[HN Gopher] Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32
___________________________________________________________________
Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32
Author : m3at
Score : 421 points
Date : 2024-12-24 00:20 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.digikey.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.digikey.com)
| phoronixrly wrote:
| What a great time for this article! The US is having a mass
| hysteria event and it turns out you can churn out DYI drones for
| the fat sum of $12-13 each? What a time to be alive!
|
| Edit: Hmm, considering that people are taking stars for UFOs
| lately, maybe a cheap drone is an overkill and a 20-pack of
| Chinese sky lanterns would be more than enough to keep the
| average US neighbourhood in a state of constant fear / see how
| long it takes for you to get to the front page of /r/UFOs...
| abracadaniel wrote:
| Judging from the posts I've seen, others have already started.
| Someone had a drone with a lit Roman candle going the other
| day. Or it was FAA compliant aliens. One of the two.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| The interesting/scary part is that its not that hard to
| weaponise these drones. You can make one drop a home made
| explosive pretty easily, fully autonomous. and then dump itself
| into a body of water. All for way less cost than a gun.
| bubaumba wrote:
| > home made explosive
|
| With this a lot of damage can be done even without drone. As
| for weaponized it's not a future, it's a reality in Ukraine
| for years now. Defense against them is difficult to
| impossible. A bodyguard who can sacrifice himself may
| sometimes work.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| It's not scary when it is just a hypothetical. If this were
| happening with some frequency it would be concerning. Until
| then I suspect there is something you are overlooking,
| oversimplifying.
|
| (EDIT: I'm assuming you are talking about non-military use.)
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Its one of those things where once you can buy "kits" for
| it, you may see its use. Ukraine war videos popularized the
| idea of using drones to drop explosives.
|
| I could see Cartels using this to take out targets.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| A rival cartel paid a British mercenary to drop 500lb
| bombs on Palbo Escobar in the 1990s.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/sep/14/colombia.world
|
| So it isn't an entirely new concept.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| I don't know what drone you're talking about but you
| absolutely cannot make a tiny Wi-Fi drone autonomous or drop
| things for less than a cost of a gun, every part of your
| statement is wrong. Currently anyone smart enough to build
| drone with 7 inch propellers and programmable GPS waypoints,
| improvised explosives ... 3d printed release mechanism ..
| probably has a pretty good paying job and doesn't see the
| value proposition of blowing things up
|
| You know what you can easily do drive a truck into a crowd of
| people or fill your car with explosives in park it under a
| building and then blow up the entire building, but people
| aren't doing that every day but continue whingeing about
| drones
| Max-q wrote:
| Autonomous isn't a problem, the open source firmwares for
| drones include fully autonomous mode. I don't know if this
| particular one does but it should be easy to port. The size
| and range, however, doesn't make this particular drone very
| scary.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >Currently anyone smart enough to build drone with 7 inch
| propellers and programmable GPS waypoints, improvised
| explosives ... 3d printed release mechanism .. probably has
| a pretty good paying job and doesn't see the value
| proposition of blowing things up
|
| This is true, but the thing is, at least in United States,
| its not a matter of lack of talent to build these things,
| its mostly a lack of need to destroy stuff. Given how
| things are going in the world, where an assasin is
| currently being celebrated, I dunno if this is gonna hold.
|
| I will point you to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Forgotte
| nWeapons/comments/15gd3nj/m....
|
| In the same way, it can very well be possible to make these
| things under $300 with mass produced kits. Hook up a gps
| chip to it, and its easy to make it waypoint navigatable
| without manual control
|
| The advantage of a drone is that the level of separation
| between the assailant and the crime goes up so much that it
| becomes next to impossible for Law Enforcement to assertain
| a suspect.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I find it funny that the US is so obsessed with infantry
| firearms and surgical strikes that people think those are the
| best "ways to go" for certain things. I guess not a bad thing
| considering we don't need any improved means for those
| stuffs...
| aftbit wrote:
| Why even "drop" an explosive? Just fly it straight into the
| target.
| diggan wrote:
| > The US is having a mass hysteria event
|
| What is this in reference to? The Chinese weather-balloon drama
| was years ago, wasn't it?
| mathgeek wrote:
| https://apnews.com/article/drones-new-jersey-what-to-
| know-e6...
| diggan wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| > Authorities say many of the drone sightings have actually
| been legal drones, manned aircraft, helicopters and even
| stars.
|
| > many state and municipal lawmakers have called for
| stricter rules about who can fly unmanned aircraft -- and
| for the authority to shoot them down.
|
| Hard to find a more American article than this.
| jbuzbee wrote:
| "Hard to find a more American article than this." Just
| wait until they start taking pot-shots at them and then
| it will be "real" America: BOOM! "Look Ma! I done got
| one!"
| edm0nd wrote:
| humans are the virus
| teruakohatu wrote:
| This is amazing. Even the landing gear (struts?) is part of the
| PCB. I hope the author considers selling kits or outsourcing kits
| to SeedStudio. I live in a country where digikey order shipping
| is quite pricey.
|
| The author estimates the BOM to be a little under US$13. At that
| price it would be fun to try create a swarm for DIY drone lights
| show.
|
| [1] https://circuitdigest.com/microcontroller-projects/DIY-
| wifi-...
