nppilot using Ardupilot

I’ve been working on nppilot, the “never complete autopilot” project for some time now. The latest iteration uses a Traxxas Revo 1/16, an OpenPilot Revolution for I/O, and a Raspberry Pi 3B running ROS as the command computer.

And it works! Here’s the car running a figure-8 pattern:

It doesn’t do much at the moment, but that’s more progress than the other reboots.

Some notes on the setup:

• I changed the spur gear down to 18T to reduce the top speed, get more speed control, and reduce the number of high speed crashes…
• Wifi with a range extender seems fine as a monitoring link
• I tried a Pi 4B, but my USB power bank can’t supply enough current. This matches benchmarks where the 4B is 2.7 W at idle vs 1.2 W.