First Build

[vapid violet]

Good morning gentlemans, I'm looking to build my first drone
As a programmer I'm interested into making a small drone (possibly under 249 gr for italy restrictions)
With the possibility to code custom stuff maybe having a raspberry pi on it
I'd like to have also the possibility to have a camera on board to stream video
Any advice?
(Generally i'm looking to build a small one to test things and have some fun)

[covert stag]

What level of programming do you want? There are projects like Ardupilot that are higher level than programming everything from scratch. Or of course it should totally be possible to write flight controller code from scratch on an RPi too 🤷 What kind of video streaming do you want? FPV drones use low-latency signals so we can fly them purely through the video feed. The cheapest way to do it would probably be a cheap analog system. Just a camera, VTX, and a monitor (or goggles, but it sounds like you're not so interested in that aspect?

[vapid violet]

I'd like to add some AI features like people recognition and follow
Or autopilot like waypoints following (this is possible via ardupilot as far as I know)
I'd like to stream the video from the camera on my phone
but adding fpv isn't a bad idea

[covert stag]

(I've not played around with Ardupilot myself, but have seen people do projects with it before, so take my advice with a grain of salt)
For something like that, you'll probably want a regular flight controller running Ardupilot, plus a Raspberry Pi that does all the image recognition stuff

[vapid violet]

What do you reccomend as flight controller that might integrate that stuff + getting also controlled from the rpi?
Still ardupilot?

[covert stag]

Anything running Ardupilot will likely get you the easiest results. The Pixhawk flight controller is a common choice from what I've seen

Oh here we go https://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/raspberry-pi-via-mavlink.html

[vapid violet]

Well, cool as f

Can you reccomend me a build?
I need a small thing, something that is suitable for indoor that possibly has no issues going outdoor (i don't need a km of range, it's a test thing for now)

[covert stag]

Ducted 3.5" is probably the way to go. It won't fly incredibly well compared to the more long-range- or freestyle-oriented drones, but the ducts will generally help protect things it bumps into

[vapid violet]

Cool.
Do you have any build example?
Consider that is my first time doing this, I'm okay into doing research and programming stuff by myself but this is a new world to me

[covert stag]

Yeah no worries. To be honest, I'm not great at picking out parts 😅 More in the "getting existing hardware set up properly" field of things. I think it's worth posting a message in #❔help-quick-questions linking back here to see if you can get people that use Ardupilot to help you. AFAIK it's got pretty wide support, so stuff like Pixhawk flight controllers will work, but even more standard flight controllers should be supported too

Oh actually here's a list from Ardupilot itself
https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-autopilots.html

[vapid violet]

I'll try doing a post in that channel + doing some research by myself

u've been very helpful flynn, thanks! ❤️

[covert stag]

No problem! Good luck

You can also use https://www.vitroidfpv.com/builds/3inch-cinewhoop as a resource, though obviously you'll need to figure out how to mount the RPi to it too. If you don't need the low-latency video, might be worth seeing if you can get a small digital camera that just connects directly to the RPi and then also streaming that video to your phone

[vapid violet]

Hmmmm i’d like to test out a build, we just need to add mavlink i think

[covert stag]

Yeah from Vitroid's list, you'll just need to pick an Ardupilot-compatible flight controller and the rest should be fine