BeagleDrone

An Open Source drone platform using the BeagleBone (black).

Goals

We are developing a well tested drone control application which is able to be run independently of the target device. This will allow us to rapidly develop advanced control and state estimation techniques which we can have high confidence will work on target devices meeting predefined criteria.

We are also developing a driver layer for this application to allow it to be run on the BeagleBone Black. This device should have enough computing and memory resources, as well as sufficient peripherals for most drone applications.

Communication

We primarily communicate on irc in #beagledrone @ freenode. Please join in at any time!

Developer Documentation

Information for developers can be found on our wiki.

Firmware

The firmware directory contains the code which runs on the beagleboard.

Dependencies

You require make and an gcc eabi arm cross compiler toolchain to build this project. Although any method of obtaining the arm-eabi will work equally well, below are the recommended methods for obtaining the toolchain.

Toolchain

Please visit https://launchpad.net/gcc-arm-embedded to obtain an arm toolchain for your platform. Ubuntu users may want to instead visit https://launchpad.net/~terry.guo/+archive/gcc-arm-embedded for a package installation.

Building

To build the package make sure the arm-none-eabi-* tools are in your PATH.

Running the command make will create a boot.bin, suitable for flashing

Flashing

I have yet to find a pleasant method for flashing. Currently, I use an SD card with U-Boot (comes on standard beaglebone linux image). I run the loady command at the U-Boot prompt, and use yterminal protocol (via minicom) to send the boot.bin. I then execute go 0x82000000 to run the binary.

Testing

Change directory into firmware/tests. Run 'make'.

Client

The client is run on a PC and can be used to communicated with the drone.

Dependencies

Qt5, g++ and CMake are required to build and run the client;

Building

To build the client run the following commands

cd client; cmake .; make