Hello ArduPilot community!
I’m George, a final-year Aero MEng student at Durham University. For my final-year dissertation project I have developed EDUCOPTER, a minimal Raspberry Pi–based Linux flight controller designed to make custom ArduPilot hardware more accessible for students and researchers.
EDUCOPTER builds on the excellent OBAL project, extending the idea of using a Raspberry Pi as the primary flight computer for a custom Linux autopilot board.
The aim of EDUCOPTER is to provide a simple and reproducible reference design for understanding how ArduPilot runs on Linux-based hardware. The project focuses on transparency and accessibility, with the goal of supporting teaching, experimentation, and further development using the ArduPilot Linux HAL.
The project includes:
-designing and manufacturing a single-sided PCB to interface sensors
-porting ArduPilot to a custom Linux board subtype to build the EDUCOPTER binary
-integrating the flight controller into a simple quadcopter design
-ground testing and flight testing the system
-documenting the internal structure of the ArduPilot Linux HAL architecture
-diagrams and instructions to support future research into ArduPilot for Linux
All instructions required to reproduce the project including gerber files, hardware definition files, software configuration steps, and flight setup are available on the GitHub repository:
I would really appreciate any feedback from the community, and please feel free to ask questions here if anything would be useful to expand or improve!
