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Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

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Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#81

Post by diggan »

mathgeek wrote: post #80
diggan wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Thanks!

> Authorities say many of the drone sightings have actually been legal drones, manned aircraft, helicopters and even stars.

> many state and municipal lawmakers have called for stricter rules about who can fly unmanned aircraft — and for the authority to shoot them down.

Hard to find a more American article than this.

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#82

Post by idunnoman1222 »

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.

I don’t know what drone you’re talking about but you absolutely cannot make a tiny Wi-Fi drone autonomous or drop things for less than a cost of a gun, every part of your statement is wrong. Currently anyone smart enough to build drone with 7 inch propellers and programmable GPS waypoints, improvised explosives … 3d printed release mechanism .. probably has a pretty good paying job and doesn’t see the value proposition of blowing things up

You know what you can easily do drive a truck into a crowd of people or fill your car with explosives in park it under a building and then blow up the entire building, but people aren’t doing that every day but continue whingeing about drones

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#84

Post by no_time »

I wonder what differs in the hardware (other than obviously using the newer esp32) compared to the implementation in this vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n76iMTHXuE

tldw: he experienced significant packet latency while the motors were spinning, making the drone uncontrollable.

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#85

Post by crote »

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…

Calling the RP2350's PIO units "low power io cores" is quite an exaggeration. Although they are technically turing-complete with a lot of hacking, they are absolutely awful at any kind of compute. Heck, you probably don't even want to let it handle UART parity calculation!

If anything the ESP32's Ultra-Low-Power Coprocessor would be perfect for such applications - but realistically it isn't worth the effort. Compute power usage is going to be negligible compared to what is needed for wifi and rotors, and running multiple realtime tasks on a single core isn't exactly rocket science either.

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#86

Post by hylaride »

the__alchemist wrote: post #79

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 U…

And a lot of it is all open source!

ESC software:

- https://github.com/am32-firmware

- https://github.com/mathiasvr/bluejay

Flight controller (you mentioned these):

- https://github.com/betaflight

- https://github.com/ArduPilot

- https://github.com/iNavFlight

Control link:

- https://github.com/ExpressLRS (also uses ESP32/ESP82 chips)

Radio Controllers:

- https://github.com/EdgeTX

5+ years ago the vast majority of this stuff was proprietary-only and getting into the hobby cost thousands of dollars. Now you could start at ~$500 (big price factor for FPV is the goggles, but cheap analog ones can be had for ~$100).

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#87

Post by sokoloff »

mrtksn wrote: post #75
szundi wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That real-time controller still needs the IMU sensors, which is maybe what GP was responding to. (Your iPhone could have an additional set of them, but the ones on the phone don't do any good to the real-time subsystem.)

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#88

Post by nullstyle »

hylaride wrote: post #86
the__alchemist wrote: post #79

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 U…

And a lot of it is all open source! ESC software: - https://github.com/am32-firmware - https://github.com/mathiasvr/bluejay Flight controller (you mentioned these): - https://github.com/betaflight - https://github.com/ArduPilot - https://github.com/iNavFlight Control link: - https://github.com/ExpressLRS (also uses ESP32/ESP82 chips) Radio Controllers: - https://github.com/EdgeTX 5+ years ago the vast majority of thi…

With luck the OpenIPC cameras that are starting to come on the market will find traction and the entire hardware stack will run on open source firmware.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdjI3ZQsmCA

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#89

Post by numpad0 »

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

imo "realtime" is such a misnomer. It should be re-termed as "jitter minimized" or "loop interval stabilized" or something along that.

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#90

Post by Max-q »

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…

Do you really need the phone? The dual core 240MHz ESP32 seems to be able to do the job at lower weight and power consumption.

Maybe the old phone is better used as a controller?

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