More than three years ago Emlid was born with the idea of building a versatile and powerful drone controller. We’ve pursued the concept of a controller that will become a primary platform for customizable drone projects when your goals go beyond the limits of traditional autopilot boards. Today we are thrilled to announce advanced drone controller Edge.
Emlid Edge is the first autopilot platform to feature an integrated HDMI input and video compression engine allowing it to capture Full HD video from an onboard camera such as GoPro or any other HDMI-capable camera. Video is streamed directly to the Ground Control Station over a long-range 5.8 GHz Wi-Fi link.
The kit consists of the Edge drone controller, external UAVCAN GNSS module, wide range power module based on Hall sensor and a long range 5.8 GHz Wi-Fi link. Edge features dual-processor architecture, temperature-stabilized dual IMU and plenty of ports for extensions all packed in thin and sleek aluminum case.
At its core Edge runs ArduPilot - the most fully-featured and robust open source autopilot software. Support for Edge is added in a user-friendly and cross-platform QGroundControl GCS. Mission planning, firmware updates, vehicle configuration and video stream viewing – everything is handled through a single application.
See the full specs on the Edge webpage and preorder now. The kits are available for $699 and will be shipped in early November 2017.
This is a Flight controller that also integrates the Video part, correct? Any other controls that can be passed through the stream? Like… Camera control, trigger, etc?
This is a real network connection so it’s very flexible. Edge can do some camera control - e.g. trigger is supported, but it depends on the camera too.
Yes, it does work with Reach. We’ll be working on making the integration as much plug and play as possible.
@Amila in most cases it would be enough to use GCS to configure Edge to do some tasks. It is also possible to use frameworks specially designed for the extension of autopilot functionality such as DroneKit. For advanced modification it is possible to change the Ardupilot code.
Edge GNSS module is designed to be a robust solution for navigation purposes, it is not an RTK receiver. For RTK or PPK mapping Reach should be used on a drone, with Reach RS on the ground as a base station.
On a serious note. Is the wifi a standalone solution for the edge only or can it act as an Access Point for other devices? Reason I am asking is that lets say that I want to connect a GOPRO, can I then connect to the GoPro via the Edge wifi system to control settings ETC ?
We will focus first on using WiFi for a seamless video and telemetry transfer. Something else can be done with some grade of hacking.
Edge has IMU heating and fast sampling of ICM IMU sensors, that should be good for most situations. In case of severe vibrations external dampening platform calculated for a particular drone can be used for best results.
If you’re talking about GNSS antenna then Reach has to use its own antenna.
If you mean correction transfer channel then it would be possible to set up their injection in WiFi link.
@jb1 Edge will transmit video with the resolution up to 1080p max, while GoPro can record it with higher resolution. So Edge can perfectly handle the task of monitoring of what is being recorded.
@coby Ardupilot runs under Linux on CM3, while the co-processor handles PWM, PPM, ADC etc.
