Building a drone that can be controlled with computer vision may sound difficult, but with the right knowledge it is much easier than you would initially suspect. Here is all you need to build an opencv drone. Let’s take a look at the high level architecture of a drone that could accomplish this task. Pitfalls…
So you’ve come here to get a better understand of what MAVProxy is. In a nutshell, MAVProxy is a lightweight ground control station, where the drone/vehicle can be controlled through a simple command line interface. No GUI needed. A typical GCS like MissionPlanner or QGroundControl let’s you do basic things, like: Change flight modes Monitor…
The open source drone movement has a few powerhouse software platforms. At the top of the mountain are ArduPilot and PX4. So what is the difference between the two, who wins in the ArduPilot vs PX4 matchup? Well really, it depends on what you want to optimize for. Let’s start with some history first. History…
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…
So far in the Dojo, we have shown how to build normal sized drones with the regular sized raspberry pi. In this post, we will show you how to scale down your builds into the micro form factor with a pi zero drone. With the former PXFMini Pi Shield solution now discontinued, this guide helps…