As drones fly deeper into critical roles — from agricultural intelligence to autonomous mapping, from disaster response to military ops — the hardware stack that powers them is undergoing a silent revolution.

At the center of that transformation is Periplex — a breakthrough tool from Vicharak’s Vaaman platform that redefines how drone builders can interface with the real world.

Forget writing firmware. Forget soldering extra ICs. Periplex lets you generate complex hardware peripherals — directly from a JSON file — mapped onto an onboard FPGA. No microcontroller can match the flexibility and performance Periplex unlocks.

What is Periplex?

Periplex is a hardware-generation engine. It converts JSON descriptions like this:

{
    "uart": [
        {
            "id": 0,
            "TX": "GPIOT_RXP28",
            "RX": "GPIOT_RXN28"
        }
    ],
    "i2c": [
        {
            "id": 3,
            "SCL": "GPIOT_RXP27",
            "SDA": "GPIOT_RXP24"
        },
        {
            "id": 4,
            "SCL": "GPIOL_63",
            "SDA": "GPIOT_RXN24"
        }
    ],
    "gpio": [],
    "pwm": [],
    "ws": [],
    "spi": [],
    "onewire": [],
    "can": [],
    "i2s": []
}

…into live hardware interfaces, directly embedded into Vaaman’s FPGA fabric. It auto-generates the FPGA logic, maps it to kernel-level drivers, and exposes them to Linux.

Think of it as the “React.js of peripherals” — make a change, and the hardware updates.

Real Drone Applications That Truly Need Periplex

Let’s break this down with actual field-grade drone use cases where traditional microcontrollers choke, and Periplex thrives.

1. Multi-Peripheral High-Speed Data Collection for Precision Agriculture

Scenario: A drone is scanning fields for crop health with:

2 multispectral cameras (I2C/SPI)
GPS + RTK module (2x UART)
Wind sensor (I2C)
Sprayer flow monitor (PWM feedback loop)
ESCs for 8 motors (PWM)
1 CAN-based fertilizer module

The Periplex Edge:
Microcontrollers would require multiple chips or muxing tricks, causing delays and bottlenecks. With Periplex:

You just declare all interfaces in a JSON file.
It builds the required logic and exposes /dev/pwm0, /dev/can0, etc.
Zero code, zero hassle, zero hardware redesign.

2. Swarm Communication and Custom Protocol Stacks

Scenario: Swarm drones communicate over:

RF LoRa (custom SPI/UART)
UWB mesh (proprietary protocol)
Redundant backup over CAN

Periplex lets you:

Create hybrid protocol stacks
Embed real-time hardware timers, parity logic, and custom UART framing — none of which are feasible in most MCUs

Replacing Microcontrollers, Not Just Augmenting Them

| Feature                   | Microcontroller           | Periplex on Vaaman                 |
|---------------------------|----------------------------|------------------------------------|
| Number of peripherals     | Limited (4–6)              | Virtually unlimited (30+ possible) |
| Reconfiguration time      | Flash + reboot             | Real-time, dynamic reload          |
| Timing precision          | Software-timer limited     | FPGA-grade nanosecond-level timing |
| AI compatibility          | Not feasible               | Integrated (Gati Engine)           |
| Sensor fusion performance | Bottlenecked               | Parallel FPGA pipelines            |

Developers Love JSON, Not Register Maps

No more:

Scouring 400-page datasheets
Bitmasking registers for I2C configs
Writing interrupt handlers from scratch

Just declare what you need. Let Periplex do the work. Peripherals become software-defined, but hardware-implemented.

Built in India, for India’s Drone Revolution

Vaaman + Periplex isn’t just about tech. It’s about self-reliance.

India’s defence, agriculture, and logistics sectors need secure, reconfigurable, audit-friendly hardware — not black-box SoCs from questionable supply chains.

Periplex is the hardware engine for Atmanirbhar Bharat in drones.

TL;DR

Periplex lets drones adapt hardware to the mission — instantly.
It replaces tangled microcontroller logic with clean, structured JSON.
It unlocks use cases microcontrollers can’t touch: AI at the edge, dynamic reconfiguration, secure protocol stacks, and more.
And it’s built into Vaaman, India’s first reconfigurable edge computer.