I've never built a drone yet but I've tried to do a lot of reading, and I don't understand why everything assumes that you have an R/C transmitter in your hand, and then at some point "throw the switch" and make it autonomous.

Isn't the entire point of these things that they fly themselves? That's why we call them drones and not R/C helis, right?

Why can't I just click "go" on my GUI, and never purchase a TX? Or can I and the distinction just isn't explained in a place that I've found it?

At least in the consumer space (which I suspect is what you're thinking of when you say "assumes that you have an R/C transmitter in your hand"), most people over the last decade (and even now in a lot of places) are flying under some interpretation of 50+ year old model aircraft rules.

Here (.au) I'm technically not allowed to fly FPV (where I'm watching a camera view from the air thru goggles or on a screen) without having another person ready to immediately take manual control who's watching/flying "LOS" (line of sight) and complying with the regular model aircraft pilot rules.

Practically nobody actually does this, but almost everybody holds some form of manual controller and is ready to take their goggles off or look away from the screen and fly the drone manually as a regular model aircraft.

If you _want_ to "just click go on the GUI", at least some of the DJI stuff will allow you to do that. I've got a DJI Spark that I can connect/control via wifi from an iPad, and software that lets me define a mission and just click fly without needing a controller. There's still an advantage to having the controller though, it's radio as way better range than an iPad's wifi, the wifi drops out and I lose the video link (while the drone keeps flying its uploaded mission) at a hundred or so meters. If the drone and the iPad both connect instead to the DJI controller, I'll get reliable video at well over 1km. One other reason I almost always use the controller is I'm much happier launching/landing in tight locations if I fly the last few meters manually. I'll sit on the back ledge of the car boot and land 1m away from the car flying manually, but I don't trust the drone/GPS quite enough to do that, and will always find a fairly large (at least 10mx10m or so if I can) area to let it land in if it's flying totally autonomously.

To be blunt: because they're not good enough. Even ArduPilot which is probably the best mission-flying software in the open source space, or DJI who are still ahead in the commercial space, will often need manual intervention to complete a mission.

You absolutely _can_ build an ArduPilot drone that takes commands and tries to fly a mission end-to-end without intervention, but without a real-time TX link of some form, you are in hot water when it fails.

That's because Betaflight and INAV have evolved from manual/freestyle flying. ArduPilot is the more "autonomous" platform, which you can fly without a TX. You can add a USB telemetry module to your laptop and fly like that, although I've never done (and wouldn't do) that, there are many cases when you need manual control for recovery/failsafes.

I don't know where you got the idea that autonomy is why we call them drones. FPV drones are all analog and they've been around a while.

They assume you have a transmitter, because a majority of non parrot drone users are flying analog.

Yeah. There was a time maybe 8-9 years back where at least a section of the hobby tried to push back against the people using the term "drone" for any quadcopter/multirotor, and trying to educate people that only things capable of autonomous flight were "drones", while regular non-autonomous quadcopter really are just RC helicopters.

We lost that fight a long time ago.

(And I'm not even sure we were "right" to be honest. The term "drone" got used back in WW2 era for radio controlled aircraft used for target practice. There sure as hell were not autonomous... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioplane_OQ-2 )

What drones are autonomous? The most well-known ones, used by the US military, aren't autonomous, AFAIK. A in UAV stands for Aerial, not Autonomous.

> The all-in-one PCB integration strategy is cute, but I really don't think it's a great approach from a crash-recovery point of view.

Spot on.

However, it's a nice way to lure you into building a quad: just put some motors on, and you're good to go.

Fly once, crash, and then go actually build a proper quad.

Small quads generally do remarkably little damage to themselves in most typical crashes. Remember this thing only weighs 102g, and half of that is a battery held on by springs.

In typical indoor use (can't get more than a few meters high, unlikely to go faster than a few m/s), this'll crash way more than one time before it show any signs of damage to anything except the (replaceable) props. (Sure, you won't be handing it down to your grandkids in your will, but it's not as disposable as "fly once, crash, throw it away"...)

I totally agree with you, it's the most compressed form, in a slim electronics layer, for the most lightweight design. Every grams are used for the best selected components, assembled with passion and fully supported by Ardupilot firmware.

Speaking of transmitters, what is a good entry level transmitter/receiver combo to get into for hacking servo-based RC projects? So far I like a Spektrum DX6 controller best I just wish it was a bit smaller for my kid's hands.

Look up the Jumper T16 - it’s a multiprotocol transmitter that supports most of the major brands, which means you’re not tied into any brand receiver.

The Jumper T176 is amazing, if you're going to get a good TX you want to last you a while, get that. If you want a cheap, small one with not too many capabilities but that a child can use, get one of the cheaper FlySky ones.

I don't know much about the drone space to be quite honest but I always wondered what it would cost to mess around with swarm algorithms, on actual drones, without breaking the bank. Any pointers?

IMO, a lot. Moving things are hard, and drones especially, are _very_ damn hard. One mistake and the drone goes poof! It gets frustrating after a while.

Just some pointers if you want to do this:

- you need some companion computer on your drone.

- GPS alone is not precise enough, you'll get wierd drifts from it all the time, you want something like RTK GPS to be able to keep stuff together.

- If you want your positioning to relie on vision, get a global shutter camera, a rolling shutter will make your life harder than it needs to be.

With ArduBee initiative we are making our best to innovate creating our best solution for swarming, with micro drones, indoor and even outdoor, based on Ardupilot Open Source project. If you have a look at https://ardupilot.org/copter/ you could start to have an idea of the included potential.

I agree -- and beyond a catastrophic crash, I wonder how practical the PCB frame is for longevity of the quad, vibration dampening, etc.

Without catastrophic crashes, it's a flying PCB with the finest micro drone's build integrated in its frame.

About vibration dampening, if you look at the maiden flight here https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/ardubee-a-ready-to-fly-micro...

Don't you think the untuned ArduBee was flying already nicely?

The graph of the postfilter acc and gyro is not so bad, the new Dynamic Notch Filter technics in Ardupilot is working so good. Furthermore, the best in his class IMU is put in the center of the frame, where the single 18650 battery, the most of the mass, is fixed in place.