6 ms·

ArduBee – A micro drone for open source development

371 points by dieantwoord 6y ago

khancyr 6y ago
The drone seems nice, I hope we can play with it soon ! I am glad they share some development with open source !
- luminousbees 6y ago
  Thank you so much khancyr! You are a well-known member in the ardupilot community your support is highly appreciated and if you have ideas or suggestions we would love to have your opinion before closing the new ArduBee prototypes in development With great excitement we follow the feeback here on HN and we are happy to answer all your questions! Besides posting here you're all also very much invited to submit your feedback via this google form and contribute with your ideas to the final version of ArduBee before starting the kickstarter: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfSv-mjhigMYmZsG03N8fZ2-TsJQC9cG0GdrETQfmdx_tZYhg/viewform https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfSv-mjhigMYmZsG03N...
spiritplumber 6y ago
Cool, but what does it do that the HoverflyOpen doesn't already?
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  The HoverflyOpen seems to just be a small part of the stack needed to build a swarm of drones. This project seems to be the full stack.
- itgoon 6y ago
  I've known about ArduPilot for a long time, never even heard of HoverflyOpen. The only reference I found for HoverflyOpen is this: https://www.parallax.com/product/31500 https://www.parallax.com/product/31500 Comparing that to the ArduBee isn't really much of a comparison. The only advantage I see is that HoverflyOpen currently exists, while ArduBee looks like they are still in the preparing-to-Kickstart phase. If there's more out there for HoverflyOpen, please share it. I'll admit I didn't dig around much. ArduPilot is a well-known and battle-tested platform.
  - spiritplumber 6y ago
    That's really it: you can grab all the code and schems from there. There was a community but it shut down when the FAA regs about drones >250grams came out.
    - luminousbees 6y ago
      We are trying to shape ArduBee as an excellent platform for 100g-200g micro uav develop and to enable urban swarm experimentations, indoor and outdoor!
      - spiritplumber 6y ago
        Very cool, but in that case definitely give Parallax a poke since they've been doing it for a while, it may save you some time and some mass.
        luminousbees 6y ago
        Thanks! I'll do it, I've never visit Parallax site before
- luminousbees 6y ago
  Hi! Makers from ArduBee here. Thanks a lot for this comment! As we have never heared of HoverflyOpen and we couldn't find much more than on this site, we can not really comment on it. But if you have more information, we would love to hear about it! Just based on the facts we can get from that site, it seems a quite priced Flight controller, where you do not know in which flight stack you could use it. Also you can not see how large the community of developers is around it. Arudupilot, which is our foundation for ArduBee, is Open Source and with a large user base and active, high talented developers working constantly on maintenance and improvements. ArduBee not only is a Flight controller (based on Ardupilot) but it's a full micro uav platform, with 4 x ESC BLHEli32 with telemetry, WIFI ESP8266, Li-Ion based with 18650 holders from easily swaps the battery, 1 facing down rangefinder for low height altitude, and last generation inertial sensors
gdsdfe 6y ago
so is this like the only programmable drone out there? or is this the only one that is open source ? how much something like would cost? anyone have an idea ?
- khancyr 6y ago
  I don't remember what was the price range but it was cheat. I think we speak about it in the end of their talk in the ArduPillot unconference. Check on ArduPilot YouTube channel for their talk. What is impressive it the integration on this drone : that give a good flight time with low weight. That is a big advantage against current weight based regulation in numerous country. And of course ArduPilot integration give hight capabilities !
  - gdsdfe 6y ago
    Excuse my noob question but : what do you mean by integration? And why is it important?
    - RealityVoid 6y ago
      It probably means you can build firmware form ArduPilot and burn it into the drone. It's a big deal because ArduPilot is a whole platform and they have a lot of bells and whistles, communication with a companion computer, base station communication, a whole lot of possible configurations.
    - luminousbees 6y ago
      integration of all the different parts on board in a single base: WIFI with ESP8266 WiFi, brushless motors, 4x ESC last generation BLHeli32 with telemetry and DSHOOT up to 2400 -- FlighControl -- IMU -- baro -- compass -- power system with 1 easily swappable Li-Ion 18650 for maximum flight time -- rangeFinder for accurate low height navigation 0-3m -- sdcard slot for Log -- connector for common RC radio and telemetry + connector for all the external add-ons like GPS, indoor positioning system, optical flow, 8 horizontal rangefinder for collision advoiance,... All these hw connected with the Ardupilot features. Furthermore, for small copter its very hard to have good flight time, ArduBee try to have very good flight time, safe and ready for makers to develop, supported by one of the best Open Source project for drone, Ardupilot. It has been developed to be used safely for urban swarm robotics application development, education, creativity! https://ardupilot.org/copter/ https://ardupilot.org/copter/ ESP8266 with Ardupilot (telemetry and control) https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-esp8266-telemetry.html?highlight=esp8266 https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-esp8266-telemetry.h... BLHeli_32 ESC Telemetryhttps://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-dshot-blheli32-telemetry.html?highlight=blheli32 https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-dshot-blheli32-tele...
asciimike 6y ago
