Q:
For drones and other small robotics, there is a protocol called DSHOT to drive the ESC (Electronic Speed Controller). This is an advanced PWM signal with a control on the high time and low time to transmit data. What software does NXP have to support this?
A:
NXP has several Drone flight controller reference designs. One is fully published, one is in validation. The third is the opensource Teensy version.
These are all based on i.MX RT.
The MR-VMU-RT1176 is the most advanced version and compliant to the Pixhawk V6X-RT standard. There are parts of the chip, such as the image pipeline, that aren't exploited on this yet.
In development, and will soon be released as opensource, is the the X-MR-VMU-TROPIC.
It is i.MX RT1064 based and is in validation and is a smaller lower cost design.
There are currently no plans to make this hardware available on NXP.com, but the design files will be published. This board should be considered unsupported.
The MR-TROPIC Community board is already published as opensource, and uses a TEENSY 4.1 board. FYI - The TROPIC above is a single board chip down version of this Tropic community board.
You can find the design resources here:
https://github.com/NXPHoverGames/TropicCommunityVMU
All these designs are open and can be shared.
About DSHOT for ESCs
- NXP has supported NuttX(RTOS) + PX4 flight stack. This includes DSHOT. This is the controller side, if you wanted to use it in an ESC design, you could reference the code, but development effort will be needed.
https://docs.px4.io/main/en/flight_controller/nxp_mr_vmu_rt1176.html#nxp-mr-vmu-rt1176-flight-contro...
- We also have Zephyr + Cognipilot (new experimental Model Predictive Control). That also has DHSOT. It may be easier to re-purpose that Zephyr code onto an ESC.
