Book Image

Building Smart Drones with ESP8266 and Arduino

By : Syed Omar Faruk Towaha

Book Image

Building Smart Drones with ESP8266 and Arduino

By: Syed Omar Faruk Towaha

Overview of this book

With the use of drones, DIY projects have taken off. Programmers are rapidly moving from traditional application programming to developing exciting multi-utility projects. This book will teach you to build industry-level drones with Arduino and ESP8266 and their modified versions of hardware. With this book, you will explore techniques for leveraging the tiny WiFi chip to enhance your drone and control it over a mobile phone. This book will start with teaching you how to solve problems while building your own WiFi controlled Arduino based drone. You will also learn how to build a Quadcopter and a mission critical drone. Moving on you will learn how to build a prototype drone that will be given a mission to complete which it will do it itself. You will also learn to build various exciting projects such as gliding and racing drones. By the end of this book you will learn how to maintain and troubleshoot your drone. By the end of this book, you will have learned to build drones using ESP8266 and Arduino and leverage their functionalities to the fullest.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Free Chapter

Things to Know Before You Build a Drone

Things to Know Before You Build a Drone

Types of motors used for drones

Radio transmitter and receiver

Battery adapters/chargers

Some modules to make the drone smarter

Assembling Your Drone

Assembling Your Drone

Assembling the frame

Connecting the RC receiver and transmitter

Connecting the battery

Binding transmitter to the receiver

Know the aerodynamics needed for flying a drone

Saving your drone from crashing

Check things before flying

Check the security protocols for flying a drone outside

Preparing Your Drone for Flying

Preparing Your Drone for Flying

What is ESP8266?

Downloading and installing APM Planner or Mission Planner

Configuring the quadcopter

Building a Follow Me Drone

Building a Follow Me Drone

What is a Follow Me drone?

Using a smartphone to enable the Follow Me feature of ArduPilot

Building an Arduino-based Follow Me drone

GPS Tracker using ESP8266

Building a Mission Control Drone

Building a Mission Control Drone

Surveying with a drone

Using drones and delivery man

Some other tweaks with the Flight Plan screen

Building a Drone to Take Selfies and Record Videos

Building a Drone to Take Selfies and Record Videos

Photography drones

Assembling the photography drone

Controlling the camera

Flying and taking shots

Controlling the camera gimbal using ESP8266

Building Prototype Drones – Gliding Drones

Building Prototype Drones – Gliding Drones

What is a glider?

How a glider glides

Let's build our own glider drone

Building Prototype Drones – Racing Drones

Building Prototype Drones – Racing Drones

Avoiding obstacles using ESP8266

Maintaining and Troubleshooting Your Drone

Maintaining and Troubleshooting Your Drone

Safety of the drone

Be careful about the battery

Storage of the drone

Carrying a drone

Before and after flight safety

Respect the law and privacy

Troubleshooting your drone

Diagnosing problems using logs

Radio control calibration problem

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Using a smartphone to enable the Follow Me feature of ArduPilot

You can make your drone follow you if you use a smartphone. Your smartphone already has a built-in GPS, and the drone will follow your phone if properly configured. You will need an OTG connector to connect the telemetry to your phone. Wherever you take your phone, your drone will follow it, as long as the data transmission is good. You can use any of the following two applications (there might be other applications that I have not tested) for this:

DroidPlanner2
Tower

Unfortunately, neither of the applications is available for iPhone (there is the 3DR Solo application for iPhone that can be used to control the on-drone camera by using Wi-Fi and Sidepilot, which is able to configure the drone to Follow Me mode if you use the ArduCopter or 3DR Solo platforms). So, we need to use Android phones. Let's learn how...