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John Hawley Talks About UAV Controls (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the monocopter-bicopter-tricopter-quadcopter dept.

John 'Warthog9' Hawley was the boss sysadmin on kernel.org before he jumped to Intel in April, 2014, as an open hardware technical evangelist. He last showed up on Slashdot in June, 2014, with his Dr. Who-inspired Robot K-9. Now he's talking about flight computers for quadcopters, specifically ones based on MinnowBoards. Last month (April 2015) he was speaking at the Embedded Linux Conference + Android Builders Summit. That's where he and Timothy Lord had this conversation about flight controllers for UAVs, which makes it a fitting sequel to yesterday's video, which was also about controlling drones with real-time Linux.

5 of 20 comments (clear)

  1. Isn't that the guy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Isn't that the guy that ate the subway sandwiches

  2. No offense but by heezer7 · · Score: 1

    Why are slashdot videos so boring? I always get excited when I see the topic then half way threw I yawn and close it.

    1. Re:No offense but by golgotha007 · · Score: 1

      No kidding. It takes him 2 minutes to say something that takes ordinary folks one or two sentences.

      Not only that, but he talks as if the technology he's playing with is cutting edge; it's not.

  3. CAN vs SPI by fred911 · · Score: 1

    A significant part of the video is dedicated to an opinion that using UARTS for peripheral communication is best. The reasoning for this contention is:

    #1 It's been around forever
    #2 It uses plain text to transfer information
    #3 Everyone understands it
    #4 It's been around forever

      Correct me if I'm wrong, but a SPI generally only defines the transmission of a byte, whereas CAN defines the packets. Isn't another disadvantage of using a serial bus in this type of application the fact that basically we're looking at a "master/slave" relationship?

      If I want to drop in a telemetry stream to my video down-link, isn't it significantly more effective to use CAN? With the vast amount of peripheral devices, servos, video, barometers, magnetometers, GPS and who knows what else (not necessarily needed for flight control), why is it better to use the controller for handling communication timing and then figuring out how to talk, when CAN does it so effectively?

      I'm seriously soliciting more in-depth reasoning for preferring a SPI (using a UART) than what's been mentioned on the video.

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  4. This will be duped I guess by rossdee · · Score: 1

    " Last month (April 2015)"

    Since its still the middle of April 2015, I'm guessing the summary was written for the dupe of this to be posted in a couple weeks time