The evolution of open-source flight control firmware is fascinating and involves everything from years of committed development with no reward, to convoluted betrayal from previous partners and friends. In this article, we will review the most popular open-source projects, explain their antecedents and highlight the survivors. #arduino #drone #development
https://reefwing.medium.com/a-review-of-open-source-flight-control-systems-2fe37239c9b6
Using an Arduino UNO to communicate with an Electronic Speed Controller (ESC) that uses BLHeli or BLHeli_S firmware. #Arduino #BLHeli #Drone #Tutorial https://reefwing.medium.com/configuring-an-esc-with-blheli-firmware-using-an-arduino-uno-9b8e5dafc1c5
We recently published a new article about writing your own flight controller software.
It is a reasonable question. There are a number of Open Source and proprietary quadcopter flight controllers with firmware available. The problem is we want to use an Arduino board, to fit in with our other training programs. As soon as this becomes a constraint your options are very limited. In fact, your only real option is to write your own. So here we are.
Initially we attempted to port BetaFlight across to the Arduino Portenta H7, as this is designed for STM32 hardware and we know that writing your own flight controller firmware is tough and time consuming. We managed to get BetaFlight to compile for the H7 but because Arduino’s use a custom bootloader which is located right where BetaFlight normally sits in memory, flashing the firmware was problematic.
You can read all about our drone design adventures.
Our MineSweeper HD game was relecently reviewed by GameKeys in their article on Underrated Simulation Games To Play on IOS.
Head over to the GameKeys site to see what they had to say about it.
In our latest article we talk about adding the DShot600 protocol to our ESC Tester. This is not straight forward because most Flight Controllers use DMA to generate the DShot packets and our ESC Tester is based on the Arduino UNO which doesn’t have DMA.
We try a few different approaches including bit banging and hacking SPI. Read on to find out what works (and what doesn’t). Full source code is provided.
You can read the full article and access the source code here.
A New Article by Reefwing Software on Medium – check it out: https://medium.com/@reefwing/creating-custom-sf-symbols-e295a2177aaf by @reefwing on @Medium
This app allows you to visually program a flight plan for the Tello Drone and then upload it to the drone for execution. You can also fly the drone manually with the app if you wish. Real time telemetry from the drone is displayed on the glass cockpit.
Tello is a mini drone equipped with a HD camera that is manufactured by Ryze Robotics and includes a flight controller with DJI smarts.
We access the Tello API by connecting to the airframe via a WiFi UDP port. Once a connection is in place, the drone is controlled using simple text commands.
It is available on the Apple App store. Download FlightPlan.