| jdboyd wrote:
| FWIW, making just 10 might drive that $13 price down quite a
| bit.
|
| Although, it looks like 1 unit might be closer to $50 (at least
| for the suppliers I might use), but $150 for 10.
|
| I think costs could be cut somewhat though. The USB->serial
| chip is nearly $6, but differently packaged it can be $4.40 for
| 1 or $3.99/ea for 10, and alternative chips that seem like they
| should be good enough can be cheaper still. The voltage
| regulator they chose is $1/ea for 500ma, while the one I would
| normally go to is $0.22/ea for 1000ma (dropping down to
| $0.13/ea for 10).
| awestroke wrote:
| Which is your go-to voltage regulator?
| pjc50 wrote:
| If you're making lots, you could uncouple the programming
| interface which isn't needed while in flight, thereby saving
| both BOM and weight.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Does it need a regulator at all? ESP32 should be able to run
| on raw battery voltage, assuming the ESP is necessary.
| RealTek TX2/RX2 + PIC10/ATTiny10/CH32V003 could be even
| cheaper if user is okay with a dedicated transmitter.
| sweetjuly wrote:
| The entire BOM is crazy. The USB to UART chip is wholly
| unnecessary if you simply pick a better (at an equal or lower
| price) ESP32-S3 module which has a USB interface.
|
| I suspect this was designed based on things the author had in
| their cupboard as opposed to something that's reasonable for
| new designs.
| iandanforth wrote:
| Meta: This has to be one of the most aggressively blocked pages
| I've encountered as it refuses to render any content if you have
| an adblocker on (uBlock at least) and resists several forms of
| archiving.
| macrocosmos wrote:
| I'm able to access the site with uBlock Origin.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Same here
| prmoustache wrote:
| Same here on firefox/linux. Is that IP dependent?
| moepstar wrote:
| uBlock on, pihole on the net - not sure what it dislikes more.
|
| I see a screen (light grey on white) which reads something
| along to "Press & hold" some button to confirm i'm human. Which
| does nothing, because of adblocking?
|
| Well, f* you then - let me find something different to read :)
| stavros wrote:
| This will work (make sure you check the video at the bottom):
|
| https://circuitdigest.com/microcontroller-projects/DIY-
| wifi-...
| ElectRabbit wrote:
| Even with uBlock and Cookie AutoDelete disabled it doesn't
| work.
|
| OK. Then I'll order my stuff from Mouser in the future.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| I also had the worst anti robot thing ever. I had to hold a
| button for what feels like 10s. Who does that?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Odd, it's just fine for me on firefox/ublock origin.
| 0xEF wrote:
| I'm also using firefox/ublock but I'm getting the mentioned
| agressively-blocked page. I'm also using a VPN, if that makes
| any difference.
|
| I also see the extremely light "Press & Hold" message to
| prove I am not a bot. I missed it the first few times I
| loaded the page because my eyes just don't pick up on things
| like that very easily (I'm the guy who turns the brightness
| up in video games with a lot of shadow). Not only does this
| press & hold action seem to be ineffective, but they made a
| message that some humans have trouble seem to keep bots out?
| Smdh.
|
| Which is disappointing, because I've ordered from digikey
| countless times, both for work and for personal projects.
| There should be absolutely no reason they clamp down on
| people using adblockers since they are highly profitable
| already. Guess I'll be looking for a different parts source.
| joshu wrote:
| note: appears to use an outdated esp-idf. worth checking to see
| if esp-drone has been ported a newer esp-idf.
| asadalt wrote:
| this is amazing. on similar note, I have spent last few months
| trying to fit visual inertial odometry into esp32. Combining that
| with this would be insane (and so cheap!)
| timschmidt wrote:
| I've had similar thoughts and have been working on firmwares
| for the esp32. My contact info is in my profile. Hollar at me
| and lets compare notes.
| asadalt wrote:
| i don't see your contact info.
| timschmidt wrote:
| My mistake. Updated.
| joshmarinacci wrote:
| What do you mean by this? Do you mean using an onboard camera
| for navigation and/or orientation? I'm very interested.
| AstroJetson wrote:
| Is the custom circuit board something that mortals can get made?
| That seems to be the sticky point to me.
| asadalt wrote:
| just upload it to jlcpcb and get it delivered with components
| soldered.
| wiml wrote:
| Yup. About fifteen years ago there was an explosion in small-
| run PCB services that cater to hobbyists (and cottage-scale
| professionals). If you don't need them overnight you can get
| good quality PCBs made at a very reasonable price.
| ElectRabbit wrote:
| 99% of hobbyist PCBs are can be ordered from JLCPCB nowadays.
|
| As long the PCBs have no components on them it's very cheap.
| stavros wrote:
| Even if they have components on them, that's only $1-$2 extra
| per board (depending on the components), JLCPCB will assemble
| all the common components (resistors, capacitors, some more
| exotic ones) for very cheap, and you can solder the rest
| yourself. Their PCB assembly saves so much time, I don't want
| to waste half an hour soldering 20 0805 resistors to save
| $0.30 any more.
| nick__m wrote:
| JLCPCB assembly services are so cheap as long as you don't
| use components marked as extended!
