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[+]rob_white0 points2 points2 points
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[–]rob_white0 points
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The thing is they can't decrease costs this way, that is also sheer bullshittery, they are adding costs and complexity. Many of the drones out there use much cheaper and simpler processors than Qualcomm SoCs, the STM32F4 is common and many factors cheaper and many factors less power draw, they are also good enough for 99% of people both hobbiests and professionals.
This will use more battery not less, and yeah, 45 to 60 minutes, typical lies everyone has seen before, even 20 mins is not realistic, more like 12-15 for your average drone depending on how it is flown.
If they marketed this as the next generation of features, sure, maybe but then they would need the software to go along with it which they do not have, they seem to be using some open source stuff that is a long way behind the commercial platforms that are closed source.
Drones are fun and a big hobby of mine but the marketing and flat out lies are very frustrating. Many new industries are like this, it's the tail end of the dotcom for Drones right now, the peak has passed and the market is consolidating already. Companies mentioned here like 3DR are laying people off already.
There are already many cheap drones around, but throwing complex and stupidly large hardware at them is a step in the wrong direction, like their claims of increased battery life is the inverse of reality, the claims of making them simple is also the reverse of reality as well.
Drones are doing a lot of things currently though, you have RF to the controller, GPS, cameras, often times a live feed for a first person view, various controllers to control motor speeds for direction etc. Then you have drones that support automated paths/flight and safety "return home" features if communications are lost. The article mentions gyroscopes, accelerometers, magnetometers, and software-driven image stabilization on tops of those.
There really are a lot of different chips and hardware performing different functions that could be consolidated down. I agree that the actual motors eat the lions share of power but all the different hardware/features does a lot to drive up costs especially when you start talking about video, FPV, and automated flight paths.
Take a look at a Fat Shark kit just for FPV and it's more than some tablets. There is definitely a possibility of integrating some of these things down to a smaller SoC and shaving costs and Qualcomm i about as well positioned as anyone to tie in all these things. The last gen snapdragon chips cost about $20/each.
[+]rob_white0 points0 points0 points
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[–]rob_white0 points
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The one I am I having most fun with currently is this it's freaking tiny, has gyroscopes, accelerometers and magnetometers, pressure sensor, F4 processor, supports GPS and does return to home and GPS navigation, position hold is amazing, as good as my DJIs, All for $50 and a very tiny footprint with a case, with the GPS is was around $100. The whole drone cost me $250 as I have a TX and batteries already, besides the advanced features, it is the best drone racing platform I have ever used.
If you want to add a linux board to that you can, it has SPI to do so, this is elegant and flexible, the real time stuff can be done on the STM32F4 and the heavy lifting can be done using an Linux board like the Pi2 or something else but I see no reason for it personally. Qualcomm likely will not just use just their SoC but have either a real time processor or a FPGA on there as well, the SoCs don't even have close to the amount of PWMs required. Sure you can hack it with a I2C to PWM IC, Navio+ does this but then more complexity and no oneshot support (although ardupilot is so backwards it doesn't support oneshot anyway).
Besides that, the Linux stuff has all been done already. It was not that successful, the complexity was the problem, are you aware of the Phenox2? Much nicer design using the ZYNQ-7000 which has an inbuilt FPGA, they used Linux for OpenCV which is where I would use it, there it matters, for normal drone stuff it's overkill. Spiri is another one, long delayed, not even released yet as of course as it is overly complex and they are having issues with it, uses STM32 for real time. How about the Navio+ for the RasPi2, ardupilot based and not very good, patched Linux kernel for realtime support. There are commercial drones using SoCs for years as well, the ARDrone does, it uses real time image processing so needs it, not exactly popular though and can't do much else.
There is zero revolution here, just more drone marketing hype for something that has been done and no one much really wants, extra complexity and extra cost.
FPV requires real time video, any latency kills it so all FPV is currently all analog, it's the digital encoding that adds latency. Yes Fatsharks have always been expensive but they made for a niche market, just the way it goes, they can not be replaced with a tablet if that is what you are saying? Just due to the delay induced by digital encoding. DJI already uses digital video for framing video shots, their app supports it, it's very nice but uses custom modems and gets good range. 3DR tries to do this also but they did it over Wifi so it has little range, the latency is really bad and only 150 meters range certainly isn't good for FPV (range is worse in populated areas) it's not much good for even watching the on board video unless you stay close. You could do this right now with a cheap IP security camera also, there are some with apps.
As for the last gen chips being $20, they are large BGA packages which is going to need an 8+ layer board, complex time sensitive routing for memory timing and that is without factoring in the power chipset they require. It's all complexity for no meaningful return. STM32, ram, flash all on package, SoCs, flash and ram both external. Increasing complexity.
If Linux drones had some amazing utility, I'd be there and using them, they have been around for years already. I have a Navio+, it's big, heavy and clunky and does the same and flies the same as a $40 ardupilot mega.
Sorry for the long reply, I don't want to say you are wrong but I do want to myth bust their marketing, it drives me nuts how much bullshit there is with drones and how many people are getting screwed on places like Kickstarter. People actually believe Amazon will use drones for a lot of deliveries and other such complete bullshit even, it's all nonsense until there is a huge battery breakthrough.
Linux SoC DO have their place, OpenCV usage is a perfect example, collision avoidance would be great but even there a microcontroller and Lidar would work very with less complexity.
