What is a companion computer? While they are a very important element of a drone build, they are by no means required. Why is this? Companion computers only give you the capability of designing higher level drone applications. They don’t actually directly control any of the onboard drone hardware. The board that is responsible for…
So what is a flight controller you ask? You’ve come to the right place. Think of the flight controller as the brains of the drone. All of the drone’s hardware will plug into the flight controller, including the motors/escs, gps, compass, lidar, rc receiver, telemetry etc. With all the drone’s hardware plugged into this central…
With the advent of the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller in early 2021, it was only a matter of time before Pi Pico Drone projects surfaced. Sure, we’ve seen larger raspberry pi drones before, but the micro form factor would be a new invention. But first, what is the Raspberry Pi Pico, and how is it different…
The Navio2 shield can make any raspberry pi into a flyable drone. It was the first of its kind, starting out under the name Navio+, then later releasing the second version Navio2. Emlid is the company behind the Navio2 shield, and they carved out quite a niche which served as the foundation of their business. While…
If you want to build a Jetson Nano drone, you’ve come to the right place. Jetson Nano Drones are great for CPU intensive applications and computer vision scripts. Now, can you fly a Jetson Nano drone with just the board and no other processors? Well, no. Most advanced DIY drones consist of a flight controller…
The PXFMini is a flight controller shield that sits on top of the Raspberry Pi zero, making it an easy drone solution for micro based drones. This shield was developed my Erle Robotics and was the first of its kind. Many projects have come from the PXFmini shield. Unfortunately, the company Erle Robotics was bought…
This guide will show you how to take a fresh install of raspbian (latest Buster and legacy Buster) and enable to work with the dronekit-python API to control the pixhawk vehicle from a python script (and without an RC controller). I got tired of running through this install on every YouTube tutorial video, so now…
Since you’re here, I’m guessing you have interest in building or obtaining your own smart UGV (unmanned ground vehicle). Perhaps you have a particular project you want to bring into the world, if only you could figure out how to make your own smart rover! Well look no more. This blog post will detail how…
One big limitation of conventional drones is the radius of control. Both telemetry and RC based control are limited to a few miles, which is fine if the mission requires a pilot to be within visual line of sight. For beyond visual line of sight missions (BVLOS), conventional methods of drone control just won’t do….
As the drone industry evolves from simple RC robots in the sky to actual industries, one thing is certain: drone programming will be crucial in fulfilling the realization of truly autonomous drones. Think about it, whether we’re talking about drone delivery or surveillance drones, human pilots will not suffice. Up to this point, the main…
