UAV DevBoard

A three-axis IMU-based autopilot board

This is the home page for the SparkFun three-axis autopilot development board developed by Bill Premerlani. This board comes with a dsPIC30F4011 CPU, an MMA7260 three axis accelerometer and 3 LISY300AL gyros already soldered as shown in the picture. It is intended for the do-it-yourselfer.

By itself, it can be used to develop a three axis IMU controller. With the addition of an EM406 or (even better) Ublox5 (with adapter and cable) GPS receiver it becomes a full autopilot/ UAV controller for an RC car, plane, or boat. It comes with self-testing firmware that serves as a starting point for you to develop your own control and navigation firmware. To enable full autopilot mode, download and install the MatrixPilot software (full documentation is at that site).

You will need a hardware programmer to download firmware into the UAV DevBoard, for more information, see a posting on the subject. A guide for programming with a ICD2 is here. Note: the ICD2 is not supported by Windows 7 unless you are running in virtual Windows XP mode.

[Warning: Do not press on any of the headers of the board, especially the gyros. Some boards have cold solder joints on the gyro connections. For more information, refer to this discussion.

DevBoards are tested at the factory, but just to be sure, you should do a functional test on the board before doing anything else. I know you are excited to get started, but its better to be safe. The easiest way to test the board is to follow the instructions for running the roll-pitch-yaw demo. After you install the board in your plane, do a ground check of all functions before you take to the air. This is also a good way to verify that vibration from the airplane's motor is not interfering with the gyros. The demo should work the same way with or without the motor running. If vibration from the motor interferes with the demo, mount the board on some foam rubber.]

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Note: All firmware is available for both the previous "green" version of the UAV DevBoard
with the ADXRS401 gyros, and the new "red" version with the LISY300AL gyros.
Each zip file has both a corresponding "green" project and a "red" project.

A guide for getting started with PIC programming, and what to do if you get ICD2 errors.

Project home where you can download the latest version of Ben Levitt's MatrixPilot firmware. For instructions,
go to the project's google home, and select the Wiki tab.

Source code (C) and basic instructions and waypoint instructions,
for MatrixNav waypoint firmware version 1.8 for either the red or green board.

Source code (C) and instructions for MatrixNav return to launch firmware version 1.7 for
either the red or green board.

Source code (C) and basic instructions and waypoint instructions,
for AileronAssist waypoint firmware version 1.8 for either the red or green board.

Source code (C) and instructions for
AileronAssist RTL firmware version 1.7 for either the red or green board.

Firmware and documentation for the roll-pitch-yaw demo for
either the red or green board.

The direction cosine matrix discussion forum is here.

Several technical papers by Mahony on the theory behind computing
and using direction cosines.

A draft of an explanation of the direction cosine matrix algorithm.

Paul Bizard's Matlab S-functions for the DCM algorithm and for extended Kalman filtering.

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Additional equipment:

We highly recommend the following items to accompany this product:

20-Channel EM-406A SiRF III GPS Receiver
You will need hardware for programming and debugging. For more information, see this posting.
An RC car, plane, or boat
If you've never played with GPS before, we also recommend getting an ET312 evaluation board just so you can instantly view and understand the SiRF NMEA or binary communications protocols

Features: