Ground control stations are an important part of every autonomous mission, but with so many free GCS choices out there, how do you know which is best for you? The truth is, most ground control stations will do the same thing, you just need to find the GCS that is best for your setup and…
In the ArduPilot world of vehicles, there are many ways of interacting with and controlling your robot. The most obvious method is an RC controller, but today we are going to look into something else called ground control stations. So what are these ground control stations? Essentially, they are GUIs that can do things: monitor…
You’re here because you have a specific question about open source drones, and you want to know what pymavlink is. Well, to understand what pymavlink is, we first must zoom out to get some perspective. You’ll notice at the bottom of this diagram is MAVLink. This is the foundation upon which some higher level APIs…
For robotic developers, this is a common problem. You’ve been testing a new control script in your backyard, and now it’s time to go to the field for some testing where there is no internet. How are you supposed to remote into the drone’s Pi to trigger the script now? There’s no home WiFi out…
So you want to get into openCV applications. Perhaps you want to track an aruco marker, or move a drone with gesture control. Whatever the application, you need to calibrate the opencv camera so your computer vision application can run properly. Why does the camera need to be calibrated? Well, to explain it in very…
I’m sure we’ve all been there, and if you haven’t yet, you will. You’re finally ready to test that script for your robot you’ve been testing in your backyard. You leave the house, go out to the park, turn on the robot and try to ssh into your raspberry pi. Then you remember, there’s no…
For any robots here at the drone dojo, we are using GPS to help aid in the autonomous missions. For the most part, these $30 GPS modules get the job done, but there are some applications where the positioning isn’t precise enough. So what is RTK GPS? It is leveling up the precision of our…
If you don’t know already, SITL drones are a very powerful tool in the drone development space. Basically they are simulated drones that run right on your computer. A basic SITL instance can be spun up in both ArduPilot and PX4, and provide robust testing capabilities right out of the box. However, some drone applications…
In the ArduPilot and PX4 worlds, testing new code on a real drone would be dangerous. What if something goes wrong while the drone is 50ft in the sky? What if a new bug makes Buster the drone nosedive into your next-door neighbor’s dog? That is where sitl comes into play. SITL stands for software-in-the-loop….
If you want to build a gesture control drone, but don’t know where to start, you’re in the right place. See, you don’t want to reinvent the wheel right? What you want to do is innovate with a new and exciting drone vision project. Let’s not reinvent the wheel. Here is your to-do list: Build…