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Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

digikey.com

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Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#71

Post by bubaumba »

ActorNightly wrote: post #65
phoronixrly wrote: post #2

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…

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.

> 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.

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#72

Post by not_the_fda »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #32

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 thei…

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.

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#73

Post by lazide »

zeroCalories wrote: post #29
picture wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just saw the two comments in question and find it to be absolutely hilarious. A serious answer to your question - no, these are in the "whoop" weight-class. Warhead carrying drones for anti-personnel and anti-armor are usually 10 inch and up, meaning they are using "10 inch" frames and likely 3115 motors, with 6S battery packs. Of course, there's endless variation, but that seems to be a optimum combination

Ukrainians and Russians use 7" drones for dropping grenades and suicide charges. This does not seem too far off?

Most RPG warheads are pretty heavy.

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#74

Post by szundi »

mrtksn wrote: post #69

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 c…

Not a realtime os though

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#75

Post by mrtksn »

szundi wrote: post #74
mrtksn wrote: post #69

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 c…

Not a realtime os though

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.

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#76

Post by JKCalhoun »

ActorNightly wrote: post #65
phoronixrly wrote: post #2

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…

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.

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.)

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#77

Post by diggan »

phoronixrly wrote: post #2

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…

> 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?

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#78

Post by bschwindHN »

szundi wrote: post #74
mrtksn wrote: post #69

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 c…

Not a realtime os though

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.

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#79

Post by the__alchemist »

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.

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#80

Post by mathgeek »

diggan wrote: post #77
phoronixrly wrote: post #2

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…

> 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?

https://apnews.com/article/drones-new-jersey-what-to-know-e6...
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