Codename: Nanodrone II

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The Nanodrone II project started as a challenging project on Hackaday.io. Aiming to inspect the state of cultivated fields it is a real-world project for environmental monitoring object of the 12-hours workshop AI Project, T4 Module of the Online Workshop Series Fabzero 2021.

More information on the workshop series can be found on the link above. The full details of the project, as well as the theory and the technologies behind this making, and the online documentation references are included in the official textbook of the course.

Project Links

The below links list is suggested to those users that bought the book or are following the FabZero 2021 T4 workshops series.

Available blog posts:

Products Links

Software and Frameworks

Arduino IDE: download the latest version for your platform from the Arduino main site arduino.cc. I suggest downloading the new version of the Arduino IDE (also the beta seems working fine); it includes a considerable number of improvements: the SAMD boards (including the MKR 1300) are already available after the installation.

Samba protocol installation on the Raspberry Pi. Recently the raspberry pi.org has redesigned its site and many useful links seems no longer available (or very difficult to find). As one of the most useful stuff to programming easily the Raspberry Pi from a laptop is working directly the Pi sources “mounted” as an external drive on the PC, the solution is installing the file-sharing Samba protocol on the Raspberry Pi. A good tutorial is shown at the following link: juanmtech.com/samba-file-sharing-raspberry-pi

Python3 development: it is a very popular IDE supporting also other languages. If you already know this IDE probably it is the best solution to install/use for the Raspberry Pi Python development. Alternatively, I strongly suggest installing the VS Code that supports both Python and other languages, as well as Json syntax, Linux Bash development and the Cypress programming tools.

Cypress Modus Toolbox: There is more than one method to program the Cypress PSoC microcontrollers boards but Modus Toolbox is the most efficient, multi-platform and open source.

OpenCV: acronym of Open Computer Vision, OpenCV is a collection of libraries open source, multiplatform, and highly efficient for using hundreds of image processing algorithms. Indeed, also the Raspberry Pi version is available.

TensorFlow: the versatile platform for Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) this framework comes in two “flavours”: the regular version and the lite version. Check the links below for some tutorials pointing from where to start and the possibilities offered by this platform.

AWS IoT Core: AWS (Amazon Web Services) includes a large number of cloud services, from server machines to database, large storage and more. We focus the attention on the AWS IoT core services oriented to manage IoT data that – in out case – we will provide through the Cypress PSoC6.

  • AWS IoT Core introduction; a comprehensive introduction to the AWS IoT core and the IoT services, including the registration information.

Tutorials, Examples, Etc.

GitHub Repositories

Due to the different technologies and hardware used the project Nanodrone II has been split into several repositories.

“Codename: Nanodrone II”
now available for preorder!

The textbook in both paperback and Kindle ebook format is available worldwide on Amazon by the end of April 2021.

Preorder the paperback at the discounted price of 7,99 Euro from this link

Below, the video of the first flight of the Nanodrone II prototype. Enjoy