28 replies to this topic

[Gary Mortimer]

How long until the pixie dust enhanced units can be flown by a non coder Dankers??? Even if it is in another quad  

[Angus]

Christmas?

[dankers]

Its just impossible to answer. At the end of the day we having been going less than 5 months, have all the hardware sorted already and a lot depends on the interest OpenPilot generates. As one guy recently stated, "We are the best kept secret in UAVS", we tried to keep it this way until we are further along. Once the developer kits become available (this will be final hardware, as all our test hardware was given away for free) I think we will be much more widely known.

At the end of the day I believe we are doing almost everything right, it is a non-profit community project, we are offering hardware at as close to our cost as possible and are the only project to do this, not only in UAVs but I personally have not come across it before. Trust me on this, we have certainly put our wallets where our mouths are!

We are hoping to fund the server costs etc with donations as well, it is key for us that people get what we are trying to achieve and donate. I think a major problem will be how we communicate this to other people. For sure the AHRSs will be usable with other Quads and other APs, but the whole idea of building a community would be to sell the hardware at cost in the hopes developers would give back to OpenPilot, at least initially.  

Bottom line is if people just see us as idiots for selling our hardware too cheap and simply just take, it will damage this project greatly, the great hope for this project is people actually give something back, either development skill, help writing documentation or just donations if they can't find the time to help out.

For sure we are going to get people that just take, we have had a few of them come along already. We have also already encountered serious hostility from for profit projects that feel very threatened by our community, still they are more than happy to copy our innovations! So for sure there are a lot of negatives types out there but the hope is the positive people out number them.

[Matt L]

Analog Devices just released and amazing gyro. It is internally temperature compensated and it can be mounted in two orientations so that all of the gyros can be mounted on one board.

"This fourth-generation device features an advanced, differential quad-sensor design that enables it to operate accurately under intense shock and vibration conditions."

Now that you are excited I just wanted to say:
Too bad they are $57 a pop

Attached Files

•  ADXRS450.jpg   21.54K   141 downloads

[dankers]

We knew about that as a pre-release as we have been talking with all the gyro manufacturers and were really excited about it as well, until we heard that it would be above $40 each, so seeing it at $57 is even worse! AD rock but the cost is too high, we switched to the Invensense 8 weeks ago after a conference calls with a couple of their engineers, they have also been really good as well and very helpful. Although they are not internally temperature compensated we do have the gyro's internal temp probe on a pin of the STM32, this is a must to get good performance with the ID range as they are fairly temp sensitive. Our early tests found they were more temperature sensitive than the AD that version 1 of our the AHRS used but with temp comp we are getting very impressive results.

Matt L, on 13 May 2010 - 04:59 AM, said:

Analog Devices just released and amazing gyro. It is internally temperature compensated and it can be mounted in two orientations so that all of the gyros can be mounted on one board.

"This fourth-generation device features an advanced, differential quad-sensor design that enables it to operate accurately under intense shock and vibration conditions."

Now that you are excited I just wanted to say:
Too bad they are $57 a pop

[Angus]

I'm not sure putting pads on the side of it really solves the whole "damn parts sticking up" issue... but if they say so

[dankers]

Oh my never spotted that, I guess it saves the mini PCBs we used to have when we used AD but its not quite as I pictured as they stated it could be mounted with the multiple orientations.

Angus, on 13 May 2010 - 05:35 AM, said:

I'm not sure putting pads on the side of it really solves the whole "damn parts sticking up" issue... but if they say so

[Radar]

Extremely sweet development, guys!

Just found this after looking through a boatload of other options for a project we're trying to put together now.  We are now working on high powered rockets that reach some very high altitudes.  Our last launch was 3 stages and reached 62,000 feet.  The problem is recovering these can be very difficult due to terrain issues, accessibility, and distance.  Thus, our project is to deploy a parafoil instead of the traditional round chute and fly the rocket back to the launch site.

This AHRS and much of the other development around OpenPilot is a perfect fit for the functionality we need.  As soon as these things are working, I need one/some.

A couple question:

1. What's the expected power dissipation?  We have more limited battery power in the rocket due to weight and size restrictions.
2. Will this survive under 20G acceleration at launch (and -5G at motor burnout)?  By "survive" I mean not be damaged or completely lose calibration.  I understand that I might need to modify the design with a second Z-axis accelerometer that will actually measure the higher load when the ones you have max out.

Thanks, and I'll keep tracking the development.

[Gary Mortimer]

Blimey, I don't have your answer but thats one serious rocket, do you guys have a website? Loved your work in MASH BTW.