Sky-Drones announces release of the next generation flight controller - SmartAP 3.2 Pro, the system became even more integrated, powerful and provides extensive set of features. It has 3x-redundant temperature-stabilized IMU, integrated OSD telemetry with power supply for camera / video TX, integrated long-range 500 mW telemetry module, FrSky S.Port telemetry support, RTK GNSS support (with additional SmartAP RTK extension), 10-60V (3-14S) power input and much more. SmartAP supports any type of multirotor UAV and provides the highest navigation and control precision. The main capabilities of the flight controller are:
- Outstanding flight stability in all modes - manual (user control), position hold (semi-autonomous control) and auto (fully autonomous navigation and control)
- 3x-redundant temperature-stabilized IMU
- Fully compatible with SmartAP GCS Ground Control Station for Configuration and Mission Planning
- Integrated OSD (On-Screen Display for FPV) with camera / video TX power supply
- Accurate GPS Position hold (up to 40cm with good GNSS reception quality)
- Accurate Altitude hold (up to 10 cm)
- Return to Home flight mode
- Fully autonomous waypoints flight mode
- Guided flight mode
- Various failsafe events configuration and triggering
Temperature-stabilized IMU allows using the system in the wide range of temperatures (-40...+60) with no need of recalibrating.
General Hardware Specifications
- Powerful microcontroller 32 bit 168 MHz STM32
- Compact board size of 8x8 cm (3.15"x3.15"), weight 60g, 6 layers PCB design
- Power supply from the main LiPO battery (3S - 14S) support, up to 60 Volts
- Power supply from BEC 5V support
- 12V, 5V, 3.3V generated onboard, dedicated voltage regulators for MCU, sensors, peripherals
- Integrated GNSS receiver UBlox NEO M8N, GPS/GLONASS, up to 24 sats, 10 Hz), active antenna
- Exnternal GNSS module support (primary configuration)
- Integrated 500 mW telemetry module (primary configuration)
- External telemetry module support
- Integrated OSD module with power supply for video TX and camera
- Up to 24 PWM I/O support (5V out, high-power)
- SBUS input support
- FrSky S.Port output support
- USB interface for configuration / firmware update
- Various communication lines (UART/USART, RS232, I2C, SPI)
- 6-pin JTAG port for programming / debugging
- MicroSD card driven by 4-bit SDIO interface for data-logging / parameters
- Backup battery for real-time clock and GNSS receiver
- Integrated main LiPo battery voltage monitoring
- 4 ADC inputs, battery voltage / current monitoring
- Electromagnetic sounder
- 3-channels bright LED support (up to 300mA/ch)
- RGB LED support
- 2-channel solid state relay
The system is also available as a kit which includes:
- SmartAP 3.2 Pro Flight Controller Main board
- External GNSS / Magnetometer module
- Ground telemetry module
- Onboard telemetry antenna
- High-gain ground telemetry antenna
- Power input cable
- MicroSD card with SD card adapter
SmartAP has its custom Configuration and Mission Planning software called SmartAP GCS, which supports Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
SmartAP GCS supports complex flight planning (including waypoints, survey grid generation, payload control, etc), real-time monitoring of flight parameters, video streaming and high-level commands control.
Sky-Drones also creates accessories such as SmartAP RTK for precise positioning and SmartAP PDB for power distribution and voltage / current measurements.
More information about SmartAP Autopilot and other Sky-Drones products can be found on the website: http://sky-drones.com/
Comments
@ Marc
No Argument on your statement. I just see too many posts by wannabe Dev's, UAV cut and paste "experts" and trolls I just wanna puke. Skeptics was admittedly a poor choice of words. I have had many skype sessions with Kirill, he is articulate, very knowledgeable, has impeccable credentials. an entrepreneur, has an excellent command of the English language, supports his product and really a respectful and polite guy. No reason to doubt what he says.
@Kendall. There are not really many skeptics here. There is absolutely a place for a professional system that is all designed to work with peripherals without endless fiddling. I never really understand the "they" thing. It is Open Source so it comes with the territory. If you are doing actual work with your UAV you will not have time for DIY. You either have to get an Open Source system and pay someone to put that together for you or buy a proprietary system that can be used without much hassle.
I too will be interested to see the fixed wing version and may consider taking a plunge.
Kendall, thank you for the nice comment! Happy to know that you are successfully using SmartAP. We'll definitely announce when the fixed wing version is available and will be glad to supply you more flight controllers.
Thanks again for the nice feedback!
