Controlling drones with a program that supports on-the-fly route updates

[gene40]

Hi everyone, I'm wondering how to get a drone to receive on-the-fly steering input from a program. I'm new to drones, but have a software/hardware background. I'd like to figure out the easiest way to get this working. Is there an existing control app that allows custom functions or programmatic input to control the flight path? Or, what would be the best way to approach this? Thanks for any help!

 

[GFields]

Greetings from Birmingham Alabama USA, welcome to the forum! We look forward to hearing from you!

I'm not a programmer so I can't help much. There are a few out there already such as Litchi, Drone Deploy and Drone Link. You may want to look at their stuff to get an idea.

 

[okw]

Welcome.

It won't work on DJI quads that this forum is focused on, but check out Ardupilot. It's a control platform that has been used on just about anything RC.

Also, since you're in the Seattle area, check out rctestflight on YouTube and at his website. He is in your area and uses Ardupilot for a lot of his projects. If Ardupilot would work for what you need, I'm sure he would be the one to know.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Hi everyone, I'm wondering how to get a drone to receive on-the-fly steering input from a program. Thanks for any help!

Why would someone new to drones want to be flying waypoint flights ?
Surely the fun is in flying the drone yourself ?
Telling us which drone you have would be a good idea what software is available likely depends on the drone's model.

 

[mavic3usa]

Why would someone new to drones want to be flying waypoint flights ?
Surely the fun is in flying the drone yourself ?
Telling us which drone you have would be a good idea what software is available likely depends on the drone's model.

Soon AI will change this and 100% control over your drone will be nearly obsolete.

 

[Droning on and on...]

I read your post differently than the others as looking to be able to programmatically control the drone with code you develop.

This can be done, but you have to use a drone that DJI has published an SDK for. They used to for every drone, now, only the Mini 3 Pro of the current consumer models has an SDK.

So, get a Mini3P and you can pretty much fully control all aspects in any way you'd like with your own homegrown application. You use the Andriod development environment to code and build the app.

There are older models, like the Mavic 2 Pro (and others) that have an SDK, but are only available in the used market.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Soon AI will change this and 100% control over your drone will be nearly obsolete.

I hope not !

 

[Droning on and on...]

Soon AI will change this and 100% control over your drone will be nearly obsolete.

We're well past the point of automating the flying. In C/N/S modes the flight controller is doing most of the flying, all of it when you're hovering. All we do is command it to go in some direction and how fast.

To experience actual flying of an RC drone, one must fly in full manual, rate mode. Even then there's still a Flight Controller managing motor RPM and stabilizing attitude with an IMU.

But that's minor compared to C/N/S modes.

 

[DJ Wes]

Why would someone new to drones want to be flying waypoint flights ?

My first drone was a Phantom 3 Standard. The first thing I looked for after flying it for a while was an app that had more advanced waypoint functionality. I later settled on Litchi and haven't looked back.

Surely the fun is in flying the drone yourself ?

Absolutely not. For me, noodling around with the sticks seems like a waist of time (and battery). My interest is in flight automation. That is why I created my web site of mission utilities. You may be interested in manually flying but not all of us are.

I'm new to drones, but have a software/hardware background. I'd like to figure out the easiest way to get this working. Is there an existing control app that allows custom functions or programmatic input to control the flight path?

You might want to check out QGroundControl. It is open source. You might get a few ideas from it.

QGC - QGroundControl - Drone Control

qgroundcontrol.com