The GluonPilot Hardware - higher end dsPic - A potential platform for the future ?

[Peter Hollands]

I was interested to see the DIY Drones post about the GluonPilot

Is this a suitable high end (more expensive) board design for MatrixPilot ?

Presumably the porting of our firmware would be fairly easy as it's using a
high end dsPic from Microchip. (something for the future ?)

Hardware details are here.

Pete

[Martin Rees]

Hi Peter,

I had a look at this morning and thought the same thing. The main difference I noticed with this PIC is that it's a J-series PIC which means its Max 3.6 volts and doesnt have any onboard EEPROM, the board uses a 2mbit SPI EEPROM chip to get round this.. What I really did like is the addition of the barometric sensor.

Another advantage of this PIC is not only the increased perfomance but also the increased pins and ports. I have attahced a comparision of the two CPU's below.

I am currently awaiting my UAVDB from sparkfun as the current acheivments of this community are pretty amazing so I had to get involved. I would be interested in adding a few peripherals once I have got to grips with the basics of the board. But judgeing by the level of knowledge here I have a lot to learn about autopilot flight.

CPU			dsPIC30F4011		dsPIC33FJ256MC710
	MIPS		30		40
	Program Memory KB		48		256
	RAM Bytes		2048		30720
	Data Memory Bytes		1024
	Votage Range		2.5 - 5.5		3 - 3.6
	IO/Pins		30		85
	Pin Count		40		100
	UART		2		2
	SPI		1		2
	I2C		1		2
	CAN		1		2
	A/D		1 (9)		2 (24)
	CCM		4		8
	PWM		4		8
	Timer 8 Bit		0		0
	Timer 16 Bit		5		9
	Timer 32 Bit		2		4
	RTCC		No		No
	CPU Cost		£3.93		£5.67

Cheers
Marv

[Peter Hollands]

Marv,

That is a very useful comparison. Thank you very much.

I agree that there is a lot to learn. It's great to have such a super and international bunch of people in the team.

Pete

[Netfoot]

I'd certainly pay two quid extra...

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 1:12 PM, Martin Rees <ma...@reesmarine.com> wrote:

Another advantage of this PIC is not only the increased perfomance but also the increased pins and ports. I have attahced a comparision of the two CPU's below....