|
| I don't solder passive components anymore and now mostly use
| 0402 (that i am not able to solder reliably) instead of the
| bigger 0805. If you value your time and don't derive pleasure
| from soldering passive components, try the assembly services!
| frognumber wrote:
| It's odd, considering this is digikey, that there isn't a "Buy
| now" button.
|
| I'd totally do that if I got everything shipped to me, and knew I
| wasn't forgetting something.
| wat10000 wrote:
| There's a small link at the bottom to "Add all DigiKey Parts to
| Cart."
|
| But one of the parts is apparently already obsolete and
| unavailable, and two more have minimum quantities above what's
| needed here, so it's not great.
| rkagerer wrote:
| _But one of the parts is apparently already obsolete and
| unavailable_
|
| I love Digikey, but unfortunately this is not uncommon at
| all.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| To answer the question asked by the [dead] commenter:
| because every other electronic component distributor site
| (with the exception of Mouser, which is basically DigiKey
| with a different stylesheet) is much worse.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Or if you don't want to do it from scratch, you can get a
| programmable readymade for a little more:
| https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5stamp-fly-with-m5stamps3...
|
| The included software stack is very basic, dig around on Japanese
| nerd Twitter for open source avionics.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Right, but it's 3x the price and out of stock :(
| asadalt wrote:
| i wish this didn't use mpu6050 imu, which is obsolete and
| unavailable it seems.
|
| but i guess they used it due to existing code/drivers widely
| available for it and esp32.
| Neywiny wrote:
| Agreed. I'm in the market for an imu and thought "ah the MPU
| 6050, I've heard of this one a lot even recently" and it's
| obsolete. This is typical of consumer to
| adafruit/sparkfun/aliexpress levels where they have countless
| old stock of cheapy proto boards to buy from, but if you're
| designing a whole new thing from scratch, that's inexcusable.
| timonoko wrote:
| I played with EUR25 foldable wifi drone from Lidl until EU
| started requiring EUR30 fee annual for a camera drone.
|
| I cannot think much practical use for drone without a camera.
| Fly-fishing might be one, but I need to program it so that it
| drops the line and returns home the moment it feels fish yanking.
| eptcyka wrote:
| How much lift can a 30EUR drone produce? A 600 gram trout could
| easily drag the drone underwater unless it is ridiculously
| overpowered.
| timonoko wrote:
| "drops the line" == does not even try, me myself reel the
| fish in.
| wyan wrote:
| EU doesn't require a EUR30 annual fee for a camera drone,
| though. Your country might. Mine surely doesn't.
| VagabundoP wrote:
| Drone reg here in Ireland (over 250g or with a camera its
| required) EUR38 for two years.
|
| https://www.iaa.ie/general-aviation/drones/drone-register
| mig39 wrote:
| I'm registered as an operator in Ireland. This isn't per
| drone fee. It's a per-operator fee.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| i did this with my drone. I just used a small sideways chip
| clip i glued to the bottom of my drone. Fly fast enough so when
| the line goes taunt, the line will slip out of the clip and
| drop.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| love everything here but I'm skeptical of real time control via
| wifi. for me there's always been a noticeable delay in video
| streaming and receiving control signal so I'm curious how this
| works?
| m00x wrote:
| There's no video feed on this drone
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| if that's true then that might be helpful as your visual
| feedback comes directly from your eyes and not latent video
| plus latency for control signals is probably less. thanks for
| pointing this out
| mciancia wrote:
| Well, given how well game streaming can work (local, not
| cloud), I think low latency for drones should be possible :)
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| if you've ever streamed video on a local network over web
| sockets you'll notice latency. no matter how fast sending
| text based control messages may be, latency in the video
| stream will cause users to send controls with the same
| latency which makes control impossible as far as I know.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Feels like a poor fit, given the limited number of cores
| available.
|
| Would be awesome to see rp2350 or some such, where there are very
| low power io cores available that can do work whether the main
| core is on or not. Embedded really is one of the best places for
| many-core, but it's so so rare there are good offload
| architectures and puny Programmable IO systems.
|
| Should out to folks like Silego/Dialog/Renesas with their
| GreenPAK; ultra tiny but interesting mixed signal little bits of
| programmable logic with a healthy dollop of peripherals!
| not_the_fda wrote:
| You don't need more cores. Ardupilot runs on much less capable
| hardware https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-
| autopilots.html#com..., we've sent people to the moon with less
| capable hardware. More cores just make things more complicated.
| crote wrote:
| Calling the RP2350's PIO units "low power io cores" is quite an
| exaggeration. Although they are _technically_ turing-complete
| with a lot of hacking, they are absolutely awful at any kind of
| compute. Heck, you probably don 't even want to let it handle
| UART parity calculation!
|
| If anything the ESP32's Ultra-Low-Power Coprocessor would be
| _perfect_ for such applications - but realistically it isn 't
| worth the effort. Compute power usage is going to be negligible
| compared to what is needed for wifi and rotors, and running
| multiple realtime tasks on a single core isn't exactly rocket
| science either.
