New announcement from BirdsEyeView:
BirdsEyeView Aerobotics is proud to introduce AvA: Advanced VTOL Autonomy for the FireFLY6. AvA is the culmination of a year of behind-the-scenes development and testing, producing a powerful, elegant single controller autopilot solution for the FireFLY6.
AvA is flight control firmware, designed for the PX4hawk autopilot, that gracefully handles the FireFLY6 in all regimes – takeoff to landing. Flight mode transitions from hover to forward flight (and back) are fully AvA-controlled, making transitions a simple matter of flicking a switch. No special radio programming or piloting techniques required.
AvA also enables fully-scripted autonomous operations, where all flight behavior (including transitions) can be preplanned using map-based point-and-click commands in our custom interface, FireFLY6 Planner.
FireFLY6 Planner runs on your Windows laptop or tablet, providing a real time link to the aircraft via the telemetry radio set included with your PX4hawk. This allows for continuous monitoring of the FireFLY6’s health and location as well as point-and-click retasking.
In particular, we focused on making mapping missions with the FireFLY6 easy, with intuitive access to the necessary flight planning and image georeferencing tools in FireFLY6 Planner. This makes the FireFLY6 a killer mapping platform when combined with our upcoming mapping camera mounts, which are compatible with the FireFLY6 Gimbal Mount Kit – giving your FireFLY6 mapping bird the flexibility to also excel in gimbal-based aerial observation tasks (aerial videography, search & rescue, powerline/pipeline monitoring, etc).
AvA is available now in three different flavors, defined by your choice of key. AvA keys unlock different levels of functionality, each level aimed at a specific user group: Sport, Pro, and Mapping. More information on AvA keys and the functionality that they unlock can be found here.
AvA and the FireFLY6 Planner are built on a foundation provided by the APM Project. AvA is a heavily modified version of APM:Copter, stripped down to the simple essentials and tailored to the FireFLY6, incorporating a special brew of custom forward flight algorithms and select functionality borrowed fromAPM:Plane. Similarly, FireFLY6 Planner is a heavily modified version of the APM Project’s Mission Planner, lovingly recrafted in BirdsEyeView Aerobotics style with the FireFLY6 as a centerpiece.
As a result of AvA’s APM heritage and PX4 backbone, we’re also happy to announce our membership in theDronecode Project. We look forward to being active members of the open source aerobotics community.
Say hello to the FireFLY6 with AvA Onboard. Welcome to the Revolution.
Comments
Craig, thank you, if you will spare some time and assist me: I will have to compare https://github.com/BirdsEyeViewAerobotics/ardupilot with the master https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot and change from wich one to wich one?
Shall be happy if you could help me
Birdeye started with a zip file downloaded from our git repo sometime in the fall of 2014 and the changes are reflected in the dropbox file. Because they started from a zip file none of the tools that would normally allow you to automatically merge or rebase the changes work. A person needs to go file by file and line by line and manually bring the actual code changes they made into master (ignoring whitespace changes etc).
The result could be used to create a new branch at https://github.com/BirdsEyeViewAerobotics/ardupilot
Craig, what is involved in "If you are sufficiently git savvy to take the code in the dropbox file and rebase it on master, please make a pull request on the repo. We estimated about 10 hours work to clean it up" ?
I have some spare time... how do I go about it ?
Thanks Craig, I am intending to build a quadplane this summer so I very much welcome these developments. Alas I am not able to send a firefly to Tridge and I suspect Birdseyeview will be in no hurry - I can wait. I have a range of alternate platforms already in use.
The team tiltrotor code is unlikely to be merged but tilt rotor support is coming to http://ardupilot.org/plane/docs/quadplane-support.html. Support for tilt rotors has recently been added to the simulator. If somebody were to send Tridge a Firefly I'm sure it would speed things up.
I have recently obtained a number of these but would prefer to use them with standard mission planner. Is the team tiltrotor firmware likely to be merged into the main code any time soon? I know there is firmware offered via QGC but I would prefer to use the standard mission planner I use on my fixed wing and multirotor options.
Adam Sloan pointed out to me today that I had linked to the wrong dropbox folder.
Corrected links are here.
I believe these are the same files listed here
https://github.com/BirdsEyeViewAerobotics/MissionPlanner/tree/FF6P
and
https://github.com/BirdsEyeViewAerobotics/ardupilot/tree/AvA
@Matt
Thank you for wanting to support companies who are respecting the Open Source Licenses.
This is reposted from http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/pirates-uav-solutions-violates-...
The GPL license allows a person to sell a version of the code, but they must also make the source code available for free.
The guys at Birdseye have posted a link on their site to the code they have running on their vehicle https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35788481/Code%20Releases/FF6P%2...
and I helped them create the github repo that you linked to, but they are complete novices at using git and the code they have published there is a mess. The code they are flying is not based on Dec 9, 2015. It is based on something from about a year older but we have not been able to make an exact determination and they do not know. They started by downloading a zip file from github and there has been zero version control used on the code.
A couple of the devs have offered to help create a working repository but so far they have not taken anybody up on the offer. Tridge has also offered to make sure his VTOL code will work on their aircraft if they send him one but they have stated he can buy one at a discount.
I have been trying to have VTOL code in master for a couple of years and I worked with Team Tilt rotor and others to make that happen but nobody has finished the job. Birdseye have said they would like to have their code accepted into master but to date their code is just not of sufficient quality for that to happen.
The changes they have made to Mission Planner have also been published to meet their licensing obligations. They do acknowledge that they do not know how to use git "Please be advised that we do not develop in a git environment and are providing this repository with the assistance of the Dronecode Project as a single public release point. If you have any questions about our released code, please reach out to us at support at birdseyeview dot aero"
Dronecode does not endorse Birdseye. I don't think they are intentionally trampling on the work of others but I will say the pressure that the community have put on them to publish has been very effective as it has been with UAVSolutions who have also published their changes. https://github.com/UAVSOLUTIONS/MissionPlanner-Current-Stable and have actually made a financial contribution to Mission Planner.
If you are sufficiently git savvy to take the code in the dropbox file and rebase it on master, please make a pull request on the repo. We estimated about 10 hours work to clean it up. On the other hand I think you will find that Tridge's quadplane and VTOL code will run on the Firefly soon and there will be little reason to use the code from Birdseye. You might just want to get involved with porting and testing that code on your airframe. We would all probably be further ahead.
Does anyone know where this stands in terms of birdseyeview publishing the FREE source code they leveraged to develop AvA? I like their physical product and am considering it, but not if they're in violation of the GLPv3 licensing terms... I don't want to support companies like that.
has anyone tried the Team Tiltrotor version of the FireFly 6. I have had mine for a year but just now putting it together. I would like to fly it with just the pixhawk, but there seem to be some confusion on which way to go. I don't want to spend another $500.00 if I don't have to. Any help would be great..
Thanks
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