AQ6 and M4v2 end of life

[JussiH]

An era ends. I am declaring Autoquad6 and M4v2 End of life now. Seems only yesterday I was at the factories to start up production of both controllers.

But both controllers can no longer be produced in their current forms, mainly due to major parts beeing end of life.

AQ6 will be replaced with a new AQ10 (AQX) controller that Adam has been designing. Its basically a 50*50mm board with up to 12 PWM lines, Dual CAN, up to 3 UARTs, more RAM, better GPS and a flexible IMU solution and expansion board footprint that makes it a very versatile and powerful controller at a good price point. I expect it to become available in the late spring of 2017.

There is no immediate plans to build a next generation of M4. But if there is demand for it, we might rework it to use a new sensor set. (the main problem is that the magnetometer is no longer available). We might also try to find some magnetometers and do a limited run if there is demand for them.

We will probably instead offer a small and cheap "AQ-R" controller in the popular 36*36mm size known from the race world. More on this later.

Here is a photo of the very last M4v2 and AQ6 controllers that I tested and packed before Christmas.....so if you want one dont wait too long. Once they are gone, they are gone for good.

Of course both the M4 and AQ6 with DIMU will be supported in new firmware releases as long as possible. At some point the RAM limitation of both controllers may become a limiting factor in terms of supporting the latest features, but we havent reached that point yet, and it is our priority to keep them supported for as long as we can.

Merry christmas to all AutoQuadders...

Adam,
Pls post some photos of the AQX prototypes....

[aBUGSworstnightmare]

Well ... I was expecting this to happen already a while ago due the EOL of some components.
Nevertheless, looking forward to AQ10! Adam, would be glad if you could post some Christmas Pics of the new boards.

[afernan]

@Jusi: first of all thanks a lot for your dedication to this Project along years.

But, still a lot of things can be done with AQ6 and M4V2 until AQX arrives. Last updates in code driven by Max are very nice, mainly in the navigation part. Also the QGC is well updated. We´ve been testing and debuging along last months and I thing it can be released for users now.

HILs is an incredible tool for developing safely and quickly but also very fun!. Also Peter is doing several improvements in the ANDROID gcs, including a control by voice on an Android clock: very fun.

Here, in the Aerospace University of Madrid, AUTOQUAD has been selected as a potential flight controler for a future Space Nano-launcher Project. This will be suported by AIRBUS.

The bottom line is that AUTOQUAD has a very solid basis (hardware and software) and the more important: a very experienced team sopporting it.

From my side, I´ll keep pushing this Project up to the limits of my knoledge and available time.

Have a nice Chrismast day!

Angel

[bluuu]

Pics of AQ_X r1 board and my test Quad with AQ_X

on r2 we made some small changes but looks quite similar

01_aqx_r1_front_s.jpg (270.33 KiB) Viewed 30074 times

01_aqx_r1_back_s.jpg (289.89 KiB) Viewed 30074 times

01_aqx_r1_MR_s.jpg (208.03 KiB) Viewed 30074 times

[aBUGSworstnightmare]

Adam/Jussi: looks good!

Are the two 3-pin JST connectors for receiver diversity? Just figured out that Spektrum has release a new Serial Telemetry Receiver (SPM4649T; https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpos ... ostcount=1) which is using a half-duplex UART.
Would be nice to have this added to the new FW as well (since the new MCU (?) has more RAM).

Joerg

[JussiH]

Yes, there is gonna be more RAM on the new board (F427 MCU). The reason we are not moving to to 45x and 46x MCU´s is that the standard peripherals library is not supported beyond F427, and rewriting all the periph drivers is a shitload of work - and using STMCube is not our cup of tea.

I am not sure that a lot of effort will be dedicated to spektrum - it seems that most people are using FrSky these days, and Max has a firmware update coming that supports the FrSky telemetry.

But its open season for anything, and adding spektrum telemetry is something I would like to see happen using the SPM4649T RX. However, its well beyond my coding skills.

Happy new year

Jussi

[afernan]

Yes:

I´m moved all my Spektrum to FrSKY, with the new Tx HORUS. It´s much more flexible and have a lot of very convenient features.

The HORUS Tx with OpenTx is an incredible radio with a large color screen. Telemetry in the Tx works very well with AQ. For the moment I´m using the basic ones (waiting the update of Max) having important measures like MAV Voltage, RSSI, Altitude, etc.

Angel

[afernan]

Sice we´re closing now a main chapter of AUTOQUAD, I´d like to add here the last status of the Firmware and AQ-QGControl including most of the last add-ons to the code (mainly done by Max) that I was helping to test and debug. I hope that Max will release "offitialy" them but until that moment, you can get attached the necesary files.

Basically it includes all updates decribed here (viewtopic.php?f=31&t=4821) :
- Several new modes: rate mode, head-free, Waypoint recording
- HILs
- Guided: NEW ( see this demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27i33RNuN0s&t=120s)

Attached are fw for M4v2 and AQv6r1 both for QUATOS. For refference, these are called r7.2 ("dev" branch).

You need also a QGC version that support all that, mainly for "guide" mode also having small improvements like:
- ESC Telemetry now show watts of the all motors (before only one motor)
- Add-ons described here: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=4894
This is a link to the exe (version 1.7-beta4 )
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5OSVb ... sp=sharing

If you need some othe compilations, please le me now.

Angel

[aBUGSworstnightmare]

[afernan]

Hi Joerg:

Not in the GitHub by now

I can share the QGC (same as GitHub + some modifications).

AQ fw Code has some libraries that are Max´s propietary and can´t share without his permission (mainly HILs and Quatos libs). I can compile for you a version.

Angel