| boguscoder wrote:
| Even rp2040 is fine running a basic drone. Ive learned a lot
| from this project https://github.com/holsatus/holsatus-flight
| curiousgeorgio wrote:
| Is this just someone reposting espressif's esp-drone
| (https://github.com/espressif/esp-drone) and passing it off as
| their own (and DigiKey posting it on their site)? They talk about
| making a custom PCB, but it looks pretty much the same.
|
| The repository linked from the article
| (https://github.com/Circuit-Digest/ESP-Drone) has some issues
| claiming there's malware in it, and the commit history looks a
| little suspicious, but I could be wrong.
| asadalt wrote:
| damn you are right!
| stavros wrote:
| Wow, yeah, I thought Espressif just wrote the firmware, but
| this drone is really really similar to the one posted, PCB
| struts and all.
| nick__m wrote:
| Since those who filed the issue did not even stated which file
| is affected this is pure speculation but the virus issue really
| look like a false positive. The pre-built firmware checked into
| a repo could easily trigger an anti-virus.
|
| The repo is mostly made of plain text files, the zip and the
| bin don't look required for anything so if your feeling
| paranoid delete them before building!
| m00x wrote:
| Yeah, he took the code straight from esp-drone which is
| copyrighted.
|
| https://github.com/Circuit-Digest/ESP-Drone/blob/main/Firmwa...
|
| I believe this is a violation of the license. Very poor form of
| Digikey to hire these people.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| both project source crazy flie as their inspiration and may be
| the cause of the similarities.
|
| https://www.bitcraze.io/products/old-products/crazyflie-2-0/
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Fun! I built a Crazyflie[1] back in the day which was bespoke
| 2.4GHz protocols (no ESP32 at the time) so this is a great
| upgrade to that. Also the use of a single low side MOSFET as the
| motor controller makes it simpler and cheaper at the expense of
| some moves that BLDC motors give you. All in all, at $10 - $15
| that is a great deal and I'm wondering if one will show up in a
| Hackerbox[2] as that is exactly the kind of thing they do.
|
| I have had a lot of fun playing with the CF microdrones, I'm
| definitely going to build one of these too.
|
| [1] https://github.com/bitcraze/crazyflie-firmware
|
| [2] https://hackerboxes.com/
| amelius wrote:
| With the power budget of a drone almost any board will do.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Fun. I'm looking into turning my old iPhone into a drone as it
| has great hardware already to do higher level tasks and use ESP32
| for the more real time stuff like actually driving the motors
| based on sensor input.
|
| If you think about it, an old iPhone 6 comes with GPS, gyro,
| accelerometer, multiple cameras, pretty powerful processors,
| bluetooth + wifi + LTE, sound + light, ambient + proximity
| sensors. Get rid of the case, and you have a great mini computer
| that can be aware of its surroundings and communicate.
|
| On more modern iPhones, you can even use advanced tech like ARKit
| to have great spatial understanding of your drone and environment
| and do autonomous drones. With an iPhone 15, you can even get
| spatial video. How amazing would that be?
|
| I wish Apple provided a straightforward way to unlock(like remove
| restrictions on the OS level) old phones and use them for DIY
| projects.
| szundi wrote:
| Not a realtime os though
| mrtksn wrote:
| True but, IMHO, a lot of the higher level task should be able
| to handle it. I guess you can have a simple real time IC to
| handle the flight envelope to provide stable flight and then
| use the iPhone to do the advanced operations. For example, if
| you are building a drone that is mapping the environment and
| follows you through a bike ride, does it really matter if the
| 3D environment it creates for autonomous navigation is
| slightly off? You can continuously compensate for it, stick
| with moving averages and avoid extreme moves.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That real-time controller still needs the IMU sensors,
| which is maybe what GP was responding to. (Your iPhone
| could have an _additional set_ of them, but the ones on the
| phone don 't do any good to the real-time subsystem.)
| mrtksn wrote:
| Oh, I got an accelerometer card for that. It's very small
| and cheap, there are also cards that contain a gyro +
| barometer. So if the phone ones are not real-time enough
| cheap options exist.
| bschwindHN wrote:
| Hence a microcontroller for flight control. The iPhone can
| just decide on the higher level tasks and send control
| signals to the microcontroller, similar to how a
| microcontroller delegates tasks to the underlying hardware
| peripherals.
| numpad0 wrote:
| imo "realtime" is such a misnomer. It should be re-termed as
| "jitter minimized" or "loop interval stabilized" or something
| along that.
| Max-q wrote:
| Do you really need the phone? The dual core 240MHz ESP32 seems
| to be able to do the job at lower weight and power consumption.
|
| Maybe the old phone is better used as a controller?
| mrtksn wrote:
| I got an ESP32 WROOM 32U board that I intent to use it as the
| flight controller which will keep the drone within its flight
| envelope and do the maneuvering upon receiving commands from
| the phone.
|
| I find the phone appealing because I want try to make it
| somewhat autonomous, like im RTS games where you give a unit
| a command to go somewhere and it figures the path out by
| itself and avoids obstacles without direct input. The phone
| has quite a lot of processing power and sensors and IMHO
| doing it on board will be more interesting. Also, I'm not
| sure that the connection will be always stable and high
| bitrate make the drone a thin client.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Still I think I'd just have the phone run an app that talks
| to a microcontroller by Wifi, even if it is strapped to the
| drone all the time.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I haven't tried it yet but as it appears that will be my
| choice too. Other options appear to be bluetooth or
| ethernet tethering over USB.
