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?
Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32
31–40 of 160 posts
Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32
#32Feels 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!
Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32
#33What 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…
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Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32
#34Meta: 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.
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 :)
Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32
#35It'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.
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.
But one of the parts is apparently already obsolete and unavailable
I love Digikey, but unfortunately this is not uncommon at all.
Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32
#36Is 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.
Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32
#37Is 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 suspici…
damn you are right!
Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32
#38This 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-...
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).
Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32
#40Fun! 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.