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BeagleUAV: Linux drones with the BeagleBone Black

An open hardware cape for the BeagleBone Black to make Linux drones powered by Ubuntu Snappy Core

BeagleUAV: Linux drones with the BeagleBone Black

An open hardware cape for the BeagleBone Black to make Linux drones powered by Ubuntu Snappy Core

2 Campaigns |

Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain

$7,044 USD $7,044 USD 66 backers

26% of $26,845 Fixed Goal Fixed Goal

Story

FAQ

Updates 3

Comments 29

Highlights

2 Projects 2 Projects

The cape

The PixHawk Fire (PXF) is an open hardware cape (daughter board) for the BeagleBone Black that allows you to create Linux (we'll be offering Snappy Ubuntu Core images) autopilot for drones that uses the open sourced APM autopilot (source).

The cape includes:

Sensors

MPU6000: 3-axis gyroscope, 3-axis accelerometer and temperature sensor.
MPU9250: 3-axis gyroscope, 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis magnetometer and temperature sensor
LSM9DS0: 3-axis gyroscope, 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis magnetometer and temperature sensor.
MS5611-01BA03: Barometer that includes pressure and temperature sensors.

Connectors

3x LED indicators (Green, Amber and Blue)
2x serial UART ports (ttyO0 is not active)
1x CAN connector and transceiver
3x I2C ports
1x Buzzer
1x Safety switch
9x PWM output channels
1 PPM/S.Bus in
1x Spektrum
1x Power brick connector
1x Battery backup (1 LiPo cell)
1x ADC
2x GPIOs exposed (IO)
1x analogic pressure sensor (AIR)

Mechanical characteristics

Size: 88.6 x 54.73 x 20.69 mm
Layers: 6
PCB Thickness: 1.62 mm
Weight: 31 grams

Get a Ubuntu Snappy Core drone and access to the "app store" for drones

With the support of Canonical, the PixHawk Fire Cape together with the BeagleBone Black will give everyone access to a Snappy Ubuntu Core brain for making drones. This means that you'll be able to access the app store for drones we've been working on over the last months:

Start developing drone apps already ;)!

ROS-powered drones

We truly believe that the future of robotics and drones will be enabled by the Robot Operating System (ROS) and the amazing work that the guys at the Open Source Robotics Foundation are doing (with ROS 2.0 coming in a few months). We use ROS actively ourselves (e.g.: Erle Robotics: Teleoperating drones with ROS) and will offer ROS support for the BBB+PXF combination.

Story

The PixHawk Fire (PXF) has been evolving over the last year. It went through different versions improving capacitor values, changing functionality exposed, addressing booting issues.

The initial concept started from Philip Rowse, an Australian hardware engineer. Philip and Víctor got in touch through the BeaglePilot project which aimed to port APM to Linux. At that time Víctor was working on Erle-Board, an integrated BBB-based design for making single-PCB drones. Giving the high costs of the final design Víctor decided to jump into the PXF and push forward a single design together.

Who's behind the cape

The following organizations contributed to make the PXF and its software a reality:

Documentation

The PXF is documented in Erle-Brain GitBook. Additional sections would be added by user request and optionally a sole GitBook could be created for this cause.

Discussion about the cape is available through:

About Erle Robotics

Erle Robotics is a startup based in the Spain and led by a group of young roboticists focused on bringing up the next generation of personal Linux-based robots powered by ROS.