| talldayo wrote:
| You would want to use quite literally _anything_ except Apple-
| manufactured hardware for this purpose. Just don 't even waste
| your life-minutes on that kind of thing.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Note to anyone unafamiliar: There is a thriving "FPV" ecosystem
| of drones that can be DIYed. Example common setup, you can
| mix+match: - Small square PCB with the main
| flight control MCU (STM32), and some sensors - Smalls
| square PCB with motor drivers - Carbon fiber frame -
| Small PCB with a LoRa radio - Camera and video transmission
| system. (90s-security-cam style analog, or digital. -
| Brushless DC motors, props etc
|
| Uses Betaflight, ArduPilot, iNav, or PX4 firmware. Or, you could
| write your own.
|
| The PCB-frame in the article is neat and has obvious convenience
| advantages, but I speculate that it would not be stiff enough for
| desirable controllable characteristics under high accel
| situations.
| hylaride wrote:
| And a lot of it is all open source!
|
| ESC software:
|
| - https://github.com/am32-firmware
|
| - https://github.com/mathiasvr/bluejay
|
| Flight controller (you mentioned these):
|
| - https://github.com/betaflight
|
| - https://github.com/ArduPilot
|
| - https://github.com/iNavFlight
|
| Control link:
|
| - https://github.com/ExpressLRS (also uses ESP32/ESP82 chips)
|
| Radio Controllers:
|
| - https://github.com/EdgeTX
|
| 5+ years ago the vast majority of this stuff was proprietary-
| only and getting into the hobby cost thousands of dollars. Now
| you could start at ~$500 (big price factor for FPV is the
| goggles, but cheap analog ones can be had for ~$100).
| nullstyle wrote:
| With luck the OpenIPC cameras that are starting to come on
| the market will find traction and the entire hardware stack
| will run on open source firmware.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdjI3ZQsmCA
| the__alchemist wrote:
| This is so cool; LFTI!
| stavros wrote:
| That'll be really nice, but I'm worried that DJI has a
| stranglehold on the camera market. Their stuff just works,
| gives you video over 20+ km without any tuning, and looks
| amazing. Open hardware has a long way to go to do that, but
| let's hope they pull off an ELRS.
| af78 wrote:
| Unfortunately these kernels look very old:
|
| - https://github.com/OpenIPC/linux/tree/ingenic-t31:
| v3.10.14
|
| - https://github.com/OpenIPC/linux/tree/ingenic-t40:
| v4.4.94
|
| etc.
|
| That's the problem with vendors forking the kernel:
| downstream users are often left with unmaintained branches
| that will accumulate CVEs over time...
| nostrademons wrote:
| You can start for ~$400 - I just bought parts for 2 drones
| for my kids. My shopping list:
|
| - Flywoo Goku F405 HD 1-2S 12A ELRS AIO V2 flight controller,
| $64, flywoo.net
|
| - Radiomaster Pocket radio controller, $65, radiomasterrc.com
|
| - EAchine EV800D VR goggles, $109.81, banggood.com
|
| - Meteor 75 frame, $5, tinywhoop.com
|
| - 4x 40mm props, $2.25, tinywhoop.com
|
| - BetaFPV canopy, $5, tinywhoop.com
|
| - TinyWhoop Pinch Premium FPV camera, $20, tinywhoop.com
|
| - 4x 702 26,000kV brushless motors, $40, tinywhoop.com
|
| - 4x BetaFPV BT2.0 550mAH lipo battery, $31, amazon.com
|
| - BetaFPV 1S lipo charger board, $28, amazon.com
|
| Haven't fully soldered it together yet so I hope I'm not
| forgetting something important, but all the parts have
| arrived, and I've successfully rough-fitted everything
| together. The Flywoo Goku board supposedly runs both
| Betaflight or ArduPilot on a whoop form factor. Note also
| that the biggest expense are one-time items that can be
| reused across multiple drones: the radio controller, FPV
| goggles, and battery charger are $200 together. The BOM for a
| single drone is about $150 these days, so if you're say
| putting together multiple ones for multiple family members,
| it's pretty cheap.
| stavros wrote:
| I don't see the ESCs, are they in the AIO?
| tubs wrote:
| They quote 12A in the name so I'd guess it includes the
| ESC.
| stavros wrote:
| Oh it's for a whoop, the cost threw me off. I guess it
| includes the controller and goggles, but still, a whoop
| should be around $50.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Yeah the ESCs are on the flight controller board.
| 83 wrote:
| You could knock at least a third off that total cost as
| well if you buy this stuff around holidays when its on sale
| at aliexpress.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I bought for Black Friday sales so there's already some
| discount included, but the FC is also more expensive than
| it needs to be because I wanted something compatible with
| both ArduPilot and Betaflight, and the motors are more
| expensive than they need to be because my kids had color
| preferences. I think you can easily get a FPV whoop BOM
| well under $100.
| fransje26 wrote:
| Instead of the analogue eachine boxgoggle, you could go
| full digital for $199.99 with the Walksnail Avatar HD
| Goggles L.
