Alexa Voice Controlled Tello Drone

In this tutorial, I will show you how to control a DJI Tello drone using only your voice. The drone works with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant to respond to voice-prompted commands.

First Step

You need to create a new Voice Skill at https://developer.amazon.com/alexa/console/ask

The Skill Invocation Name is "drone:"

In the JSON Editor Section, drag and drop the file “alexa.json” you find in my GitHub repository:

In the Endpoint Section, put the post call to your Node-RED (ex. https://mysite.com/drone):

Second Step

I put my Node-RED in a EC2 AWS instance but you can have Node-RED wherever you want. You need also to install a SSL Certificate to enable HTTPS and a MQTT message broker: I use https://www.cloudmqtt.com/

In Node-RED search "Import – Clipboard" and cut & paste the contents of “node-red.txt” you find in my GitHub:

Now all that's needed is to configure the MQTT broker with your credentials.

The start of Node-RED flow is the Endpoint of the Alexa Skill:

Third Step

On RPi install Node.js:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs 

then type:

mkdir drone
cd drone
npm install mqtt --save
npm install request --save

then copy in this directory “drone.js” you find in GitHub.

In the file “drone.js” you must insert your MQTT credentials:

var MQTT_username = "<YOUR USERNAME>";
var MQTT_password = "<YOUR PASSWORD>";
var MQTT_host ="wss://m10.cloudmqtt.com:XXXXX";

The RPi is connected simultaneously with two networks: Internet and Tello WiFi:

The protocol to send commands to the drone uses UDP packets in a specific binary format.

Start to Fly

• The Tello drone is powered up

• Alexa is powered up and is connected to your WiFi Network

• RPi is powered up and is connected to Tello WiFi Network & your Ethernet Network

• RPi is running “node drone.js” program. You can set this to auto start or you can just ssh into the RPi and run it

• Say “Alexa, ask drone to take off." You should see your Tello to take off

Available Commands

You can find all the code at my GitHub.