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[–] rob_white 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago (edited ago)
The thing is they can't decrease costs this way, that is also sheer bullshittery, they are adding costs and complexity. Many of the drones out there use much cheaper and simpler processors than Qualcomm SoCs, the STM32F4 is common and many factors cheaper and many factors less power draw, they are also good enough for 99% of people both hobbiests and professionals.
This will use more battery not less, and yeah, 45 to 60 minutes, typical lies everyone has seen before, even 20 mins is not realistic, more like 12-15 for your average drone depending on how it is flown.
If they marketed this as the next generation of features, sure, maybe but then they would need the software to go along with it which they do not have, they seem to be using some open source stuff that is a long way behind the commercial platforms that are closed source.
Drones are fun and a big hobby of mine but the marketing and flat out lies are very frustrating. Many new industries are like this, it's the tail end of the dotcom for Drones right now, the peak has passed and the market is consolidating already. Companies mentioned here like 3DR are laying people off already.
There are already many cheap drones around, but throwing complex and stupidly large hardware at them is a step in the wrong direction, like their claims of increased battery life is the inverse of reality, the claims of making them simple is also the reverse of reality as well.
[–] cat-facts 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Drones are doing a lot of things currently though, you have RF to the controller, GPS, cameras, often times a live feed for a first person view, various controllers to control motor speeds for direction etc. Then you have drones that support automated paths/flight and safety "return home" features if communications are lost. The article mentions gyroscopes, accelerometers, magnetometers, and software-driven image stabilization on tops of those.
There really are a lot of different chips and hardware performing different functions that could be consolidated down. I agree that the actual motors eat the lions share of power but all the different hardware/features does a lot to drive up costs especially when you start talking about video, FPV, and automated flight paths.
Take a look at a Fat Shark kit just for FPV and it's more than some tablets. There is definitely a possibility of integrating some of these things down to a smaller SoC and shaving costs and Qualcomm i about as well positioned as anyone to tie in all these things. The last gen snapdragon chips cost about $20/each.
[–] rob_white ago (edited ago)
The one I am I having most fun with currently is this it's freaking tiny, has gyroscopes, accelerometers and magnetometers, pressure sensor, F4 processor, supports GPS and does return to home and GPS navigation, position hold is amazing, as good as my DJIs, All for $50 and a very tiny footprint with a case, with the GPS is was around $100. The whole drone cost me $250 as I have a TX and batteries already, besides the advanced features, it is the best drone racing platform I have ever used.
If you want to add a linux board to that you can, it has SPI to do so, this is elegant and flexible, the real time stuff can be done on the STM32F4 and the heavy lifting can be done using an Linux board like the Pi2 or something else but I see no reason for it personally. Qualcomm likely will not just use just their SoC but have either a real time processor or a FPGA on there as well, the SoCs don't even have close to the amount of PWMs required. Sure you can hack it with a I2C to PWM IC, Navio+ does this but then more complexity and no oneshot support (although ardupilot is so backwards it doesn't support oneshot anyway).
Besides that, the Linux stuff has all been done already. It was not that successful, the complexity was the problem, are you aware of the Phenox2? Much nicer design using the ZYNQ-7000 which has an inbuilt FPGA, they used Linux for OpenCV which is where I would use it, there it matters, for normal drone stuff it's overkill. Spiri is another one, long delayed, not even released yet as of course as it is overly complex and they are having issues with it, uses STM32 for real time. How about the Navio+ for the RasPi2, ardupilot based and not very good, patched Linux kernel for realtime support. There are commercial drones using SoCs for years as well, the ARDrone does, it uses real time image processing so needs it, not exactly popular though and can't do much else.
There is zero revolution here, just more drone marketing hype for something that has been done and no one much really wants, extra complexity and extra cost.
FPV requires real time video, any latency kills it so all FPV is currently all analog, it's the digital encoding that adds latency. Yes Fatsharks have always been expensive but they made for a niche market, just the way it goes, they can not be replaced with a tablet if that is what you are saying? Just due to the delay induced by digital encoding. DJI already uses digital video for framing video shots, their app supports it, it's very nice but uses custom modems and gets good range. 3DR tries to do this also but they did it over Wifi so it has little range, the latency is really bad and only 150 meters range certainly isn't good for FPV (range is worse in populated areas) it's not much good for even watching the on board video unless you stay close. You could do this right now with a cheap IP security camera also, there are some with apps.
As for the last gen chips being $20, they are large BGA packages which is going to need an 8+ layer board, complex time sensitive routing for memory timing and that is without factoring in the power chipset they require. It's all complexity for no meaningful return. STM32, ram, flash all on package, SoCs, flash and ram both external. Increasing complexity.
If Linux drones had some amazing utility, I'd be there and using them, they have been around for years already. I have a Navio+, it's big, heavy and clunky and does the same and flies the same as a $40 ardupilot mega.
Sorry for the long reply, I don't want to say you are wrong but I do want to myth bust their marketing, it drives me nuts how much bullshit there is with drones and how many people are getting screwed on places like Kickstarter. People actually believe Amazon will use drones for a lot of deliveries and other such complete bullshit even, it's all nonsense until there is a huge battery breakthrough.
Linux SoC DO have their place, OpenCV usage is a perfect example, collision avoidance would be great but even there a microcontroller and Lidar would work very with less complexity.