|
| Of course you will also have to pay extra for the HD camera
| system, and the system might be slightly on the heavy side
| for tinywhoops, but the upgrade to digital image is
| absolutely worth the price. And you might be able to get a
| bundle discount if you buy the goggles with a camera
| system.
|
| As a disclaimer, I should add that I have 0 experience with
| the Walksnail system, but I do fly the other two HD systems
| on the market.
|
| From my experience, starting with an analogue system was,
| in hindsight, a waste of money. And a disappointment as the
| image quality of the low cost analogue systems was
| particularly poor.
|
| As a second tip, have your kids fly on the computer first,
| using the radiomaster pocket as a controller. That will
| help decrease your repair efforts due to unavoidable
| beginners crashes.
| hylaride wrote:
| If they stick to it, you'll eventually want to get this
| charger: https://viflydrone.com/products/vifly-
| whoopstor-6-ports-1s-b...
|
| It'll do storage voltage (which very few 1S chargers
| support), which is much better for battery longevity.
| Kadin wrote:
| This is all true, but just to set expectations: the open source
| ecosystem seems to be lagging the proprietary world pretty
| significantly, unless there's some corner where development is
| really chugging along that's not making it out to the rest of
| the hobbyist market.
|
| Though there have been incremental improvements in flight
| control software, and video subsystems have moved (mostly) from
| analog to 2.4/5.8 GHz and digital, the overall architecture is
| pretty similar to what it was 5+ years ago. You have a hobby
| R/C transmitter and receiver driving PWM outputs (through the
| flight controller, typically an STM32) to hobby-type ESCs which
| control the motors. The ESCs are microcontroller-driven and can
| be reflashed, but painstakingly and annoyingly. Telemetry is
| typically separate from control, which is separate from video.
| Everything is very short-range and non-IP.
|
| In comparison, a COTS quadcopter from DJI has a single backhaul
| from the airframe to the controller which does control, video,
| and and telemetry. And the video is impressively low-latency.
| (I'm pretty sure they use a WiFi-type chipset and just spew raw
| vendor frames, and the receiver picks up what it can, best
| effort. You could do this with an ESP32 in ESP-NOW mode, I
| suspect?) I've seen some efforts to reverse-engineer the DJI
| protocol but I'm not aware of a fully compatible implementation
| or equivalent in the OSS world.
|
| And at the upper end of the commercial/proprietary space you
| have systems with out-of-the-box autonomy, multiple backhauls
| over IP -- so they can use LOS/BLOS radio, LTE, SATCOM,
| whatever you want -- integration with navigation beacon systems
| to reduce GPS dependence, hybrid motor/generators, redundant
| power systems, the whole shebang.
|
| There's no real reason aside from developer interest that this
| situation exists, as far as I can see. The components are
| mostly all available. A Raspberry Pi running a decent RTOS
| would have orders of magnitude more processing capacity than an
| STM32 and could easily do the sort of multi-sensor fusion that
| the commercial systems do. LTE modems are cheap. A bigger
| hexacopter or fixed-wing could easily loft one of the small
| Starlink dishes, if someone wanted to. Stuff like "perching"
| (landing and recharging from solar panels) is entirely
| possible.
|
| But from what I can tell, the cutting edge of open source
| drones is happening behind closed doors in Ukraine and Iran.
|
| Happy to be corrected if there's new stuff that I'm not
| tracking, but the gap between the "art of the possible" and
| current practice seems large.
|
| Lots of opportunity though, is the other way to view it.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| That is consistent with my experience. My highlights:
|
| - Current betaflight devevelopers and leaders are incompetent
| (They inherited the code base from others), and are slow, and
| varying degrees of willing, to add higher-level flight-
| control mechanics (semi-autonomous modes etc).
|
| - The Ardupilot and PX4 configuration systems, and general
| experience, are user-hostile.
|
| Note that the converses of these hold: Betaflight has a
| reasonably-good user experience, and Ardupilot and PX4 have
| extensive higher-level flight control mechanics. If only you
| could get the pros of both together!
|
| Regarding hardware, frames generally accommodate flight
| controllers and ESCs elegantly, but other hardware like
| cameras, radios, and especially batteries, feel clumsy to
| assemble in a safe and consistent way.
| bodhi_mind wrote:
| Fwiw, betaflight for acro flight is probably the best.
| Tuning is dead simple. Filtering is possibly the best.
|
| That said, I don't need much else because I just fly acro
| mode 100% of the time.
| aftbit wrote:
| I haven't touched this stuff in 5+ years, but I wonder how
| iNav stacks up on your list? I was about 50% of the way
| through a 7" FPV build with a GPS receiver based on iNav
| when COVID hit, and between the supply shortages and
| general life shift, I stopped working on it.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I'm curious too; of those it's the one I have the least
| experience with. It is currently not an option for me, as
| the aircraft I would use with it uses CAN perhipherals,
| which iNav doesn't support.
| 83 wrote:
| I fly iNav on a couple planes. I havent updated to the
| latest version in a couple years but i find it works
| great. The electronics like gps modules and sensors are
| insanely cheap now if you go straight from china
| (aliexpress) - you can get an hglrc m100 gps for about
| $12 shipped now.
