Yea, I see nothing wrong with this Using a pi as a flight controler What could go wrong?

[G+_610GARAGE]

Yea, I see nothing wrong with this. Using a pi as a flight controler. What could go wrong?.......

 

Its an interesting idea, but I would not use a general purpose operating system for a flight controller. Too much of a chance that it could lock up.

 

To be fair, I am assuming that it is using linux. They could have built a dedicated os. But I couldn't find anything about the os from my quick look.

http://hackaday.com/2016/02/16/a-quadcopter-controlled-by-a-pi-zero/

[G+_Dan Hockey]

Rpi's now use something called raspbian. It is a spin off of debian. The lastest is raspbian jessie. A device like this should be using a real time kernel. Google for "flying with linux" you'll find some cool videos of what linux can do.

BTW there are other interesting distro's for the rpi.

http://elinux.org/RPi_Distributions

[G+_610GARAGE]

Dan Hockey Yea, that's the problem. Raspbian uses threading. Threads can lock up. A standard flight controller doesn't really use an os. It's like an arduino. It executes code on a loop, barring any interrupts.

 

Also, a lack of threads makes programing WAY simpler. Which makes the the code easier to test; easier to debug and overall, makes for sturdier code.

[G+_Dan Hockey]

It would have been nice if they had provided more details about that board. I wouldn't be surprised if it had an embedded arduino or avr to do the real time stuff.

[G+_610GARAGE]

Dan Hockey Yea, that would have been nice. Having an avr onboard to maintain level and the pi to control it would be great. Than if the pi stalls out, it could be rebooted by the avr and the avr can maintain level.

 

There was a company doing something similar, though not with a pi.

[G+_Dan Hockey]

It might have been the beagle bone black.

[G+_Ben Reese]

Looks like it's a daughter board on the Pi. Probably has a real-time flight controller to actually drive everything then the Pi just sends it commands - similar to a remote. Just my guess though.

[G+_610GARAGE]

Wayne Hobbins The nerd appeal of having a pi in your quadcopter? This seems like overkill for %99 of the drones out there. Evan photograph/videography drones. That said, there may be more complicated sensors that this would allow for. Which would be interesting. 

 

Ben Reese That's what I would hope. Unfortunately, they don't have schematics up yet. They also didn't say that there was a flight controller onboard. Maby it was an oversight.

 

http://erlerobotics.com/docs/Artificial_Brains_and_Autopilots/Autopilot_shields/PXFmini/Intro.html

[G+_Steve Martin]

Wayne Hobbins agreed, having HDMI and some of the other stuff seems pretty superfluous on a drone. Inflight movies? The weight alone seems excessive. Fun idea but not very practical.

[G+_Ben Reese]

We're starting to add a lot of weight to this, but why not include a pico projector in that case too. Project movies on a building 5 stories up.

[G+_610GARAGE]

Ben Reese Ooo, we could play a video of a ghost and have it chase people. :)