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moosearedeer@lemmy.world

Cheap drone for beginners/children, but open-source/DIY? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by grue@lemmy.world to c/drones@lemmy.world

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My elementary-school-aged daughter keeps asking for a drone, and although I'm dubious about whether she's old enough I'm thinking of giving her one for her birthday. Neither she nor I have ever flown one before, so one of those cheap (~$50?) mostly-indoor slow ones with a prop guard would be appropriate.

However, there is one thing I'm picky about that makes it hard to just look at some reviews or pick one randomly from Amazon: I have a pretty strict policy of avoiding proprietary software, so having it use some sketchy smartphone app for the video feed (or anything else) is a deal-breaker. Having the firmware on the drone itself be open source is almost as important. (I'm not sure, but I get the impression that most of the non-DJI no-name and FPV racing type ones are? The drone youtube videos I've been watching mention Betaflight a lot, and seem to assume that pretty much any drone supports it.)

I would also very much prefer it to use "standard"/popular communications protocols (ELRS and analog video if I get something with an FPV camera...?).

Finally, I'm not afraid of 3D-printing the frame and soldering together the components myself, especially if it could result in a significantly better drone for the money. However, I am intimidated by the notion of sourcing components that work together properly, so if somebody could just spoon-feed me a BOM that'd be great.

Suggestions?

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[–] JayleneSlide@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Hiya, did you ever get a good answer or solution to this? I ran down this rabbit hole because I also wanted an open source solution, but everything I found was definitely not within my current skillset or time allotment for my drone ops. And I am very adept with electrical, electronics, software, and engineering. I'm hoping your journey went way better.

I found that cheap, beginner, and open source are all mutually exclusive in this arena. Jumping into the deep end and committing to the journey seems to be the only course, although I hope that I am wrong and just missed something. I began my drone journey with Ryze Tellos and wrote my own software, but none of their kit is even close to open source.

I'm sure you found these projects, but just in case anyone else is starting this journey: ArduPilot, LibrePilot, and DroneCode were the paths I started running down. Then I way overshot the timebox I allotted to getting my drone ops running.