Re: [Paparazzi-devel] Low cost autopilots for paparazzi

[Prof. Dr.-Ing. Heinrich Warmers]

Hi,
I am flying a Naze32 since one year with the harakiri  multiwii software.
I paid 47 Euros for the 36x36mm PCB with all sensors for automatic flight.
In the US a 35$ price is given.
RC flight and automatic altitude hold is perfect.
Position hold is compatible with paparazzi.
It is difficult to port paparazzi, because the STM M3 micro controller has only 128 kByte EPROM.
A Exchange with a other 48 pin stm processor with 256KByete EPROM  seems to be possible.

A PIX 4 hardware cost in the US 99$ and has much power.

Regards

Heinrich





Marius Pfeffer schrieb:

Hello

The Naze32 is available at Hobbyking:
http://hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__55819__AfroFlight_Naze32_Acro_AbuseMark_FunFly_Controller.html

19€, with MPU60x0, without mag and preasure sensor, cheap as hell....

STM32F103CB has only 128 Kbytes memory and I think he is connected with a silabs cp2102 with USB, but there is a swd header...

Best Regards

Marius/Neo

2013-08-03 12:48 GMT+02:00 Prof. Dr.-Ing. Heinrich Warmers <address@hidden>:

Thanks for the link  Marius.

Marius Pfeffer schrieb:

Sorry, forgott the link:

http://www.mikrocontroller.net/topic/299315

-Marius

Am 02.08.2013 22:45 schrieb "Hector Garcia de Marina" <address@hidden>:

Be aware of that cheap hardware also comes with its major drawbacks such as power, noise and malfunction due to temperature issues.

Having a good designed board is not only for fun. As an example I remember the case of one autopilot (for a boat) employing a low cost board, the magnetometer (from Honeywell HMC series) employed as a pump capacitor a cheap tantalum one.

Well, that capacitor had a high resistor series under low temperatures (below 5 degrees). All the test were in summer, so everything was ok. In winter, because of that issue, the magnetometer started to ruin the I2C communication (the chip hanged without freeing the bus) and they lost the boat (fortunately they could recover it). Imagine what would happen in an airplane.

Even for hobby, a flying machine takes a lot of time (we all know this :P) and it is really annoying to see one crash because cheap hardware. Besides for mass production, I would say it is really worthy to spend 50 or 100€ more in a well tested 

board. After all, in my opinion, if you can afford to have a quadrotor or an airplane and its maintenance, you should go for relative good hardware.

On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 10:21 AM, Felix Ruess <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi Heinrich.

"All" you need to do is write a new board makefile in conf/boards and a new board header file in sw/airborne/boards containing the pin mapping you wish. You can use the Lisa m ones as example and starting point.

Cheers, Felix

On Aug 2, 2013 10:09 AM, "Michel GORRAZ" <address@hidden> wrote:

The construction  of a prototype by hand need about 40h.

40h ?!?!? for one board ???

You should order new hands :)

Kidding aside, i'm not sure to get your message : if you want to port pprz on "cheap" hardware, ok, " just do it", but don't confuse people with bad numbers.
I think having companies taking the risk building the hardware that is perfectly matching our needs is a real chance...

Michel

2013/8/2 Prof. Dr.-Ing. Heinrich Warmers <address@hidden>

Hi Michal,
a problem with the Paparazzi project  is that the hardware is expensive by the low count  of  units  for example for  many students and hobbyists.
The special hardware like Krooz, Apogee etc. is good but not available in many countries or shops and make also
a determination between mutirotor or normal wings aircraft
For example the production  of our one autopilot HBmini  the self cost of  manufacturing  a set of 10 units is about 2500 Euros.
The fix cost of a production run is about 1000 Euros in Germany .
The construction  of a prototype by hand need about 40h.

The second idea is to use the same cheap hardware for simple software like  MultiWii and a more complex like Paparazzi.
This gives the chance that a hobbyists starts with the simple software and can chance to Paparazzi to a second without new hardware.
The work for the implementation is only  the addition of  a new make system and directories.

Regards

Heinrich






















Michal Podhradsky schrieb:

Hello Heinrich,

do I understand correctly that you want to port paparazzi onto an existing hardware? I noticed that recently lot of new APs came out (Krooz, Apogee) and the community is working on those. Just a suggestion - maybe it would be better to first finish and properly test those boards (so they can be considered airworthy) before moving to new hardware (which should be way easier with proven drivers)?

With kind regards
Michal

On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 4:21 PM, limaiem imed <address@hidden> wrote:

Hello,

why not,

I can help with 3hours a week.

But you need to split the job ...

regards,

Imed LIMAIEM
address@hidden

On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 12:38 PM, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Heinrich Warmers <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi,
i want to start a discussion for low cost STM3 autopilots to use with paparazzi
I have flown a low cost Multikopter  with the following autopilot with the STM32f103 (M3 with 48 pins 128kB EPROM 20kB RAM):

 http://flyduino.net/Multikopter-FC_2  cost  47 Euro compatible with
 
http://abusemark.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=30 
(cost 49,50 Euro) compatible with
 
http://abusemark.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=45 
( Cost 18,50 Euro without magnet and baron sensor).

The multirotor has the same performance, like my paparazzi multirotor.
The software is a 32-bit MultiWii port.
The hardware is full Paparazzi computable.
The board has a USB connection and sensors of the sate of the art.

It seems to be simple to port paparazzi on this hardware. The only restriction is the 128KB EPROM space.

Is same one of the Paparazzi team willing to work with me to port paparazzi on this hardware?

Next time STM offer a processor with 265KB EPROM and 64 KB RAM in the same housing with the f4 CPU (floating point unit, cost about 10 Euros).

I am locking for answers

Heinrich

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--

Héctor

Webpage: http://mathtronics.wordpress.com/

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