Re:Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? Pl...
by troncheadle on Thursday March 10, 2016 @02:23PM
(#11261473)
Holy crap this is so cool. So cool! I'm a JR full stack dev, mainly proficient in JS technologies, and I have a cheap drone with a wifi camera. What would you recommend that I study to start getting involved with autonomous drone programming for fun?
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? Pl...
by iamleppert on Thursday March 10, 2016 @02:55PM
(#11261785)
There are many open source flight controllers. My best advice would be to research and decide on one, then build a small fixed wing, helicopter, or multirotor. You'll learn a lot in the process of building vs. just buying something and while a longer project, it's certainly within the realm of hobbyist and there are huge communities to support you.
Most of open source flight controllers support MavLink, a communications protocol that you can use to send path commands and receive telemetry info over a WiFi link. There are wrappers for many languages, including node.
It's good to have a project in mind of what you want it to actually do in the end before you start that will help guide you through the process.