| elcapitan wrote:
| Interesting, I wanted to look into building a drone myself
| next year. Mostly to learn about tinkering with engineering
| and electronics. What are the issues with the codebases and
| their development?
| the__alchemist wrote:
| This is a tough question to answer in detail: I encourage
| you to browse yourself. (They are all on Github) but: The
| BF code base in itself isn't too bad. The AP one is
| _very_ complicated, and difficult to navigate. The names
| and organization are confusing. Compiling is finicky and
| slow due to the tool system they use, and it requires
| Linux (Note: The compile target is embedded!). I PRed an
| update to the build instructions, but it was rejected.
|
| For all of these code bases, there is minimal or no
| documention: Neither guides, nor code comments. The
| functions, structs, fields, etc have no descriptions of
| their purpose or use. The modules, where you would expect
| a description of their purpose and use, instead includes
| the same license text at the top.
| Fabricio20 wrote:
| I think to be fair BetaFlight is not aimed at autonomous
| flight, when I got into this stuff a few years ago I was
| told "BetaFlight is for FPV (acro mode?)" and "iNAV is for
| Autonomous" and after giving both a try I can say that my
| experience on iNAV was much better for what I wanted
| (autonomous). BetaFlight worked wonders for flying around
| (very low input delay, etc..) but it was pretty clear it
| barely had anything related to auto control. Hells, it
| didn't even have a reasonable return-to-home!!! It would
| just drift diagonally in the "home" direction and try to
| land when it felt it was close enough.
|
| iNAV on the other hand REQUIRES a full gps suite for
| starters (which for me was REALLY expensive) but you can do
| full waypoint navigation with just that and a barometer.
|
| Of course it's been at least 4 years but hey at least it
| was pretty good back then already on the iNAV side!
| holoduke wrote:
| Sorry but the main dev of Inav is a very experienced dev
| with a lot of knowledge. He has many youtube videos about
| developing of drone software/hardware.
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| Everything here is possible, the gap in implementation is
| that it's a) expensive and b) non trivial engineering work.
| There is vanishingly small overlap between the people whom
| have the capital for parts, the understanding of the
| engineering needed, free time to do it and desire to do it
| for free.
|
| The people whom have the true multidisciplinary understanding
| to do robotics well can usually also consult (with little
| difficulty finding work) for $$$s per hour and get the same
| "problem solving satisfaction".
|
| Open source software shortcuts a couple of these limitations
| because you can work on it with little investment over than
| time.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Everything here is possible, the gap in implementation is
| that it's a) expensive and b) non trivial engineering work.
|
| The real issue is that it's just not interesting or worth
| it.
|
| Why would you want to put LTE or Starlink on a drone?
| Flight time is around 30 minutes with current battery
| technology and you're not legally allowed to fly past line
| of sight anyway. Strapping a bunch of extra gear to a drone
| would cut flight times and add basically nothing to the
| experience.
|
| These things aren't popular because they're not interesting
| to the people who build and fly drones.
| nine_k wrote:
| Not interesting to the people who build _amateur_ drones
| _for fun_.
|
| I bet that stuff like different Linux kernel schedulers,
| or entirely new subsystems like io_uring are written by
| not entirely amateurs and not completely for fun. But the
| ecosystem is such that open-source licensing works for
| such efforts. For some reasons, the same is not true for
| the open-source firmware or hardware used in drones.
|
| One could contemplate on the structure of incentives that
| could produce a viable pool of open technologies for
| advanced (including non-amateur) drones.
| aftbit wrote:
| Back in the old days (Phantom 1), it was all IP. The "range
| extender" box that you could buy for the controller was
| literally a MIPS box running OpenWRT. I took one apart and
| used a debug interface to jailbreak it, then connected my own
| RPi to its network and used it for some degree of autonomous
| control. I assume things have advanced substantially since
| then.
|
| I was very disappointed that my Mavic Mini 1 could not be
| controlled through the DJI SDK so I couldn't use any external
| apps to drive it. I assume that has also improved, but for a
| minute at least, the cheaper DJI drones were essentially
| unusable for my use cases.
|
| To some extent, the availability of cheap commercial gimbal
| camera drones really set the OSS side of the hobby back.
| Eventually most of that energy moved to FPV acro drones, but
| definitely something was lost, as nobody really tries to
| build a DIY DJI competitor anymore. Of course, DJI drones are
| absurdly performance limited compared to what is possible
| with similar sized platforms.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| Depends on what you want. A lot of the interest in FPV is
| acro flight, not autonomous, so there isn't a lot of interest
| in improving that (at least for beta flight)
|
| You act as if separate backhauls is a bad thong - I'm not
| sure that's self evident. Short range just seems wrong to me
| - RC transmitters outrage all of the current video tx
| systems, and in open air video tx is long enough that you run
| into problems with battery before anything else. The best
| video tx systems currently is proprietary (DJI).
|
| Open source is good enough for what most people care about.
| An open source high quality video tx would be awesome, but
| obviously a significant engineering effort relative to
| everything else.
| nuker wrote:
| > Telemetry is typically separate from control, which is
| separate from video. Everything is very short-range and non-
| IP.
|
| Check out ExpressLRS, very long range, everyone is using it
| today.