Super cool! Back in 2014 as a senior project in college we built a quadcopter for the BeagleBone: https://github.com/Rose-Hulman-ROBO4xx/1314-BeagleBone-Quadcopter https://github.com/Rose-Hulman-ROBO4xx/1314-BeagleBone-Quadc... We considered building the entire thing as a PCB, but it was pretty expensive to build one that size, plus we had concerns about its ability to take abuse (we broke a lot of quadcopters, even with our hastily jury rigged test stand. Our main constraint was price: I think we set a total of $100 (including the BeagbeBone) for all the components, which included the IMU, a cheap VGA camera, motors, battery, etc. Super proud of the laser cut frame as well, though I bet if we had better access to 3D printers back then we could have printed a frame fairly easily.
chrisdalke 6y ago
Looks cool, it's great to have another good open source ready-to-fly option. I have some concerns about larger PCB quadcopter designs because I can imagine that fatigue due to flexing on the PCB over long-term use could cause issues with the PCB delaminating or solder joints failing. On the ArduBee particularly, you can see a lot of surface-mount components mounted on the arms. I'd love to read more about any lifetime testing they've done on the PCB. Of course there's always the risk of just crashing your drone and breaking it, but that's no different than other drone designs!
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Why would the PCB flex? A quadcopter doesn't have that much of a twisting force being applied to it, no?
  - xtagon 6y ago
    Vibration can be a concern with quadcopters especially if the motors and propellers are not properly balanced
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      I guess that's true, and they are using brushless motors so you have quite a bit of power there. Hmm.
    - luminousbees 6y ago
      Till 1 year ago it has been a great concern, especially for small drone. Now thanks to andyp1per, new Ardupilot dev, we have amazing results with dynamic filtering gyroscope noise, we could even track the mechanical noise peak based on actual RPM or live FFT. Harmonic Notch Filter in Ardupilot https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-imu-notch-filtering.htmlhttps://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-imu-notch-filtering.html https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-imu-notch-filtering... new and ongoing development https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/13121 https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/13121 https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/14010 https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/14010
fxj 6y ago
m5stack, the company which puts esp32 and esp8266 into nice boxes has recently teased a m5stack atom drone (atomfly). https://twitter.com/M5Stack/status/1244209693045567488?s=20 https://twitter.com/M5Stack/status/1244209693045567488?s=20 the m5stack atom is a little esp32 in a box. https://m5stack.com/products/atom-lite-esp32-development-kit?variant=31699969507418 https://m5stack.com/products/atom-lite-esp32-development-kit...
roland35 6y ago
I am really excited about the ultrawideband implementation! The technology has been around for a few years now but the interface is quite complex and is hard to get up and running. The actual ultrawideband devices (decawave) are available on digikey for $10-20 each so if a good open source implementation exists, that would be very exciting for hobby robotic makers.
- luminousbees 6y ago
  I agree UWB system has good quality positioning, it's not affected by lights or smoke and it's quite cheap. The localization is processed on each Flight Control and it's integrated inside the Arudpilot firmware and passed to the Ardupilot EKF.
msadowski 6y ago
Very cool idea! Looks like something that will allow prototyping automatic indoor flight on a tight budget. The only thing I don't like about the design is that if you break an ESC (or other component for that matter) then you most likely need to replace the whole thing, which won't be cheap. I wish this had a bit more processing power (or a raspberry pi add on) so that it could run ROS but that would definitely hurt the flight time. Couple of years ago there was a prototyping board Snaodragon Flight that came with built-in cameras for optical flow: https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/ardubee-a-ready-to-fly-micro-drone-for-education-and-swarming/54362/13 https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/ardubee-a-ready-to-fly-micro.... I think some people here might find it interesting.
- luminousbees 6y ago
  Thanks! we are working hard on the best protection+landing, searching for the lightest solution and it will be all around the propellers. We use since 2 years its bigger brother (220g) in a swarm system for choreographies with medium acceleration/speed autonomous navigation, during all the intense flying sessions we had quite some crashes but the harm on the board has been very low.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
vanderZwan 6y ago
This looks really cool, but tbh when I saw the name micro drone I expected something crazyflie-sized[0] more than this. Which is not a complaint, by the way! The crazyflie is so small that it becomes quite the limitation in a few ways. Really curious how the slightly larger size of the ArduBee compares in practice - probably has a bit more stability and power. [0] https://www.bitcraze.io/products/crazyflie-2-1/ https://www.bitcraze.io/products/crazyflie-2-1/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law
- luminousbees 6y ago
  Thank you! Bitcraze is so small and lightweight, but the first version had 3 minutes of flight time. It have brush motors and it's not suited for outdoor. We'll update you about the real flight time asap the new motors arrive. Furthermore, ArduBee will be proposed as a plain board without motors and propellers, to enable every sort of selection and combinations of brushless motors and 3" props, offering full customization for many different approach, you can use top motors or under the base, for max endurance, max payload, max navigation performance or wind disturbance rejection.
forsakenharmony 6y ago
Can you remove the unnecessary loading screen from your website?

