It seems that DIY-Drones are having problems sourcing Atmel CPUs and memory chips. Atmel in short supply – what a shock, who would have thought it !

I’ve been looking at the Ardupilot and development for ages now and have always been put off by the Atmel component. I think Arduino is a brilliant concept but why base it on an Atmel chip, with their long history of supply problems to the little guys.

A light in the distance is a port of Arduino, by someone else or by the Arduino team to Arm. I’m hoping that very soon it will be possible to run Ardupilot on and Arm based board.

As for the memory chip, forget it. Use a micro SD card; even if you don’t support a PC compatible format. The SD card can be purchased by the end user and may cost a little more but is not perceived to be expensive.

There is talk about SD cards not being equal and some causing problems. I have never seen this and would not be surprised if it was an electrical interface or communications (protocol) problem with the device the SD card is plugged in to.

An Ardupilot type product has a limited market and must be made in small batches at very low cost. The design should use standard multi-sourced parts except for the sensors which could be on a daughter-board for easy replacement or upgrade. The CPU is a problem, but there are suppliers with a better history than Atmel. Memory card supplied by the end user.