Raspberry Pi inspired autopilot • Hacker News Board

Re: Raspberry Pi inspired autopilot

#11

Post by ivereninov » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 3:28 PM UTC

klinquist wrote: post #7

Using the RPi as a video encoder may be the "killer app" for this. Currently, there isn't a "ready to fly" solution that will encode video and send it out over LTE.

Exactly! We are working on this and will include a very easy to use LTE streaming configuration for HD FPV experience.

Re: Raspberry Pi inspired autopilot

#12

Post by bhhaskin » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 3:40 PM UTC

This is awesome! How much weight does it add compared to traditional autopilots?

Re: Raspberry Pi inspired autopilot

#13

Post by mjs7231 » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 3:52 PM UTC

Just curious here. The CC3D boards were also open source, hackable, and only 1/3 the price, and guessing, but looks about 1/5th the size. What makes using better than all those downfalls?

Re: Raspberry Pi inspired autopilot

#14

Post by NietTim » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 3:53 PM UTC

I have thought about doing this before, but figured this would be too heavy. Guess I was wrong, very cool!

Re: Raspberry Pi inspired autopilot

#15

Post by igorvereninov » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 3:58 PM UTC

bhhaskin wrote: post #12

This is awesome! How much weight does it add compared to traditional autopilots?

Thanks! Additional 23 grams for raspberry pi A+

Re: Raspberry Pi inspired autopilot

#16

Post by igorvereninov » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 4:01 PM UTC

mjs7231 wrote: post #13

Just curious here. The CC3D boards were also open source, hackable, and only 1/3 the price, and guessing, but looks about 1/5th the size. What makes using better than all those downfalls?

This is completely different. Autopilot runs under Linux and that gives incredible flexibility. You can send HD video over LTE, run scripts in flight. SSH to drone in the air, how cool is that?

Re: Raspberry Pi inspired autopilot

#17

Post by nakedrobot2 » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 4:01 PM UTC

Is this only 8-bit? That is not really responsive enough.

Currently the best-in-class are naze32 with baseflight/cleanflight firmware (stunt, mini copters) or APM / pixhawk (mapping, cinematography, GPS)

Re: Raspberry Pi inspired autopilot

#18

Post by spiritplumber » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 4:01 PM UTC

klinquist wrote: post #7

Using the RPi as a video encoder may be the "killer app" for this. Currently, there isn't a "ready to fly" solution that will encode video and send it out over LTE.

You can use an Android phone with a Propbridge or IOIO board for control (disclaimer: I make and sell the Propbridge), however that is fairly heavy and contains components that you don't particularly care for, like a screen.

That said, I had 2G video off a flying wing in 2010 with this method.

Re: Raspberry Pi inspired autopilot

#19

Post by tomswartz07 » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 4:02 PM UTC

This is very neat!

Has there been any thought about using the 'Compute Model' RasPi? It's the RasPi in the DIMM form factor. Perhaps this would help lighten up the payload even more?

Re: Raspberry Pi inspired autopilot

#20

Post by asynchronous13 » Mon, Jan 12, 2015, 4:02 PM UTC

Jeandon wrote: post #2

Looks very nice. Is Linux actually real-time enough to run autopilot code?

Yes. Linux is plenty fast to run autopilot code. There are real-time patches for Linux kernel, but in my experience those are not necessary for decent performance.