|
| https://www.expresslrs.org/
| Aurornis wrote:
| It's possible to use a DJI air unit for control, but most
| people prefer ExpressLRS to have a separate, longer range
| backhaul.
|
| You want your control backhaul to have more range than your
| video feed anyway. If you go so far that the video starts
| to drop out, you can fly up higher to regain signal or flip
| the switch to safely drop the drone. You can also get GPS
| coordinates back to go find it.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > In comparison, a COTS quadcopter from DJI has a single
| backhaul from the airframe to the controller which does
| control, video, and and telemetry. And the video is
| impressively low-latency.
|
| Your information is very out of date.
|
| DJI sells their camera and video unit as a standalone part
| that you can put in your hobby drone. They're on the 3rd
| generation right now with the 4th coming out soon
| https://www.dji.com/o3-air-unit
|
| If you want the DJI video feed, you just buy this unit for
| under $200 and put it in your drone. You get the same video
| technology as the COTS DJI unit and it integrates with your
| open-source controller.
|
| > A Raspberry Pi running a decent RTOS would have orders of
| magnitude more processing capacity than an STM32 and could
| easily do the sort of multi-sensor fusion that the commercial
| systems do.
|
| The STM processors have more than enough power to operate the
| drone.
|
| I think you're missing the point of hobby drones and their
| controllers. They don't need or even want LTE, Starlink, or
| any of the other complications you mention. They just need to
| get up in the air and fly cheaply. The current products work
| well for that.
|
| People have tried to build drones around Raspberry Pi gear
| but there's no advantage and a lot of additional cost, size,
| and weight for something that doesn't help at all.
|
| I don't think people realize how powerful the top STM
| microcontrollers are these days.
|
| > Happy to be corrected if there's new stuff that I'm not
| tracking, but the gap between the "art of the possible" and
| current practice seems large.
|
| Most of what you posted has been tried in open source. It's
| just not really beneficial or interesting. You can cobble
| together an LTE drone if you want, but you can't legally fly
| it past line of sight anyway, so what's the point?
|
| For what it's worth, hobby drones are miles ahead of the COTS
| drones when it comes to fast flying and control. The gear
| from DJI is great if you want to safely fly a camera up and
| hover around, but if you want a fast and challenging drone
| you basically have to DIY.
| stavros wrote:
| This is very inaccurate. The receiver doesn't output PWM, it
| communicates with the FC over UART. Control and telemetry are
| one link, open source, with a range of more than 100km on
| commodity hardware. Ardupilot enables advanced autonomy out
| of the box, DJI uses LTE for more than 20km range of HD video
| out of the box.
|
| Sure, you don't have sensor fusion from a bunch of disparate
| exotic sensors, and the control software could be improved a
| lot, but it's not as bad as you describe it.
| helpfulContrib wrote:
| > There is a thriving "FPV" ecosystem of drones that can be
| DIYed.
|
| As someone who has for decades built flying things which could
| be drone'ified any day of the week, it is sort of also
| necessary to point out that even before drones became so
| widespread and commonplace, rcgroups.com has been _the_
| ecosystem in which to find oneself.
|
| And indeed, the "model airplane/remote control flight" subject
| has been prosperous and flourishing as a hobby for decades too
| .. just feast yourself on the categories here:
|
| https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/index.php
|
| A very earnest exploration of the various sub-forums will
| reveal some extraordinary designs - some which, indeed, break
| the 'norm' for what a flying thing should look like, in respect
| to a more casual view. Magnus, aerostat, Fettler are pretty
| good search terms...
| dheera wrote:
| Also
|
| > All-in-one PCB: Doesn't need any 3D printed parts or such
|
| I actually am fine 3D printing and laser cutting stuff at home
| but I don't have the stuff to make a PCB and don't have the
| hand skills to do anything more than through-hole soldering.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| The intent is not at-home fabrication: It's sending it to a
| company in Shenzhen (e.g. JLCPCB) to do both PCB fab, and SMT
| assembly for you. 10-day time between order and arrival.
| (USA), and astonishingly low cost.
|
| PCB are sometimes used in these structural scenarios, (Where
| they are not the _right_ tool for the job) as they 're one of
| few(?) ways to get a custom part fabricated at low cost. If
| the device has electronics anyway, the added cost of
| expanding the PCB footprint for structure, as in this case,
| is small.
| dheera wrote:
| > JLCPCB
|
| Minimum order of 5, as is the case for many similar
| factories.
|
| Great for startups, sucks for hobbyists.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| What about those of us who really are awful at flying drones? I
| personally have tried fpv ones and just don't seem to have the
| skills for it - however I really enjoy my DJI mini. I never can
| seem to find information on open drones that fly the same way
| (maybe I just don't know what I'm looking at or for?)
| no_time wrote:
| I wonder what differs in the hardware (other than obviously using
| the newer esp32) compared to the implementation in this vid:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n76iMTHXuE
|
| tldw: he experienced significant packet latency while the motors
| were spinning, making the drone uncontrollable.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Does anyone know who at Digikey is responsible for their absurd
| adblock-blocking efforts?
|
| It's so goddamn tiresome that I'm headed to a site already with a
| list of things to buy and it blocks me because I've installed an
| extension that will block them from showing me ads _trying to
| sell me even more stuff._
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