There are plenty of drones (and other gadgets) you can buy online that use proprietary control protocols. Of course, reverse-engineering one of these protocols is a hacker community classic. Today, [Zac Turner] shows us how this GPS drone can be autonomously controlled by a simple Arduino program or Python script.

What started as [Zac] sniffing some UDP packets quickly evolved into him decompiling the Android app to figure out what’s going on inside. He talks about how the launch command needs accurate GPS, how there’s several hidden features not used by the Android app, et cetera. And it’s not like it’s just another Linux SoC in there, either. No, there’s a proper Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) running, with a shell and a telnet interface. The list of small curiosities goes on.

After he finished reverse-engineering the protocol, he built some Python scripts, through which you can see the camera feed and control the drone remotely. He also went on to make an Arduino program that can do the latter using an Arduino Nano 33 IoT.

In the turmoil of today’s world, drones are getting bigger, badder, and angrier. [Max Imagination] has gone the other way with his work, though, building a teeny Arduino drone that can fit in the palm of your hand. Even if you have a small hand!

The drone is based around an Arduino Pro Mini, and uses an MPU6050 IMU for motion sensing and flight control. Communication with the drone is via an NRF24L01. Four small coreless motors are used for propulsion, driven by tiny MOSFETs, and the whole assembly is run via a teeny 220 mAh lithium-polymer battery. Oh, and there’s an FPV camera so you can put on some goggles and see where it’s going!

Control is via MultiWii software, written specifically for building multirotor craft. [Max] flies the craft using a controller of his own creation, again using an NRF24L01 for communication.

It’s a neat build, and a titchy one too! Tiny drones have a character all their own, even if they can’t really stand up to windier outdoor environments. Video after the break.

There are a number of famous (yet fictional) sea monsters in the lakes and oceans around the world, but in the Caspian Sea one turned out to be real. This is where the first vehicles specifically built to take advantage of the ground effect were built by the Soviet Union, and one of the first was known as the Caspian Sea Monster due to the mystery surrounding its discovery. While these unique airplane/boat hybrids were eventually abandoned after several were built for military use, the style of aircraft still has some niche uses and can even be used as a platform for autonomous drones.

This build from [Think Flight] started off as a simple foam model of just such a ground effect vehicle (or “ekranoplan”) in his driveway. With a few test flights the model was refined enough to attach a small propeller and battery. The location of the propeller changed from rear-mounted to front-mounted and then back to rear-mounted for the final version, with each configuration having different advantages and disadvantages. The final model includes an Arudino running an autopilot program called Ardupilot, and with an air speed sensor installed the drone is able to maintain flight in the ground effect and autonomously navigate pre-programmed waypoints around a lake at high speed.

For a Cold War technology that’s been largely abandoned by militaries in favor of other modes of transportation due to its limited use case and extremely narrow flight tolerances, ground effect vehicles are relatively popular as remote controlled vehicles. This RC ekranoplan used the same Ardupilot software but paired with a LIDAR system instead of GPS to navigate its way around its environment.

Thanks to [TTN] for the tip!

Multirotors, or drones as they’re popularly called, are so ubiquitous as to have become a $10 toy. They’re no less fun to fly for it though, and learning how they work is no less fascinating. It’s something [Science Buddies] has addressed in a series of videos examining them from first principles. They may be aimed at youngsters, but they’re still an entertaining enough watch for those of advancing years.

Instead of starting with a multirotor control board, the video takes four little DC motors and two popsicle sticks to make a rudimentary drone frame. Then with the help of dowels and springs it tethers the craft as the control mechanisms are explained bit by bit, from simple on-off motor control through proportional control to adding an Arduino and following through to how a multirotor stays in flight. It’s instructional and fun to watch, and maybe even for some of us, a chance to learn something.

We’ve had multirotor projects aplenty here over the years, but how about something completely different made from popsicle sticks?

