam Ghanghas April 1, 2015 at 5:32am

    We haven't yet seen a anti Linux comment on this post yet. Looks like people have finally started to settle for it. 

    Anyway I will be buying either this one or Navio+ soon, already have a pi2. And then I want to put a arduino mini or nano with parachute control on it. Either the pi can ask arduino to open the parachute or if the arduino doesn't get heartbeat from raspberry pi with reasonable interval, cut power and open the parachute.  Power cut may be a little complicated, I don't want to use relay. I think this solution can solve most RTOS related concerns from people. Anyway good parachute mechanisms are must for copters to ever become reasonably safe. I haven't tried a parachute yet, there may be problems with this whole idea. 

    Any feedback is appreciated before I start burning money on parts :-)

  • Stephen Gloor April 1, 2015 at 4:55am

    Dammit - knew I should have waited for the clones ☺

  • Emlid April 1, 2015 at 2:23am

    When we started Navio project a year ago we decided that we could consider our project truly successful the moment first chinese clone shows up. And now that it happened, we are flattered. Wishing all the best to your project!

  • Pritam Ghanghas April 1, 2015 at 1:36am

    @Jerry,

    I am interested in buying the early prototype. I understand that sending samples for free may not be much of an option for you due to inherent cost of hardware. And considering my schedule I can't commit on "how much I would be able to contribute to your project". I have some experience with programming on Linux.  PM me for further discussion.

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