Saturday, February 14, 2015

You Can Now Play With The New Zyro Droneball That Runs On Linux!

 Zyro, a “Droneball” quadcopter that runs on Linux and Gumstix COMs, is a Kickstarter project. It also acts like a smart aerial ball which can be useful in multi-player games too. Well, Zyro Droneball doesn't even look like a usual ball and neither it acts like other normal balls.

It's a quadcopter which can hover, zig-zag and copy a hockey puck or a soccer ball. There are variety of games around Zyro which are activated through a mobile app and the list includes multi-droneball contests too. In these contests, a Droneball acts like an extra player on the field. Zyro is a project by Gumstix engineers and its Droneball runs on Linux on the open source AeroCore 2 micro-aerial vehicle (MAV) controller board, equipped with Gumstix computer-on-module and a WiFi module.

Gumstix engineers have developed Zyro out of their love for drones and gaming. This quadcopter is physically controlled with a wireless-enabled wand device which incorporates AeroCore 2 board. Zyro is asking for for ideas from Kickstarter backers to design the wand and other components for final release. If you are already owning a drone, you can buy a DroneBall Remote autopilot and attach the remote to your own drone of a different make, then it will start functioning like a Droneball.

You can play games with up to four DroneBalls and combinations of DroneBalls as well as other remote-enabled drones in multi-player games. The Zyro DroneBall along with one Zyro Wand is available for $449 as the basic Kickstarter package. Additional Zyro Wands are available for $129 and there is a $159 package too with a Drone Remote autopilot for attaching to a third-party drone.

The AeroCore 2 can be fitted with various WiFi options. AeroCore 2 runs Nuttx RTOS for real-time control tasks and its real-time-task-oriented microcontroller is an ST Microelectronics STM32F427 MCU, based on a 180MHz Cortex-M4 core. The DroneBall is available for funding on Kickstarter through 14 March and shipments are due in June.

You can find more information on the Droneball Kickstarter page and the Zyro website. For the time being, have a look at the introductory video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAV_sjwY8MI

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