VR Brain Flight Control a dream began 3 years ago.
I'm Roberto Navoni the founder of VirtualRobotix.com community
BUT ... The main problem was that this object was a closed source project and so I couldn't learn more about the flight algorithm.
So I decided to search on internet if there was some opensource project to join and learn more about this great kind of technology.
After a while I found an interesting opensource project : the AeroQuad project and I joined the DevTeam .
I saw that in internet there was also another project for autopilot that was arduplane based on the first version of an apm that was a simple arduino board to develop autopilots but only for airplanes.
When I learned enough about this kind of platforms I decided to develop my first board. The name was MultiPilot 1.0
That was my first open source design . Before that time I didn't know how powerful it was and how many things I could bring to the opensource community.
My first personal success on opensource Autopilot was the first flight with my Multipilot board using the first release of Autoquad firmware which at that time was the revision 1.5.
I was very happy to understand how a gyro work and how I can manage the motor with my remote control to do my first loiter ... a lot of code written and after a lot of pre-flight check I was operating my first flight. I was very happy.
After some time another member of the AeroQuad community, my friend Jani told me about the opportunity to develop a new opensource project called Arducopter. The idea was to use the experiences made in the AeroQuad and Arduplane projects and develop a new project called Arducopter.
Who proposed this new exciting experience was Chris Anderson , the founder of the DIYDRONES community.
During my work inside the community I kept on developing the Multipilot 1.0 board and decided to create our Team called FOXTEAM and put all our experience in our community that I named Virtual Robotix :
www.virtualrobotix.com
This is our virtual place where we can meet our developer and users of our boards and develop cheaper or professional flight platforms.
In multicopter applications the core of the system is the VR Brain flight control, then you just need only simple components as :
- Frame
- ESC : Electronic Speed Control of the motors
- Propellers
- Radio Trasmitter and Receiver
- Battery
We share the main code with DIYDRONES community, our developer is in DEVELOPER TEAM too and I thank all the members of the team for this fantastic work. Our Team worked on low level libraries and on porting to ARM Cortex M4 CPU the original 8 bit Arducopter firmware.
We prefered to develop a new generation of boards called Multipilot32 , the main difference with APM is that in our design we use an STM32 micro controller. My work in the Arducopter community was to port the firmware and enviroment from the 8 bit Arduino technology within the more advanced 32 bit technology.
During this great adventure I knew a lot of interesting people and after 3 years of work on 32 bit platform technology I'm very happy to present the result of our development :
VR Brain ready to fly Autopilot Board :
The VBrain autopilot is an all in one board the main harware features are:
- 168Mhz ARM CortexM4F microcontroller with DSP and floating-point hardware acceleration.
- 1024 KB of flash memory, 192 KB of RAM.
- MEMS accelerometer and gyro, magnetometer and barometric pressure sensor.
- 6 RC Input standard PPM , PPMSUM , SBUS
- 8 RC Output at 490 hz
- 1 integrated high speed data flash for logging data
- 1 Can bus 2 i2c Bus
- 3 Serial port available one for GPS 1 for serial option 1 for serial telemetry.
- 3 digital switch (ULN2003).
- Jtag support for onboard realtime debugger.
- 1 Buzzer output.
- 1 Input to control lipo voltage
- Included in the VR Brain Package there is the GPS module , the module support MTEK 3329 gps .
- Physical Dimension 60x40x15 mm
- Will be available a plastic enclosure.
- Acro Flight
- Stable Flight
- Simple mode flight
- Automatic Return to Landing point.
- Gps hold and altitude position.
- Automatic waypoint navigation.
- Telemetry control by Mavlink 1.0 protocol
- Manage different kind of configuration Quad , Hexa , Okto
- Manage also automatic gimbal stabilization not available in Okto configuration
http://code.google.com/p/multipilot32/
more information about the project is available inside our community :
http://www.virtualrobotix.com
Our platform support Floating point hardware acceleration and is more of 30x fast of standard arduino platform.
How you can help us :
Join our VirtualRobotix community , promote it and help us to connect a lot of new users : Developers , Beta Testers , end users, distributors or retailer of our products.
For joining us connect to : www.virtualrobotix.com , for more info normally we are available online in skype , our nick name is virtualrobotix .
To become a local distributor / retailer of our boards and products connect towww.virtualrobotix.com and send us an e-mail to info@virtualrobotix.com.
Help us to complete our work to develop a Ready to fly VR BRain , at the moment the VR Brain is available only in a limited stock, hand made, normally for advanced developer users which help us to improve the code and project.
If the crowedfounding will be successfull we can produce a big stock of board ready for end users. We need to work on documentation and advanced tools to simplify the platform for end users. So new developers are welcome
We think to have 3 option available :
VR Brain CPU - NO SENSOR :
With VR Brain lite you have a powerfull CPU that you can use to develop your great applications. This kind of configuration is suitable to develop any kind of application where you need a powerfull CPU with a lot of flash and MHz. This kind of CPU is worthy to develop applications as 3D printers, light controller application or domotics systems.
To develop applications is available a complete professional IDE based on Eclipse and is also possible to use a JTAG adapter for realtime debugging.
VR Brain Lite :
This is the version of VR Brain that supports a lot of advanced sensors to develop your own R/C - Robotics application. This kind of configuration is very good for Flying Robot (Multicopter) , Rover or Boat , it's really suited to develop giro stabilized gimbal or any other system where the need is a very good IMU (inertial Measurement Unit)
VR Brain :
All features of the lite version are included as well a GPS to allow the use of automatic functionalities as waypoint navigation, return to home and loiter. it is a very good configuration for advanced design.
We can help you to have a ready to use and tested configuration of your drone; with the same VR Brain You can develop micro quad platform, medium quad with camera onboard for video and FPV or big Multicopter for aerial picture and video shooting.
The project is opensource, so all the information, code and project is available online for our customers.
Are you interested to a "Ready to Fly" complete Kit ? ( could be available in the next update)
In our community we have a big experience in the development of a "ready to fly" drone, so we are evaluating to put a complete "ready to fly" kit on line. If you are interested add a comment with the kind of kit on which you are interested in, so in the next update we can add the right option:
The kit could be :
Simple and cheap "Ready to fly" kit to learn to fly.
Standard kit to take your pictures and video in the air.
Advanced kit for Flying camera option
Enclosure for VR Brain :
Now it is possible to download the design file for the VR Brain by thinkverse : http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:32321
If the crowdfounding will be successful there will be available also a molded print enclosure option.
Our community and main sponsor company is based in Italy , in our country is not available as in the U.S. venture capital that supports the startup of new companies, so we hope that this innovative approach will help us to continue this great adventure. This is only the first project that we intend to promote by a Indiegogo campaign but i have a lot of innovative idea to promote here.
For more info and for support the development of VR Brain join the indiegogo campaign at : http://www.indiegogo.com/vrbrain
Best
Roberto Navoni
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