I was lurking on the Dev Call this week (13 Feb 2017) and have a question. Has anyone attempted to do what Lucas dM is doing with the Intel Aero and AP but instead using a Raspberry Pi as the companion computer running (a special) ArduPilot and getting all the sensor data, R/C input, and ground station comm from the flight controller hardware over UART (or some other protocol)?
I was even thinking. Could you use a Navio2 with Raspberry Pi and skip the companion computer? Would you run two versions of ArduPilot, one that runs the Navio2 (for sensors, R/C and comm) and another that does the flight control work? Another option, create a ‘version’ of ArduPilot that says, I’m running on a Raspberry Pi (w/Navio2) so let me do more stuff because I’m more capable than the ARM processor and have more memory. Of course, the RPI is running some linux flavor.
I was lurking on the Dev Call this week (13 Feb 2017) and have a question.
Has anyone attempted to do what Lucas dM is doing with the Intel Aero and AP
but instead using a Raspberry Pi as the companion computer running (a
special) ArduPilot and getting all the sensor data, R/C input, and ground
station comm from the flight controller hardware over UART (or some other
protocol)?
Not over a uart to my understanding, but yes, something similar has been
done before.
I was even thinking. Could you use a Navio2 with Raspberry Pi and skip the
companion computer? Would you run two versions of ArduPilot, one that runs
the Navio2 (for sensors, R/C and comm) and another that does the flight
control work? Another option, create a Β‘versionΒ’ of ArduPilot that says, IΒ’m
running on a Raspberry Pi (w/Navio2) so let me do more stuff because IΒ’m
more capable than the ARM processor and have more memory. Of course, the RPI
is running some linux flavor.
Anything is possible Whether it is a good idea or not is another
matter. One of the things about the separate flight controller / CC setup
is that if the CC goes out to lunch the flight controller can land the
aircraft.
In this case the microcontroller is acting as sensor hub. Something that’s very common on our cellphones today. I don’t known anyone that has done something like that for ArduPilot yet, but it’s an idea that I’ve been thinking of.
The second is the one that’s more attractive to me and what I want to play with in near future. It adds redundancy and let you use Linux for flight stack without people that don’t believe in it to have arguments against.
In this case we’d need some work on the flight stack to allow it to be run as “a failsafe flight stack”.
I would be interested in helping develop the idea of a Linux for flight stack. I’m an advanced beginner/early intermediate C++ coder but actively learning. I could also do some testing if that could help.
I’m open to the idea running on the Aero but don’t have the hardware or PH2. Maybe that would be a later step for me.
Whether it is a good idea or not is another