Fabio Varesano & FreeIMU

[drakelive]

Hi

Fabio Varesano died at only 28 years for a heart problem.
Many of us knew him for his Free IMU and its work supporting software:

http://www.varesano.net/blog/fabio/freeimu-designing-free-speech-9-domdof-marg-imu

Why not continue your work? I believe that we can contribute to the memory of Fabio.
What do you think?
Ian is this possible?


Greetings
Drake

[ian]

Hi Drake,

I'm so sorry to hear the news. His contributions will be missed.

What did you have in mind?

[drakelive]

Hi Ian

I'd like to work around FreeIMU not be forgotten or lost in the chaos of the Web. For this reason, I wonder if you could take this project forward in sauce DP.
From this project we could improve it because I think it is a very useful project in different sectors such as automotive, model helicopters, airplanes and quadcopters ..... etc..
We may also find areas of study and research. These types of modules are suitable for different uses.



Greetings
Drake

[ian]

I would want to be very careful not to disrespect anyone else who wanted to pick up the project who had been previously involved. Are you connected to the project at all? If there is a desire among the community to carry it on I am open to the idea.

[femtoduino]

Hi, this is Alejandro Albino from the Femtoduino site...I just heard of Fabio's untimely passing today. This is incredibly sudden and shocking, and I can't begin to assimilate why this happened to such a good man. I am so sorry to hear this terrible news. Fabio and I had just chatted over e-mail not more than a few weeks back. When exactly did this happen? Can anyone be so kind as to shed some light on the matter?

[drakelive]

Hi,
I heard about this sad event a few days after Christmas in Italian mailing list that I follow.
I was told that Fabio has handled the entire project FreeIMU alone, so he did not actually worked with anyone else. Of course I cannot be 100% sure about this information.
FreeIMU consists of only a few sensors, does not have microcontrollers and it is released in Open Hardware and Software.
Ian, it is reasonable to think that we can start to improve this project.
We can decide whether to continue calling it FreeIMU or OpenIMU etc. but to pay respect to Fabio I think we have to keep track of the initial project.
Some ideas to improve a similar project? I propose to insert a microcontroller and a temperature sensor.


Drake

[PaulStoffregen]

Damn, I can't believe he's gone.

It was only a few weeks ago he and I talked (online) and he merged my patches for 32 bit support.

[drakelive]

Which sensors we can use? Any idea? I like chip digital interface (SPI, I2C, etc.) but do not know how fast they work.

A good design should guarantee at least 50 measurements per second. You agree?

FreeIMU sensor consists of the following:

MPU6050 (U301) ----> Gyro + Accelerometer
HMC5883L (U401) ----> Three-Axis Digital Compass
MS5611 - 01BA03 (U201) ----> Barometric Pressure Sensor

What do you think? They are good chip?

I was thinking of adding an MCU to read continuously and quickly provide sensors and external data read (ISP? I2C? Serial?)



Drake

[PaulStoffregen]

Fabio was working heavily on a GUI to do all sorts of nice stuff. If you really want to continue his work, probably looking at what we was trying to accomplish with the gui, and starting with his last commit (R49) would be a good place to begin.

Changing the hardware would be taking a completely different direction.

[drakelive]

You are perfectly right but I and many other DP members do not have a FreeIMU for development. Unfortunately I could not find an online vendor. You know a supplier?
DP is able to find the sensor needed to create prototypes of FreeIMU and print (seedstudio?) If you can take this route, I am willing to buy one or two modules freeIMU and work on the software.
You will need to create a new repository for development.
However, I believe that all decisions (or recommendations) on the development of hardware and software and management are working for Ian.
Who is interested in this project? PaulStoffregen you are interested in software development? Those interested Hardware Development?

[PaulStoffregen]

I am interested in seeing FreeIMU continue. However, I'm incredibly busy with porting Arduino libraries to 32 bit ARM (I did FreeIMU about a month ago).

At the moment, probably the best I can do is offer the extra 4 blank boards I have to people who seriously wants to get involved. They were ordered from OSH Park, and they're not expensive, but if I send you one of mine it'll save a few weeks waiting for OSH Park to make it for you.

So, anyone reading this who seriously intends to work on the FreeIMU software, please email me directly, paul at pjrc dot com, and I'll send you one of these 4 leftover boards.

[drakelive]

In this forum there are others interested in this project?
We need people working on electronics and software but first you must talk about it to decide the best route to take.

Ian express to us your thoughts about it.

[ian]

I'm just another guy here, if there is momentum do whatever you like and I'll support the best I can. I'm really nervous about taking over his project though, and we are not super strong in the software department. If you need a board routed, no problem, but if you want lots of firmware or software to read and decode the data then we are weak and will need community contributions to make it happen.

[PaulStoffregen]

Probably a first step would involve only logistics and a small amount of money.... to keep Fabio's website online.

Presumably he was paying a web hosting company to host varesano.net. At some point, that bill will become past due and his work will vanish. His code on bazaar.launchpad.net and github will probably remain available long-term, but much of his work will lose value when his personal website with all that hosts the documentation and forum conversations and is the target of numerous links from other sites suddenly vanishes.

Other than contributing a couple patches, I didn't have much connection with Fabio. I don't know how to contact his family. If anyone does know.... the very first thing to do would be opening communication with his family and establishing a relationship with the hosting company so payment can be made to keep is work online and alive.

[atestani]

In response to drakelive » Sun Jan 13, 2013 10:21 am ....

There are multiple hardware configurations supported in the FreeIMU library including ArduIMU which does have an onboard MCU.

IMHO, continuation of Fabio's work should be directed at improving and enhancing the FreeIMU software. There are multiple hardware platforms already supported and hardrware work is best done on improving calibration and drift plus fusing of other sensor inputs (e.g. GPS which the ArduIMU hardware already can do).

I, myself, have been working with an ArduIMU board but despite the changes suggested by Fabio when we added code to FreeIMU to support the platform, I still get significant Yaw drift. To determine if it is something with the ArduIMU board, I am working to build up a couple of FeeIMU board as a comparison. To do that I have acquired a number of FreeIMU PCBs. If anyone is interested in acquiring some of these boards please let me know.