371 points by dieantwoord 6y ago

khancyr 6y ago

The drone seems nice, I hope we can play with it soon ! I am glad they share some development with open source !

luminousbees 6y ago
Thank you so much khancyr! You are a well-known member in the ardupilot community your support is highly appreciated and if you have ideas or suggestions we would love to have your opinion before closing the new ArduBee prototypes in development With great excitement we follow the feeback here on HN and we are happy to answer all your questions! Besides posting here you're all also very much invited to submit your feedback via this google form and contribute with your ideas to the final version of ArduBee before starting the kickstarter: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfSv-mjhigMYmZsG03N8fZ2-TsJQC9cG0GdrETQfmdx_tZYhg/viewform https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfSv-mjhigMYmZsG03N...

spiritplumber 6y ago

Cool, but what does it do that the HoverflyOpen doesn't already?

alasdair_ 6y ago
The HoverflyOpen seems to just be a small part of the stack needed to build a swarm of drones. This project seems to be the full stack.
itgoon 6y ago
I've known about ArduPilot for a long time, never even heard of HoverflyOpen. The only reference I found for HoverflyOpen is this: https://www.parallax.com/product/31500 https://www.parallax.com/product/31500 Comparing that to the ArduBee isn't really much of a comparison. The only advantage I see is that HoverflyOpen currently exists, while ArduBee looks like they are still in the preparing-to-Kickstart phase. If there's more out there for HoverflyOpen, please share it. I'll admit I didn't dig around much. ArduPilot is a well-known and battle-tested platform.
- spiritplumber 6y ago
  That's really it: you can grab all the code and schems from there. There was a community but it shut down when the FAA regs about drones >250grams came out.
  - luminousbees 6y ago
    We are trying to shape ArduBee as an excellent platform for 100g-200g micro uav develop and to enable urban swarm experimentations, indoor and outdoor!
    - spiritplumber 6y ago
      Very cool, but in that case definitely give Parallax a poke since they've been doing it for a while, it may save you some time and some mass.
      - luminousbees 6y ago
        Thanks! I'll do it, I've never visit Parallax site before
luminousbees 6y ago
Hi! Makers from ArduBee here. Thanks a lot for this comment! As we have never heared of HoverflyOpen and we couldn't find much more than on this site, we can not really comment on it. But if you have more information, we would love to hear about it! Just based on the facts we can get from that site, it seems a quite priced Flight controller, where you do not know in which flight stack you could use it. Also you can not see how large the community of developers is around it. Arudupilot, which is our foundation for ArduBee, is Open Source and with a large user base and active, high talented developers working constantly on maintenance and improvements. ArduBee not only is a Flight controller (based on Ardupilot) but it's a full micro uav platform, with 4 x ESC BLHEli32 with telemetry, WIFI ESP8266, Li-Ion based with 18650 holders from easily swaps the battery, 1 facing down rangefinder for low height altitude, and last generation inertial sensors

