LinuxDrone Project Hardware for the LinuxDrone

[vmayoral]

Hi guys,

I'm opening this new thread to speak about the hardware to be used with the BeagleDrone.
If we speak about the BBB usage, from my perspective there're two main approaches:

• Integrated one: Erle Robot is a low cost, light-weight and fully integrated Linux drone (BB-based) with all the necessary sensors and peripherals to perform simple missions. It includes 3 accelerometers, 3 magnetometers, 3 gyroscopes, 2 range finders (bottom and top), altimeter, GPS and a big quantity of IOs to hack it. Please refer to the web for more information.
  
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  I honestly believe that LinuxDrone can be a great asset these kind of drones. Furthermore the robot Erle's design is still open so we would be happy to integrate all the feedback/request that you guys might have.
• Using capes: The most representative example of this approach is the PixHawk Fire Cape announced by the ArduPilot guys. They've promised many sensors on board and they aim to improve the ARDrone stability system.

Bests,

Victor.

 

[osnwt]

From LinuxDrone developers' point of view we appreciate a lot of options to run our system.

The idea behind was to make possible running the real-time linux-based system with web GUI and full javascripting on almost any Linux board. At the moment we are focused on BeagleBone Black-based solutions. But since they don't contain sensors, we need either capes or integrated boards. And your hardware fit this goal very well, complementing the solution.

The main goal of our system was easy of use, using integrated web server for setup and scripting. But we do not have a flight code yet. Many other projects have flight code (either existing ported to Linux or own), but use PC software for configuration. I think we can easily collaborate joining both approaches and creating a highly modular system which can run many alternative modules for flight, for example.

NB: we have repositioned our system. Actually, with the web GUI and topology editor it becomes a general purpose real-time system platform to be used for any real-time applications, not just UAV drones.

 

[Bartman]

hi guys...i see the board in the original post has all of the sensors on the main board....we've seen other designers claim that the GPS and magnetometer sensors need to be located off-board away from the noise of the helicopter's other wiring and electronics.....is it true or are the sensors less vulnerable to interference than we've been led to believe?

thanks and keep up the good work! i don't understand most of what you're talking about but i'm rooting for your success!!

 

[osnwt]

i see the board in the original post has all of the sensors on the main board

I should probably stress that the LinuxDrone project currently develops *software only*. My personal experience shows that accels and gyros should be mounted out of main board, and that magnetometers should be moved far from the rest of electronics. That's why we don't develop hardware but use separate sensor boards for our tests.

The hardware shown in this thread is NOT developed by the LinuxDrone team. It is a completely different project. That hardware *probably* can be used to run our software. But please do not mix these two projects. They are different.

 

[Bartman]

ok, thanks for the reply.

 

[makayasaul]

Hello,
Thanks for sharing the information.
Thanks

 

[Erk]

I was wondering how the port to the Raspberry Pi was coming along? I think the model A+ is a good size for a Flight Controller, it's 65mm x 56mm and 23gms, which is not ideal, still a lot smaller than the BBB which is the main focus of development. My concern after reading the development threads, is that there seems to be a lot of use of the additional processors on the BBB but I don't think the Pi has something similar, which means the versions are going to be substantially different.