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Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

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Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#91

Post by Max-q »

idunnoman1222 wrote: post #82
ActorNightly wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 propositi…

Autonomous isn’t a problem, the open source firmwares for drones include fully autonomous mode. I don’t know if this particular one does but it should be easy to port. The size and range, however, doesn’t make this particular drone very scary.

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#92

Post by Kadin »

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…

This is all true, but just to set expectations: the open source ecosystem seems to be lagging the proprietary world pretty significantly, unless there's some corner where development is really chugging along that's not making it out to the rest of the hobbyist market.

Though there have been incremental improvements in flight control software, and video subsystems have moved (mostly) from analog to 2.4/5.8 GHz and digital, the overall architecture is pretty similar to what it was 5+ years ago. You have a hobby R/C transmitter and receiver driving PWM outputs (through the flight controller, typically an STM32) to hobby-type ESCs which control the motors. The ESCs are microcontroller-driven and can be reflashed, but painstakingly and annoyingly. Telemetry is typically separate from control, which is separate from video. Everything is very short-range and non-IP.

In comparison, a COTS quadcopter from DJI has a single backhaul from the airframe to the controller which does control, video, and and telemetry. And the video is impressively low-latency. (I'm pretty sure they use a WiFi-type chipset and just spew raw vendor frames, and the receiver picks up what it can, best effort. You could do this with an ESP32 in ESP-NOW mode, I suspect?) I've seen some efforts to reverse-engineer the DJI protocol but I'm not aware of a fully compatible implementation or equivalent in the OSS world.

And at the upper end of the commercial/proprietary space you have systems with out-of-the-box autonomy, multiple backhauls over IP -- so they can use LOS/BLOS radio, LTE, SATCOM, whatever you want -- integration with navigation beacon systems to reduce GPS dependence, hybrid motor/generators, redundant power systems, the whole shebang.

There's no real reason aside from developer interest that this situation exists, as far as I can see. The components are mostly all available. A Raspberry Pi running a decent RTOS would have orders of magnitude more processing capacity than an STM32 and could easily do the sort of multi-sensor fusion that the commercial systems do. LTE modems are cheap. A bigger hexacopter or fixed-wing could easily loft one of the small Starlink dishes, if someone wanted to. Stuff like "perching" (landing and recharging from solar panels) is entirely possible.

But from what I can tell, the cutting edge of open source drones is happening behind closed doors in Ukraine and Iran.

Happy to be corrected if there's new stuff that I'm not tracking, but the gap between the "art of the possible" and current practice seems large.

Lots of opportunity though, is the other way to view it.

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#93

Post by helpfulContrib »

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…

> There is a thriving "FPV" ecosystem of drones that can be DIYed.

As someone who has for decades built flying things which could be drone'ified any day of the week, it is sort of also necessary to point out that even before drones became so widespread and commonplace, rcgroups.com has been the ecosystem in which to find oneself.

And indeed, the "model airplane/remote control flight" subject has been prosperous and flourishing as a hobby for decades too .. just feast yourself on the categories here:

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/index.php

A very earnest exploration of the various sub-forums will reveal some extraordinary designs - some which, indeed, break the 'norm' for what a flying thing should look like, in respect to a more casual view. Magnus, aerostat, Fettler are pretty good search terms...

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#94

Post by the__alchemist »

nullstyle wrote: post #88
hylaride wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is so cool; LFTI!

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#95

Post by numpad0 »

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 find it funny that the US is so obsessed with infantry firearms and surgical strikes that people think those are the best "ways to go" for certain things. I guess not a bad thing considering we don't need any improved means for those stuffs...

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#96

Post by the__alchemist »

Kadin wrote: post #92
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…

This is all true, but just to set expectations: the open source ecosystem seems to be lagging the proprietary world pretty significantly, unless there's some corner where development is really chugging along that's not making it out to the rest of the hobbyist market. Though there have been incremental improvements in flight control software, and video subsystems have moved (mostly) from analog to 2.4/5.8 GHz and dig…

That is consistent with my experience. My highlights:

- Current betaflight devevelopers and leaders are incompetent (They inherited the code base from others), and are slow, and varying degrees of willing, to add higher-level flight-control mechanics (semi-autonomous modes etc).

- The Ardupilot and PX4 configuration systems, and general experience, are user-hostile.

Note that the converses of these hold: Betaflight has a reasonably-good user experience, and Ardupilot and PX4 have extensive higher-level flight control mechanics. If only you could get the pros of both together!

Regarding hardware, frames generally accommodate flight controllers and ESCs elegantly, but other hardware like cameras, radios, and especially batteries, feel clumsy to assemble in a safe and consistent way.

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#97

Post by nick__m »

curiousgeorgio wrote: post #36

Is 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…

Since those who filed the issue did not even stated which file is affected this is pure speculation but the virus issue really look like a false positive. The pre-built firmware checked into a repo could easily trigger an anti-virus.

The repo is mostly made of plain text files, the zip and the bin don't look required for anything so if your feeling paranoid delete them before building!

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#98

Post by qazxcvbnmlp »

Kadin wrote: post #92
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…

This is all true, but just to set expectations: the open source ecosystem seems to be lagging the proprietary world pretty significantly, unless there's some corner where development is really chugging along that's not making it out to the rest of the hobbyist market. Though there have been incremental improvements in flight control software, and video subsystems have moved (mostly) from analog to 2.4/5.8 GHz and dig…

Everything here is possible, the gap in implementation is that it’s a) expensive and b) non trivial engineering work. There is vanishingly small overlap between the people whom have the capital for parts, the understanding of the engineering needed, free time to do it and desire to do it for free.

The people whom have the true multidisciplinary understanding to do robotics well can usually also consult (with little difficulty finding work) for $$$s per hour and get the same “problem solving satisfaction”.

Open source software shortcuts a couple of these limitations because you can work on it with little investment over than time.

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#99

Post by mrtksn »

Max-q wrote: post #90
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?

I got an ESP32 WROOM 32U board that I intent to use it as the flight controller which will keep the drone within its flight envelope and do the maneuvering upon receiving commands from the phone.

I find the phone appealing because I want try to make it somewhat autonomous, like im RTS games where you give a unit a command to go somewhere and it figures the path out by itself and avoids obstacles without direct input. The phone has quite a lot of processing power and sensors and IMHO doing it on board will be more interesting. Also, I'm not sure that the connection will be always stable and high bitrate make the drone a thin client.

Re: Build a Low-Cost Drone Using ESP32

#100

Post by mrtksn »

sokoloff wrote: post #87
mrtksn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Oh, I got an accelerometer card for that. It's very small and cheap, there are also cards that contain a gyro + barometer. So if the phone ones are not real-time enough cheap options exist.
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