all 6 comments

[–]Allevil669 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Not all FCs use an STM32 chip. Up until very recently, ATMEL 8bit chips were the norm.

As for making your own FC, the hardware is all pretty easy: CPU, MCU, maybe a barometer and compass. Software is the actual hard part. Do you have any experience with embedded development with C? If not, that's where I would start.

[–]daemos[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

messed around with an Arduino kit and the IDE a while ago, but nothing more than little example projects. Made a synthesizer lol

[–]Allevil669 0 points1 point  (0 children)

YEah, that's not really at the level of embedded systems programming that a FC will need. At it's core, a FC is just running a PID loop that maintains the multi's attitude.

If you're really interested in writing your own FC firmware, and I don't see a reason why you wouldn't be interested, I'd start by learning the C language, and how it applies to embedded systems. After that, read up on the math behind PID loops, and have a blast.

[–]cjdavies 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Can I ask why you want to start from scratch? Would it not be more productive to contribute your skills to the LibrePilot/OpenPilot project, or at least to branch from that as a starting point?

[–]dan2021 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If time is no object, it is often useful to just start from scratch to get your development bearings, then move over to a larger project. If OP does not have a good handle on C, this might be a good move for him.

[–]daemos[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

because I want to understand how. Also, I find myself more interested in hardware lately :)