SmartAP 3.0 Pro Autopilot is the high-level flight control system for multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with the capability of fully autonomous flight including take off, waypoints flight and landing. The hardware core is powered by STM32F4 microcontroller from STMicroelectronics, 9-axis Inertial Measurement Unit and the latest GPS/GLONASS receiver from UBlox providing outstanding flight precision. SmartAP has its own Configuration and Mission Planning software called SmartAP GCS. The system supports any type of multirotor UAV with the highest navigation and control accuracy. SmartAP Autopilot was developed using the latest electronic components available at the moment, which allowed to achieve such amazing results!
General features of the system:
- All-integrated system approach - plug and fly
- Extremely stable flight in
- stabilize (user control)
- position hold (semi-autonomous control)
- auto (fully autonomos navigation and control)
- MAVLink compatible Ground Control Station protocol
- Accurate Position hold
- Horizontal: up to 40cm
- Vertical: up to 10cm
- Manual altitude override
- Fully autonomous waypoints flight
- Autonomous take off
- Autonomous landing
- Return to Home mode
- Low battery detection and Failsafe triggering
- And many many more...
The system installed on 960-sized hexacopter:
Hardware:
- Powerful microcontroller 32 bit 168 MHz STM32F4 ARM Cortex M4
- Compact board size of 8x8 cm (3.15"x3.15"), weight 60g, 6 layers PCB design
- Power supply from main LiPO battery (3S - 8S) support, up to 36 Volts
- Power supply from BEC 5V support
- 12V, 5V, 3.3V generated onboard
- Integrated GPS receiver (UBlox NEO8, GPS/GLONASS, up to 24 sats, 10 Hz) active antenna, exnternal module is supported as well
- Integrated telemetry module (100 mW), external module is supported as well (up to 5V@1A powered)
- Up to 24 PWM I/O support (5V out, high-power), SBUS support
- USB interface for configuration / firmware update
- 6-pin JTAG port for programming / debugging
- Various communication lines (UART/USART, RS232, I2C, SPI)
- MicroSD card driven by 4-bit SDIO interface for data-logging / parameters
- Backup battery for real-time clock and GPS receiver
- Integrated main LiPo battery voltage monitoring
- 4 ADC inputs, battery voltage / current monitoring
- Electromagnetic sound audio indicator
- 4-channels bright LED support (up to 100mA/ch)
The components of the system:
SmartAP Ground Control Station and Configuration Tool
SmartAP GCS (Ground Control Station) is the software application which allows you to plan autonomous mission for your SmartAP Autopilot as well as control the UAV using intuitive high-level commands.
General features are:
- Flexible and user-friendly interface
- One-click commands for high-level control
- ARM, Take off, Loiter, Land etc.
- Status information display
- Real-time video feed and overlay
- with video capture device
- Major flight information display
- Mission planning using waypoints
- Customizable waypoints' settings
- Flight logging support
- Realtime plot of all parameters
- Integrated log analyzer
- Points of interest selection and control
- Terminal window
Ground Control Station Mainwindow
Supported Airframes
- Quadcopter Plus 4
- Quadcopter X 4
- Quadcopter W 4
- Hexacopter Plus 6
- Hexacopter X 6
- Octocopter Plus 8
- Octocopter X 8
- Tricopter I 6
- Tricopter Y 6
- Quadcopter X 8
- Hexacopter X 12
Ground Control Station demo video
User's review video:
More information and ordering at: http://sky-drones.com/
Kirill
Sky-Drones.com
Comments
I was not at all questioning your naming! Just curious. I have read about rare instances of DJI A2 going beserk, potentially at certain harmonic frequencies. Have you managed to reliably replicate this behavior in any flight controller?
I study fly-away cases reported at DIYDrones and log files published, attached to build courseware library.
Since log file data record saving is clocked at low frequency,
I don't get gitter, higher harmonics, PWM, BEC, RPM frequencies
saved.
I need technical specification for every sensor clocked, PWM, BEC, barometry, IMU1, IMU2, EKF (frequency, frequency range, if modulated, loop frequency if looped).
Since ppl report fly-away cases flying Pixhawk I call it Pixhawk fly-away syndrome or cases.
If you don't like my naming approach just call it Drone Fly-away Syndrome, in general.
To detect and record jitter I need twice as high clocked recorder at least.
I can try to calculate airframe resonances by element's length and Helmholtz resonance can be studied on the ground at vibrating table
but highly intelligent controller starts to react hysterically, exactly as intelligent humans react if exposed to infrasonic vibrations matching their brain waves, resulting in alert state generated ( moving from relax stage to alert stage suddenly).
Faster clocked board is prone to jitter and higher harmonics since loops run code can process it in real-time generating some random, uncontrollable actions, described as outburst of uncontrollable hysterics, making it to crash.
Darius Jack - can you refer me to where the 'Pixhawk flyway syndrome' has been dicussed? I have not not been keeping up. That one is new to me.
I mean if you have ever tested your drone on vibrating table
applying full spectrum vibrations at variable amplitude
or multi-frequency or random generated, noise induced vibrations to airframe to simulate higher altitude drone fly-away syndrome known for Pixhawk ?
@Tevada -- that is a fairly silly comparison. Sorry, I would not entrust that ebay Pixhawk to a serious vehicle. If I am flying a $5000 Flir sensor, for example (and I do not), I am probably not going for an eBay special Pixhawk with a mess of cables.
Kirill,
I know you have been working on this for a while and it is in its third iteration. At $490 it is still beyond what most (but not all) hobbyists will pay but in the zone of professionals. Although that market seems smaller with DJI starting to sell solutions for everything these days. It is more than competitive with what is on the market for a ready-to-go system. I think you need to get it reviewed though by third party.
A few more questions. How is the power managed? Do you you include a power module for single cell voltage and overall current measurement? Does it use a shunt or a Hall effect sensor? (I am loving this one http://www.mauch-electronic.com with a hall effect sensor).
Are you going to support fixed wing?
Have you considered porting Arducopter/Arduplane to this? Virtual Robotix does this with proprietary boards.
Jack, it's all done in the software. A lot of this issues was solved using the hardware in the loop simulations.
Vibration issues were resolved using sensors data analysis and applying filtering as well as precision tuning of the attitude / position estimation algorithms.
QuadrotorThai, this is multiple hardware redundancy of the system, if something goes wrong with one of the sensors another one is activated.
@Kirill,
how did you resolve drone fly-away syndrome, jitter, higher harmonics, airframe vibrations at resonant frequencies ?
I want to know why you use STMicroelectronics LIS3DSH - 3-axis Accelerometer. All sensor are in MPU-9150.
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