Re:Bayangtoys X16: Inexpensive, durable, hackable GPS drone
by mschuster91 on Tuesday November 07, 2017 @11:23AM
(#15644671)
> Every commercial drone has them, but they're tricky to code round being edge cases where the evidence has, well, flown away.
I wonder, given how ultra small batteries and RF chipsets have become, if this would be a viable option: take a small battery, flash memory, a GPRS modem, a GPS receiver and something like the ESP32. Make a black box out of it by encasing it in epoxy to harden it against impact. Connect it via a data bus to the drone's main controller. When the power gets cut or the data stream from the main controller is interrupted or an accelerometer detects a hard landing, power up the GPS module and have it send the current location via SMS to the owner, and also use the ESP32's wifi capability to create an access point - which can then be triangulated using a simple mapper software on your cellphone that measures wifi strength.
I wonder, given how ultra small batteries and RF chipsets have become, if this would be a viable option: take a small battery, flash memory, a GPRS modem, a GPS receiver and something like the ESP32. Make a black box out of it by encasing it in epoxy to harden it against impact. Connect it via a data bus to the drone's main controller. When the power gets cut or the data stream from the main controller is interrupted or an accelerometer detects a hard landing, power up the GPS module and have it send the current location via SMS to the owner, and also use the ESP32's wifi capability to create an access point - which can then be triangulated using a simple mapper software on your cellphone that measures wifi strength.