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 […]
We don’t usually speculate on the true identity of the hackers behind these projects, but when [TN666]’s accoustic drone-detector crossed our desk with the name “Batear”, we couldn’t help but wonder– is that you, Bruce? On the other hand, with a BOM consisting entirely of one ESP32-S3 and an ICS-43434 I2S microphone, this isn’t exactly […]
The final second prototype flying. (Credit: Luke Maximo Bell, YouTube) The dream of fully powering everything from aircraft to cars on just the power generated from solar panels attached to the machine remains a tempting one, but always seems to require some serious engineering including putting the machine on a crash diet. The quadcopter that […]
Keeping an eye on remaining battery charge. (credit: Luke Maximo Bell, YouTube) Although not a typical focus of people who fly quadcopter drones for a hobby or living, endurance flying has a certain appeal to it for the challenge it offers. Thus, as part of his efforts to collect all the world records pertaining to […]
Anyone with an inkling of interest in super-sized remote control aircraft probably has at least seen some of the mind-blowing projects that [Ramy RC] has worked on over the years, with examples like the ongoing Airbus A380-800 build approaching the size of a full-sized business jet. That said, they recently got the offer to build a […]
By now we’re all familiar with the quad-rotor design most popular among modern drones, and of course there are many variants using more or less propellers and even fixed-wing drones that can fly autonomously. We’ve even seen drones that convert from rotorcraft to fixed-wing mid flight. But there are even more esoteric drones out there […]
Much like calling over a buddy or two to help with moving a large piece of furniture and pivot it up a narrow flight of stairs, so too can quadcopters increase their carrying capacity through the power of friendship and cooperation. However, unless you want to do a lot of yelling at your mates about […]
While most of the world’s venture capital is off chasing anything with “AI” in the name in what many think looks increasingly like an inflated spherical film of soap molecules, in aviation all the hot money is betting on eVTOL: electric vertical take off and landing. What if you want to get in on the […]
The iconic X-wing ship design from Star Wars is something many a hobbyist have tried to recreate, and not always with success. While [German engineer] succeeded in re-imagining an FPV quadcopter as an X-wing fighter, the process also highlighted why there have been more failures than successes when it comes to DIY X-wing aircraft. For […]
LED billboards are cyberpunk-dystopian enough for most, but it can get worse. For example, this project by [Concept Crafted Creations] that takes the whole concept and takes it airborn (literally) in the form of a flying POV sphere called “Zippy”. We love persistence-of-vision (POV) displays, and have featured plenty before, from the very complicated to the […]