Making own drones

DIY Drones
1

Morning all.

My students in Ghana are now looking at building their own drones to code and fly as they are really excited now.

The requirements are as follows:

  • The drone must be very cheap so therefore we only need the control board, battery, motors and propellers.

  • It must be able to be programmed by using python as well as it’s own system.

I have seen something that interests me called Pluto X and Air:bit which uses a microbit.

Both of these are a little expense so before I dive in I was wondering if anyone have worked with this or has any other suggestions.

Regards

Jas

2

Sounds like you are up to some exciting stuff. I did a video about Pluto X a few years ago. You can check it out here:

PlutoX Drone Programming First Look - YouTube

I’m assuming that it’s come a long way since then. The other one that’s very interesting to me is COEX Clover:

COEX Clover — programmable quadcopter kit

The thing I really like about Clover is it uses Raspberry Pi as a companion computer as well as ROS. Their code is open source on GitHub as well. It definitely supports Python and allows you to interface with many different aspects of the system. More details here:

Programming · Clover (coex.tech)

In full disclosure it may seem that I’m biased towards Clover and that’s because I’ve spent much more time with it than PlutoX. It may not fit your “very cheap” requirement. What price point are you looking at?

3

My partner is in Ghana I love what your up to lets talk been kinda hectic doing these covid19 vaccines

4

Cheers Tony let me know when you are free

5

Thanks Dennis, cost it the main thing for me so will look at some other stuff, saw the air:bit and looks interesting

6

Do you have a price point you’re shooting for?

7

The Tello Edu is around £130 so it will need to be under £50. The Drona Avation 1.2 Pluto nano full kit is £64 but is C++ and looking at the reviews and support looks abit hit and miss.

Maybe we could create something for developing countries ourselves