Drone racing is nifty as heck, and a need all races share is a way to track lap times. One way to do it is to use transponders attached to each racer, and use a receiver unit of some kind to clock them as they pass by. People have rolled their own transponder designs with some success, but the next step is ditching add-on transponders entirely, and that’s exactly what the Delta 5 Race Timer project does.

The open-sourced design has a clever approach. In drone racing, each aircraft is remotely piloted over a wireless video link. Since every drone in a race already requires a video transmitter and its own channel on which to broadcast, the idea is to use the video signal as the transponder. As a result, no external hardware needs to be added to the aircraft. The tradeoff is that using the video signal in this way is trickier than a purpose-made transponder, but the hardware to do it is economical, accessible, and the design is well documented on GitHub.

The hardware consists of RX508 video receiver PCBs modified slightly to enable them to communicate over SPI. Each RX508 is attached to its own Arduino, which takes care of low-level communications. The Arduinos are themselves connected to a Raspberry Pi over I2C, allowing the Pi high-level control over the receivers while it serves up a web-enabled user interface. As a bonus, the Pi can do much more than simply act as a fancy stopwatch. The races themselves can be entirely organized and run through the web interface. The system is useful enough that other projects using its framework have popped up, such as the RotorHazard project by [PropWashed] which uses the same hardware design.

While rolling one’s own transponders is a good solution for getting your race on, using the video transmission signal to avoid transponders entirely is super clever. The fact that it can be done with inexpensive, off the shelf hardware is just icing on the cake.

Lego bricks have been the foundation of so many awesome and elaborate creations, it's no wonder people have already had the idea to send them skyward in drone form. But while there are plenty of DIY tutorials around, as well as the odd prebuilt model, we haven't seen anything quite as accessible and affordable as these new Lego UAV kits from Flybrix.

Lego bricks have been the foundation of so many awesome and elaborate creations, it's no wonder people have already had the idea to send them skyward in drone form. But while there are plenty of DIY tutorials around, as well as the odd prebuilt model, we haven't seen anything quite as accessible and affordable as these new Lego UAV kits from Flybrix.

Source: Flybrix

Flying a drone usually leads to–sooner or later–crashing a drone. If you are lucky, you’ll see where it crashes and it won’t be out of reach. If you aren’t lucky, you’ll know where it is, but it will be too high to easily reach. The worst case is when it just falls out of the sky and you aren’t entirely sure where. [Just4funmedia] faced this problem and decided to use some piezo buzzers and an Arduino to solve it.

Yeah, yeah, we know. You don’t really need an Arduino to do this, although it does make it easy to add some flexibility. You can pick two tones that are easy to hear and turn on the buzzers with a spare channel or sense a loss of signal or power.

The device has its own battery so it will work even if the drone’s power depletes. Apparently, the 9V battery will run the whole thing for over 20 hours. Pulsing the audio would probably push that number even higher. Of course, the downside is the drone has to carry the extra weight, but if you recover an otherwise lost drone, that might be a small price to pay.

This might be more practical than a calculus-based approach. Maybe like a tightrope walker, you’d rather use a net.

Ready to level-up your robot skills? ArduRoller is a self-balancing, inverted pendulum robot that’s also capable of autonomous navigation indoors or out. I created it as an entry for the annual SparkFun Autonomous Vehicle Competition: The goal was to create a nontraditional vehicle capable of quickly navigating an obstacle course […]

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The post How to Build a Self-Balancing Autonomous Arduino Bot appeared first on Make:.

Ready to level-up your robot skills? ArduRoller is a self-balancing, inverted pendulum robot that’s also capable of autonomous navigation indoors or out. I created it as an entry for the annual SparkFun Autonomous Vehicle Competition: The goal was to create a nontraditional vehicle capable of quickly navigating an obstacle course […]

Read more on MAKE

The post How to Build a Self-Balancing Autonomous Arduino Bot appeared first on Make:.