Dear Friends,

our lab continue to work and improve our platform , we are working on next generation RTF and OEM platform.

The new brand will be VR BRAIN 4.0 the revision of produvt will be MP32FX V4. Put a BRAIN in your DRONE :)

The new design will be based on experience doing with MP32FX V3 and NAVY 2012 . Same great sensor MPU6000 , HMC5883 , MS barometer and STM32F1 or F4 as micro controller and Data Flash onboard for save realtime data logging .

The design will be more compact , only  1 all in one board with put a gps on it or connected by a cable

There are also interesting news about new exclusive ST MEMS sensor supported by VR Brain but will be more news available in the future :)

For special low consuption application will be available also L1 revision of micro.

So with this new boar will be available also the new VR IDE PRO .

The main adavantages of this new ide is the direct support of .PDE file  so will be more simple mantain the aligment of arducopter project  and support of relative path  so will be more simple de zip and use enviroment without need to redefine the path ecc ecc in the eclipse.

This is the link of new VRIDE is 4 part download all then dezip it.

http://code.google.com/p/multipilot32/downloads/detail?name=vrobotix-ide-pro-0.0.5.7.0-WIP-Angerl%20Loiter-F1-F4.part1.rar&can=2&q=#makechanges

See last video doing with the hardware that will be used also in VR BRAIN

The precision of loiter is around 2 meter

New developer and user are welcome , this will be ideal platform also for oem developer : Autopilot and Gimbal Control systems :)

Best

Roberto

Ciao a tutti!

Incidente mortale per un ingegnere austriaco in Sud Corea durante una prova di un drone militare.

Si dice nell'articolo che sarebbe dovuto ad un interferenza (voluta o no, Nord-Coreani ...) sul GPS.

E impressionante i danni che ci sono stati oltre la morte di un uomo (150 kg di drone in un camion...)

Cliccare su Link per l'articolo completo.

Fa riflettere sul rapporto costi/sicurezza di questi mezzi ...

Buon voli

Touch

First early Flight Video only for test that all work fine ... a windy day and need to setup PID because with more power the old one is not good:

Dear Friends,
i'm happy to inform you that our new product Multipilot32F4 and NAVY 2012 is ready
for beta testing for a special price of 199 euro.

We presented it at the beginning of year .We finish to port low
level library from STM32F1 to STM32F4: We rewrite old libmaple for STM32F1 by scratch porting
all lib to STM32F4. (thank's Alberto V for his work on library)
So the AP_LIB have same interface of standard AP_LIB for arduino and
the Arducopter32  is very similar to original revision for Arduino
platform , share 98% with original code.

The firmware that i using in my fly test is Arducopter 2.5.4 so it's last available.

I'm doing my first fly test in these day with success . A video will be availabe in the next days

The characteristics of Multipilot32F4 are:

Hardware:

• ARM Cortex-M4 processor STM32F407VET6. 168 Mhz
• Flash 1024 Kbytes RAM 196 Kbytes
• 16-bit Timer 4
• SPI 2 (ADC Interface , MicroSD connection Option)
• I ² C 2 (First I2C (sensor), Second I2C control until ESC 12)
• USART 5 (GPS, DEBUG Console, XBee Pro Telemetry)
• USB 1 (Upload Firmware, Debug Console, Power Board for Debug)
• CAN 1 (Interconnection with Professional ESC 1 Mbit update rate)
• 8 PWM Output Bit 16 (ESC / Servo Control)
• 7 PWM Input 16 Bit (RC Input Channel, accept PPM SUM)
• 8 Analog Input 12 Bit.
• Professional 4 layers PCB.
• DC: DC 30 V (6s Lipo): 5 volts and 3.3 volts
• MPU6000 Imu Sensor 3 gyro and 3 acc on board

The NAVY 2012

• HMC5883 3 axis magnetic sensor
• EEPROM for data storage
• MS6511 high precision barometer
• MTEK GPS with custom firmware for arducopter.
• Dataflash on board.
• SDIO SD Card
• SPI SD Card that support FAT file systems. (Optional)

More info about the boards are available here :

http://www.virtualrobotix.com/page/multipilot32f4-v3-0

The board is yet in production and available the next stock could be
available in the middle of may.

There are a lot of tool for development :

• A very light toolchain for peolpe that like command line ... a lot in hard developer community.
• A VRIDE Pro that is an eclipse with support for JTAG debugging .. we using ST-LINK.
• An VRIDE Std that will be available in some week for end user .

Is possible to use the DFU on usb for upgrade firmware without problem.

This is the link for download last revision of  enviroment :http://code.google.com/p/multipilot32/downloads/detail?name=VR%20MP32F4%20%20IDE%20LIB%20FIRMWARE%2001-5-2012%202.6%20%20beta.rar&can=2&q=#makechanges

This is the link of the thread on virtualrobotix forum:
http://www.virtualrobotix.com/forum/topics/multipilot32-v3-f1-f4-and-new-vr-ide-pro

In our test we found more of 12x respect to standard Arduino Mega hardware platform.

The spare time cicle in 5 second is 3610 for APM and 42321 for an Multipilo32F4. 


In this test is not yet available the FPU acceleration only by different clock 16 mhz for arduino , 168 for Multipilot32F4



In this video you can see the different whe use FPU ON or FPU OFF math acceleragion going up 17x

This is the new benchmark   

Arduino APM1 e APM2  

PerfMon:            cpu%          mils #called Hz 

loop                     33.45%  96 3614 0hz 

read_AHR             34.09%    98       29 0hz 

FiftyHZ_Loop         2.88%         8        15 0hz 

Update_GPS           0.56%                  1       15 0hz 

setupA                   0.00%              0   0 0hz 

unexplained         29.03% 83  



STM32F1                        MP32F1  

PerfMon:                       cpu%        mils #called    Hz 

loop                            35.81%  112     18357   0hz 

read_AHR               23.53%  73      130             0hz Fif y

FiftyHZ_Loop   H           7.54   54      15              0hz 

SuperFast_Loop         3.04%   9       392             0hz 

Update_GPS             1.10%   3       15              0hz 

ReadBarometer          0.07%   0       3               0hz 

setupA                 0.00%   0       0               0hz

unexplained             18.91%  59    



STM32F4                 MP32F4 ( NOW I2C IS OK )  

PerfMon:                 cpu%    mils    #called Hz 

loop                       46.88%             131 42321 0hz 

read_AHR               11.01%  30      138     0hz 

SuperFast_Loop         8.45%   23      519     0hz 

FiftyHZ_Loop           3.00%   8       15      0hz 

Update_GPS             0.13%   0       15      0hz 

ReadBarometer          0.04%   0       3       0hz 

setupA                 0.00%   0       0       0hz 

unexplained            30.49%  85

So if someone would join the development is welcome :)

Best

Roberto Navoni