I’ve been a bit slow testing my Cormorant prototypes over the last few months. I have managed to complete the drivers for the IMU sensors and the data radio which cover most of the important hardware devices, so I thought now would be a good time to measure the power consumption. This is not just one simple number however, as Cormorant has many peripheral devices with many configurations each consuming different amounts of power.
Cormorant. A New FPGA Based Autopilot
It has been a few years since I first assembled a prototype flight controller built around an FPGA, having been thoroughly distracted by work and thesis writing it’s about time I updated the design. So I hereby present Cormorant!
The concept is the same as before: motion sensors, actuator control, communication and of course the FPGA. All of these have come a long way since my original ProASIC3 design, and CPU/FPGA “SoCs” have become common. This new design centres around a SmartFusion2 SoC which uses the FPGA fabric of an igloo2 paired with a Cortex-M3 CPU.