quadcopter controller firmware

INFO: Project is in development stage.

Controller firmware for multiple hardware and emulated targets. The project is based on Zephyr. Zephyr solutions are used for the build system, board support and platform code (HAL, subsystems, RTOS). Nonetheless, significant amount of controller code is platform-agnostic.

Supported boards

Native application

Native application build allows to easily test the code on the developers machine without any extra hardware. Although limited in IO capabilities, this build is great for testing high-level APIs.

stm32 controller board

STM32F3 quadcopter flight controller for controlling simple machines with brushed DC motors.

Development

Environment

INFO: The recommended way is to use Docker-based environment and VSCode devcontainers. Documentation for other set-ups may be incomplete.

With Docker

The root Dockerfile provides definition for the development image with all tools preinstalled. Simply run all the development commands from this documentation inside this container, for example docker exec <container_name> <command>.

You can either build the image yourself or use it together with VSCode as a devcontainer using Dev Containers plugin. This approach is described in next section. This is the recommended set-up. If you want to build and use the image yourself please do at your own discretion.

VScode devcontainer

This project includes support for VSCode Dev Container. That means you can simply:

1. Install Dev Containers extension.
2. Run VSCode command Dev Containers: Reopen in container (or Dev Containers: Rebuild and reopen in container if running for the first time).

From now on you will be able to run all the development commands in the built-in terminal from VSCode.

Local (not recommended)

TODO: Document local environment set-up.

Task

This project uses Task for running common development commands.

Task is a task runner / build tool that aims to be simpler and easier to use than, for example, GNU Make.

Initialize Zephyr project

To build and run the Zephyr application you need to set up the project with Task, which in turn calls Zephyr's west build system.

cd quadcopter
task project:init
task project:update

Unit tests

Unit tests are run using ThrowTheSwitch framework consisting of Ceedling, Unity and CMock. Task wrappers are provided to simplify running tests.

To run all Unit Tests simply call:

task test:all

Build and run

Controller board

Build

Build application for controller board using:

task build:controller

Flash

Flash controller board with:

west flash

Native application

Build

Build native application using:

task build:native

Run

Run native application with:

west build -t run