@Kirill
I purchased your SmartAP 3.1 pro set last year. It works as you described, smooth and reliable. I will gladly purchase v3.2 when the Plane firmware is complete. If it performs as well as the Multirotor version I will purchase many for my commercial fleet. Disregard the skeptics, they have no clue. The forums are full of complaints on the Pixhawk(s) hardware and software that have been completely disregarded. Knowledgeable End users been told they are the cause of their issues because they do not understand the system. Some of the issues have only been "discovered" by very diligent "outsiders". Many would gladly pay $1000 for a flight controller that is reliable, and simply does what it claims.
Olivier, right, QGroundControl supports even 5 operating systems now. I referred to Mission Planner because I saw somewhere people writing that SmartAP GCS is a copy of Mission Planner, which is not actually and it's obvious just by seeing which technologies used for programming.
SmartAP major features such as multisensor IMU/GNSS data fusion, autonomous waypoints flight, smooth trajectory transitions and etc appeared earlier than in Pixhawk/APM. However, nowadays the majority of the flight controllers have very similar functionality. In contrast to large open source projects we're concentrated on the quality and support rather than extremely wide range of features. The key things are navigation precision and control quality and SmartAP exceeds the others here.
Also it's not only about the autopilots which are publicly available (SmartAP 3 and SmartAP 4), we do lots of contract developments on custom flight controllers design.
We use HM-TRLR-S transceivers with our custom firmware. Probably, 3DR is using something similar since they are quire popular now for their price / quality ratio.
Thomas, thanks for your nice comment and great thoughts on IMU! You're right, Invensense (and lots of others) sensor are typically rated -40C to 85C range. But it's actually operating range which means that the IC should work (beyond - it might not, not guaranteed). However, the quality of the sensor data is not taken into account when talking about the temperature. And here temperature stabilization / calibration comes.
Yes, ICM20602 has integrated temperature compensation and this is the new trend, I'm sure we'll that implement in flight controllers pretty soon.
We'll prepare some plots showing the difference in IMU reading with and w/o temperature calibration to compare and I'll post them here, there are actually some interesting things to take a look at.
I guess heated IMUs do some contribution to marketing but actually they also do the real work and later it will become sort of standard for flight controllers, especially if wide range of temperatures required. Anyway, time will tell.
Absolutely agree on your comments regarding open / non-open source, my thoughts are exactly the same. In addition I would just tell that the key idea is to have knowledge, experience and capability to create the value, the rest is marketing more or less.
Kirill, btw I never thought for a minute that you 'ported' Ardupilot. It would be good to know how the features of SmartAP compare to Arducopter. I think it fair game that people may want to just understand the differences and the evolution. Thanks.
Kirill, answering Marc's question with another question is not an answer. Not sure why you bring up Mission Planner, QGroundControl is also open source and works with both Ardupilot and PX4, and runs not only on Windows, MacOS and Linux but also runs on Android and IOS. And the fact you only support multicopter for now is irrelevant, supporting just one type of firmware is much easier
Can you expand on what "Major" Features" SmartAP has?
On the telemetry radio side, are those SIK based like the ubiquitous 3DR radios? Those run open source software, are you running that?
Thanks Krill. I just wanted you to publicly address that. It is what I thought, personally. What major features do you refer to BTW?
While I have no strong opinion on IMU heaters, it is interesting that they seem to part of the PCB design. I also think it looks like a nice proprietary piece of kit that is on its third or fourth iteration.
I don't understand the obsession with "heaters" for the IMU. The gyroscope/accelerometers from Invensense are rated for operation over a temperature range (typically -40C to 85C) and have compensation coefficients! In addition, the newer ICM20602 has embedded temperature compensation; an apparent trend in newer sensor design.
I'd like to see a plot comparing temperature variance or "heated" vs not heated IMU/sensors!! let's see some facts to prove the need!
The heated IMUs here appear to be a stab at the Pixhawk2xx addition of "heaters"...appears to be a more extraneous bell and superfluous add-on to marketing hype.
While there seems to be complaints about the hardware and the software not being "open source", there is a need. Closed source allows the product to be propriety and quells the completion. It costs money to build a board and run a 250 piece production which must be recovered! In addition, it puts the burden of reliability on the manufacturer; they cannot pass the buck when there is a software design fault.
As far as what happens when the company goes out of business; this entire industry is so ephemeral that it doesn't really make any difference for now. Look at how many companies started five years ago (making this drone part or that drone part) and now are defunct...
Nice job on a proprietary controller. At least the far East juggernaut cannot steal your design!
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