gdsdfe 6y ago

so is this like the only programmable drone out there? or is this the only one that is open source ? how much something like would cost? anyone have an idea ?

khancyr 6y ago
I don't remember what was the price range but it was cheat. I think we speak about it in the end of their talk in the ArduPillot unconference. Check on ArduPilot YouTube channel for their talk. What is impressive it the integration on this drone : that give a good flight time with low weight. That is a big advantage against current weight based regulation in numerous country. And of course ArduPilot integration give hight capabilities !
- gdsdfe 6y ago
  Excuse my noob question but : what do you mean by integration? And why is it important?
  - RealityVoid 6y ago
    It probably means you can build firmware form ArduPilot and burn it into the drone. It's a big deal because ArduPilot is a whole platform and they have a lot of bells and whistles, communication with a companion computer, base station communication, a whole lot of possible configurations.
  - luminousbees 6y ago
    integration of all the different parts on board in a single base: WIFI with ESP8266 WiFi, brushless motors, 4x ESC last generation BLHeli32 with telemetry and DSHOOT up to 2400 -- FlighControl -- IMU -- baro -- compass -- power system with 1 easily swappable Li-Ion 18650 for maximum flight time -- rangeFinder for accurate low height navigation 0-3m -- sdcard slot for Log -- connector for common RC radio and telemetry + connector for all the external add-ons like GPS, indoor positioning system, optical flow, 8 horizontal rangefinder for collision advoiance,... All these hw connected with the Ardupilot features. Furthermore, for small copter its very hard to have good flight time, ArduBee try to have very good flight time, safe and ready for makers to develop, supported by one of the best Open Source project for drone, Ardupilot. It has been developed to be used safely for urban swarm robotics application development, education, creativity! https://ardupilot.org/copter/ https://ardupilot.org/copter/ ESP8266 with Ardupilot (telemetry and control) https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-esp8266-telemetry.html?highlight=esp8266 https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-esp8266-telemetry.h... BLHeli_32 ESC Telemetryhttps://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-dshot-blheli32-telemetry.html?highlight=blheli32 https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-dshot-blheli32-tele...

asciimike 6y ago

Super cool! Back in 2014 as a senior project in college we built a quadcopter for the BeagleBone: https://github.com/Rose-Hulman-ROBO4xx/1314-BeagleBone-Quadcopter https://github.com/Rose-Hulman-ROBO4xx/1314-BeagleBone-Quadc... We considered building the entire thing as a PCB, but it was pretty expensive to build one that size, plus we had concerns about its ability to take abuse (we broke a lot of quadcopters, even with our hastily jury rigged test stand. Our main constraint was price: I think we set a total of $100 (including the BeagbeBone) for all the components, which included the IMU, a cheap VGA camera, motors, battery, etc. Super proud of the laser cut frame as well, though I bet if we had better access to 3D printers back then we could have printed a frame fairly easily.

chrisdalke 6y ago

Looks cool, it's great to have another good open source ready-to-fly option. I have some concerns about larger PCB quadcopter designs because I can imagine that fatigue due to flexing on the PCB over long-term use could cause issues with the PCB delaminating or solder joints failing. On the ArduBee particularly, you can see a lot of surface-mount components mounted on the arms. I'd love to read more about any lifetime testing they've done on the PCB. Of course there's always the risk of just crashing your drone and breaking it, but that's no different than other drone designs!

