MultiWii

Hi Guys,

It's really amazing what was done on this project. I never thought that a processor as small as the AtMega328 could fulfill the needs of a full blown multirotor flight controller. (even with gps rth). However it's clear that the project is reaching the limits of the mega328 and further development will be more and more constrained by the limitations of memory and ports.
The question is: Could we go forward with the current single codebase and use sophisticated defines to separate parts that does not work on 328? This solution has the advantage, since it's easier to maintain, but also make the code hard to read, and eventually cause constrains on certain parts of the code.
OR
We can fork the code and maintain a separated codebase for 328 and for 2560? This will add some workload for backporting fixes and improvements between forks, but as I see, this can help to speed up the development of new functions such as waypoint navigation or mav-link implementation.
Alex and all other contributors, what do you think?

no need to fork now.
Avoid separate code bases as long as possible.

Hamburger wrote:no need to fork now.
Avoid separate code bases as long as possible.

Agreed,

at my company we are spending a lot of time to keep everythin in one project.

May be its the time to fade out AtMega328

wahaha99 wrote:May be its the time to fade out AtMega328

if you want to have a quad flying with a brain you have to option :

- port the multiwii source to a high level board [1]
- connect a high level board to a working flight controler ..and in this case you want to avoid 5v ( 328p 8mhz,3.3v is great)


an 328p can add flight abilities to any projects and those projects can in turn enhance the initial capabilities of multiwii. an autopilote (input) or mavlink (output) are not real part of the flight controler .. they are connected to it


Do one thing, and do it well .

- send command to servo/motor (two array) to adjust current attitude (getestimatedAttitude() and getestimatedAitude ) with the correction describe by the input (currently rcdata)

everything else is extra code .

so unless an 328p can not handle this task there is no reason to fade it out.. also there is no reason to set a limits to the numbers of components just because they do not all fit in memory


1 : I have multiwii running on this board

@EOSBandi

Great idea,

Now it's time for me to make a 2560 Multiwii board.
(low cost to keep Multiwii mind).

It is Alex idea to keep the arduino IDE and to keep it simpele.
So ATMega2560 is a good choice.

Start drawing?

Rob Keij

Why not start reducing the memory footprint of the existing Multiwii code first? There are so many line of code where memory (both flash and RAM) is tossed out of the window.

Or move to a real processor (stm32)

dongs wrote:Or move to a real processor (stm32)

I was waiting for you ! I really love your enthusiasm about moving to a powerfull platform And I share it, but don't forget that couple of thousands people who currently has 328 and 1280/2560 based MultiWii boards....

Rob wrote:@EOSBandi

Great idea,

Now it's time for me to make a 2560 Multiwii board.
(low cost to keep Multiwii mind).

It is Alex idea to keep the arduino IDE and to keep it simpele.
So ATMega2560 is a good choice.

Start drawing?

Rob Keij

All my devs are made on my 2560 based board. I'm at ver4 and soon will have ver5. I'll find an affiliate who can manufacture and sell them... (I'm not interested on making a business out from MultiWii, I believe in donationware )

EOSBandi wrote:

dongs wrote:Or move to a real processor (stm32)

I was waiting for you ! I really love your enthusiasm about moving to a powerfull platform And I share it, but don't forget that couple of thousands people who currently has 328 and 1280/2560 based MultiWii boards....

so if you're waiting, why did you make a new post right above this one trying to continue perpetuating fail by making MORE failmega hardware?

The strength of multiwii has always been the affordable and easy to get harware like a Wii Motion Plus or an ARduino Pro Mini.

If we want a perfect ahrdware and software solution we could call ourselves Miktrokopter and take load of money for a platform that is worse than multiwii.

I predict that if you branch to a new hardware you will miss out a lot of features that only will be developed by people like me that do not want to spent all their money and time for sophisticated hard and software.
IMHO multiwii as it is is the best platform available and that is because of the huge community and their crowdsourcing and betatesting ability.

Maybe stupid question but ...
I saw Maple board @ Sparkfun, it have STM32 it have some compatibility with Arduino and IDE is very close.
So - maybe this could be less painful way to move forward.
Tom

IMO, the only issue with going with the STM32 at present is, the availability of a FREE or cheap IDE. Once that problem is resolved, the floodgates are open.

Tifani wrote:http://leaflabs.com/docs/maple-ide-install.html

Awesome, going to give Maple a try now.

http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/maple-mini-p-861.html
I just find this:
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Det ... PKIT-UNO32