Glossary¶
Hardware¶
- DF-13
- A kind of connector (for data/low power), with a varying amount of pins. Somewhat of a standard among drones. The Navio has a lot of them.
- XT60
- A connector for batteries, rated up to 60A.
- UART
- Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter: see http://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/37817
- I2C
- (Officially written as I²C), Inter-Integrated Circuit: see http://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/37817
- SPI
- Serial Peripheral Interface: see http://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/37817
- ADC
- Analog-to-Digital Convertor. The data is the voltage.
- ESC
- Electronic Speed Controller
- LiPo
- Lithium-Polymer [battery]
- CW
- Clockwise
- CCW
- Counter clockwise
- C-rating
- A confusing way to rate batteries on max current, has nothing to do with Coulombs. See http://www.revolectrix.com/tech_data/lipoCalc/Battery_C_Rating.htm
Software¶
- MAVLink
- Binary protocol over which all the DroneCode related projects communicate.
- GCS
- Ground Control Station, eg. QGroundControl or Tower
- SITL
- Software in the loop
- APM
- ArduPilot Mega. Sometimes used to refer to the hardware, sometimes used to refer to the entire ArduPilot project (which is software).
- PX4
- An alternative Open Source flight stack, again often used to refer to the hardware running it (Pixhawk). Also speaks MAVLink.
General¶
- DroneCode
- Organisation started by the Linux Foundation that organizes open-source efforts in the UAV community.
- 3DR
- A very prominent company in DroneCode. One of the few brands competing with DJI that isn’t Asian.
- DJI
- Basically the biggest drone company out there. Software is very closed, but they sell good hardware.
- Rx
- Receiver
- Tx
- Transmitter