StavrosK 6y ago
Why would the PCB flex? A quadcopter doesn't have that much of a twisting force being applied to it, no?
- xtagon 6y ago
  Vibration can be a concern with quadcopters especially if the motors and propellers are not properly balanced
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    I guess that's true, and they are using brushless motors so you have quite a bit of power there. Hmm.
  - luminousbees 6y ago
    Till 1 year ago it has been a great concern, especially for small drone. Now thanks to andyp1per, new Ardupilot dev, we have amazing results with dynamic filtering gyroscope noise, we could even track the mechanical noise peak based on actual RPM or live FFT. Harmonic Notch Filter in Ardupilot https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-imu-notch-filtering.htmlhttps://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-imu-notch-filtering.html https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-imu-notch-filtering... new and ongoing development https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/13121 https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/13121 https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/14010 https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/14010

fxj 6y ago

m5stack, the company which puts esp32 and esp8266 into nice boxes has recently teased a m5stack atom drone (atomfly). https://twitter.com/M5Stack/status/1244209693045567488?s=20 https://twitter.com/M5Stack/status/1244209693045567488?s=20 the m5stack atom is a little esp32 in a box. https://m5stack.com/products/atom-lite-esp32-development-kit?variant=31699969507418 https://m5stack.com/products/atom-lite-esp32-development-kit...

roland35 6y ago

I am really excited about the ultrawideband implementation! The technology has been around for a few years now but the interface is quite complex and is hard to get up and running. The actual ultrawideband devices (decawave) are available on digikey for $10-20 each so if a good open source implementation exists, that would be very exciting for hobby robotic makers.

luminousbees 6y ago
I agree UWB system has good quality positioning, it's not affected by lights or smoke and it's quite cheap. The localization is processed on each Flight Control and it's integrated inside the Arudpilot firmware and passed to the Ardupilot EKF.

msadowski 6y ago

Very cool idea! Looks like something that will allow prototyping automatic indoor flight on a tight budget. The only thing I don't like about the design is that if you break an ESC (or other component for that matter) then you most likely need to replace the whole thing, which won't be cheap. I wish this had a bit more processing power (or a raspberry pi add on) so that it could run ROS but that would definitely hurt the flight time. Couple of years ago there was a prototyping board Snaodragon Flight that came with built-in cameras for optical flow: https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/ardubee-a-ready-to-fly-micro-drone-for-education-and-swarming/54362/13 https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/ardubee-a-ready-to-fly-micro.... I think some people here might find it interesting.

luminousbees 6y ago
Thanks! we are working hard on the best protection+landing, searching for the lightest solution and it will be all around the propellers. We use since 2 years its bigger brother (220g) in a swarm system for choreographies with medium acceleration/speed autonomous navigation, during all the intense flying sessions we had quite some crashes but the harm on the board has been very low.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

vanderZwan 6y ago

This looks really cool, but tbh when I saw the name micro drone I expected something crazyflie-sized[0] more than this. Which is not a complaint, by the way! The crazyflie is so small that it becomes quite the limitation in a few ways. Really curious how the slightly larger size of the ArduBee compares in practice - probably has a bit more stability and power. [0] https://www.bitcraze.io/products/crazyflie-2-1/ https://www.bitcraze.io/products/crazyflie-2-1/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law

luminousbees 6y ago
Thank you! Bitcraze is so small and lightweight, but the first version had 3 minutes of flight time. It have brush motors and it's not suited for outdoor. We'll update you about the real flight time asap the new motors arrive. Furthermore, ArduBee will be proposed as a plain board without motors and propellers, to enable every sort of selection and combinations of brushless motors and 3" props, offering full customization for many different approach, you can use top motors or under the base, for max endurance, max payload, max navigation performance or wind disturbance rejection.

forsakenharmony 6y ago

Can you remove the unnecessary loading screen from your website?