First flight

You’ll need two windows, running two commands. In one window, start the web server for the user interface:

$ godrone-ui
2014/12/01 21:39:29.057009 Listening on: :8080

In the other window, use godrone-util to cross-compile the drone software and send it to the drone:

$ godrone-util run

Now, you are ready to fly!

  1. Make sure that the drone is on a level surface.
  2. Open http://127.0.0.1:8080/ in your web browser, you should see the GoDrone web user interface. The user interface is currently just a set of graphs showing the input (black) and status (red) of the drone.
  3. Use the following keys to control the drone:
  • ESC: Emergency! Stop all motors. Reload the page to fly again.
  • Arrows up/down: Altitude up/down
  • Arrows left/right: Yaw
  • w/s: Pitch
  • a/d: Roll
  • p: Pause the graph
  • x: Cycle through the graphs
  • c: Calibrate (drone must be on a level surface)

You may also be able to use a gamepad controller to fly the drone. You need to be able to configure your controller to send keys in response to up/down/left/right on the left and right joysticks. You should also remember to configure a gamepad buttong for “emergency”!

Currently the following configuration is known to work:

  • MacOS 10.9.5 (Maverics) with the XBox 360 USB wired controller, the Tattiebogle driver and Enjoyable to translate gamepad input into keyboard input.

Next steps

First of all, congratulations, you’ve earned the dubious badge of honor for having tried out version 0.1.0 of a drone software, made by amateur robotics enthusiasts, that you just found on the interwebs! You’re a truly adventurous person.

Take all the time you need to recover from this experience, but if you feel hungry for more, please start to get involved with the community. Report your experience, share your problems or demand your money back.

After that, feel free to poke around the source, and maybe even send a patch for that thing that annoyed you the most!