Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Makani source code released

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 127 posts

Re: Makani source code released

#31

Post by brandmeyer »

elromulous wrote: post #28
UncleOxidant wrote: post #3

It's cool that they open sourced this, but as someone who worked at a kite power company (a much smaller company with a much smaller kite) I'm not sure much here will be transferable to other companies. Makani was making a huge 2000 lb "kite" turbine. That requires the kind of money that Google could back them with - and since Google isn't funding this anymore I just don't see where this can go as none of the remaini…

That's not totally true. While there are certainly custom control laws and gains, almost everything is parameterized in terms of the kite's configuration. Edit: to clarify, I was responding to: "I'm not sure much here will be transferable to other companies"

Dude, that's totally true. Just for one example: I.MX, TMS570, and ethernet of all things are all very expensive and extravagant solutions for the application. Those decisions are only supportable if you can hide the cost behind the price tag of a system the size of Makani (preferably much larger). Almost anyone else would be looking at Cortex-M and CAN bus and be quite satisfied with those selections.

Re: Makani source code released

#34

Post by tobinfricke »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #4
purpleidea wrote: post #2

I guess this means that this project is dead or not viable for some reason, and they're being nice and releasing their work. Good job Google! As an aside, it should be law to release any firmware, code, and backend services code for any device that is no longer fully supported by the manufacturer. Let other people play with your dead things and reduce the barrier for new innovation on top of them.

Google stopped funding Makani several months back. I'm not sure how applicable most of this code will be for other kite power companies. The Makani "kite" turbine was 2000 lbs. It definitely required Google-level funding to develop which is now gone. None of the remaining kite power companies that I'm aware of have the kind of significant funding required to develop this - ours ran out of money late last year.

> The Makani "kite" turbine was 2000 lbs.

Essentially the same code could run Makani's smaller machine, the 20 kilowatt "Wing 7", with a 7.8 meter wingspan and a mass of 60 kg. Many of the existing kite power companies are working on machines of this scale.

But we did have the luxury to design and build the system from the ground up, whereas scrappier startups might have to cobble together existing components. Hopefully they will be able to utilize some of the materials we've just released.

Re: Makani source code released

#35

Post by meekrohprocess »

elromulous wrote: post #27
meekrohprocess wrote: post #25

Neat! If I'm reading the repository right, it looks like the avionics firmware ran on a TMS570 Cortex-R microcontroller made by TI: https://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Category:TMS570 I'm pleasantly surprised to see that instead of a big Cortex-A or x86/64 chip. It's cool to read well-funded code for a small realtime SoC. you don't see them too often outside of things like memory controllers and safety-critical…

Not entirely true. The actual autopilot (the controller + estimator) runs on an imx6. The tms570 are the sensor / actuator nodes. Edit: just to add some detail. The autopilot and aio (avionics io, i.e. the tmd570s) communicate over a ring ethernet topology.

Oh, that makes sense. It did seem like a lot for such a small processor to handle.

Still, that sounds even cooler; a reference for how to set up a local network of MCUs controlled by a big processor? Awesome.

Re: Makani source code released

#36

Post by tobinfricke »

canofbars wrote: post #17
purpleidea wrote: post #2

I guess this means that this project is dead or not viable for some reason, and they're being nice and releasing their work. Good job Google! As an aside, it should be law to release any firmware, code, and backend services code for any device that is no longer fully supported by the manufacturer. Let other people play with your dead things and reduce the barrier for new innovation on top of them.

I think the main obstacle is these things often contain licensed code the company does not have permission to open source.

That's right; or the IP gets sold to someone and never sees the light of day. Think of BeOS (sold to Palm Inc) etc.

Re: Makani source code released

#37

Post by lowiqengineer »

jefftk wrote: post #24
lowiqengineer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the "disclosure" necessary, or are you just flexing?

Maybe not? But I've seen people here get mad at other employees for not disclosing, so I do it to be on the safe side.

I’ve never seen anyone from my company disclose, which has way more engineers.

Re: Makani source code released

#38

Post by tobinfricke »

brandmeyer wrote: post #31
elromulous wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not totally true. While there are certainly custom control laws and gains, almost everything is parameterized in terms of the kite's configuration. Edit: to clarify, I was responding to: "I'm not sure much here will be transferable to other companies"

Dude, that's totally true. Just for one example: I.MX, TMS570, and ethernet of all things are all very expensive and extravagant solutions for the application. Those decisions are only supportable if you can hide the cost behind the price tag of a system the size of Makani (preferably much larger). Almost anyone else would be looking at Cortex-M and CAN bus and be quite satisfied with those selections.

The use of those processors and ethernet were not major cost drivers.

There's a very nice technical document describing the network topology titled "A Low-Cost Fiber Optic Avionics Network for Energy Kites" in the collection of technical documents:

https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/Maka...

Re: Makani source code released

#39

Post by tobinfricke »

Xorlev wrote: post #19
UncleOxidant wrote: post #3

It's cool that they open sourced this, but as someone who worked at a kite power company (a much smaller company with a much smaller kite) I'm not sure much here will be transferable to other companies. Makani was making a huge 2000 lb "kite" turbine. That requires the kind of money that Google could back them with - and since Google isn't funding this anymore I just don't see where this can go as none of the remaini…

Does code released have to have commercial applicability to other organizations to be relevant? It seems like a post-mortem code dump.

We hope that others find the code useful. There are a lot of goodies in there. A full-fledged flight simulator that could be used to simulate a variety of physical systems. A Kalman-filter-based state estimator. Math libraries. Firmware to run high performance electric motors. We also understand that it's typically very hard to adapt and re-use other people's code, especially when it's no longer actively supported.

Aside from the "code dump" portion, we have published 400 pages of entirely new documentation describing the system, plus about an equal amount of technical document artifacts.

Re: Makani source code released

#40

Post by TaylorAlexander »

brandmeyer wrote: post #13
msoad wrote: post #8

Why this failed? I would love to learn more if anyone has more insider knowledge

The tether replaces one set of problems with a different set of problems. Some of the new problems had promising solutions, but others were more marginal. 1) Land use. The small props are loud, and the setbacks relative to populated areas are pretty high for tether and crash safety. Solution: offshore. Now you have two problems :) 2) The tether's weight is a factor. Its hard to build in much margin on this component…

From what I hear the robotics initiative is still going. I left in early 2019 and the project has its challenges (robotics is hard), but from what I could tell they still had support of leadership.
Post reply on HN