Drone Month Buyer's Guide
June is drone month at Hackster! Here is a quick buyer's guide for developers looking for a great drone kit and resources.
Remember the Amazon Prime Air drone delivery commercial in 2015? Since then, the drone development ecosystem has evolved significantly and the global community of drone enthusiasts and developers continues to emerge.
It doesn't matter if you're just starting to build your first drone or you're an autonomous systems pro who has been in the field for years, this article introduces the most popular ready-to-fly developer drone kits for your research lab or industry needs.
NXP HoverGames
The KIT-HGDRONEK66 kit is the best place to start your development as it supports the largest commercially deployed open source flight stack, PX4. All you need is a suitable LiPo battery & a country-specific telemetry radio to get this drone up and flying. Not only is it easy to assemble and use, it's also fully open for development.
See how the community is using this drone kit by browsing the 50+ project tutorials here.
This drone kit is featured in NXP's HoverGames contest series, hosted on Hackster since 2019. The first initiative asked participants to build solutions that assist firefighters in the Fight Fire with Flyers contest. The following year's theme focused on the use of drones to assist healthcare workers, support communities and prevent the spread of a pandemic in Help Drones, Help Others During Pandemics contest.
During Hackster Cafe this week, Alex Glow interviewed Iain Galloway of NXP to discuss this year's HoverGames 3 contest, which will launch later this year. Participants will be tasked with creating interesting ways of using drones and rovers to achieve sustainable food ecosystems. Learn more about the Hovergames drone and the contest by tuning in!
Holybro S500/X500
If you've been looking for a developer kit that allows for complete customization and enough space for mounting external sensors then your search is over! The Holybro X500 is designed for effortless customization. The rail mounting system can pick up a whole host of camera mounts and gimbals along with provision of optional mounts for various widely used depth cameras such as the Intel RealSense series & Structure Core Depth Cameras.
Holybro will be collaborating with Hackster during drone month for drone kit giveways 🎁 ! Be sure to follow Hackster on social media to find out more.
ModalAI VXOL
If you're looking for something more advanced with 5G and AI development capabilities, check out ModalAI's development kits. The Qualcomm Technologies' QRB5165 System-on-a-Chip (SoC) allows ModalAI to lead acceleration of autonomy development in the drone community. The SoC supports autonomous flight using 5G cellular technology and the 5th generation Qualcomm® Artificial Intelligence (AI) Engine. You can read more about it here.
The ModalAI team also has a great library of videos to help developers get started and explore all of your drone's capabilities.
Additional Resources
If you want to build a drone from the ground up or play around with the science behind the aerodynamics and mechanical modeling of motors, ESCs, etc. then check out our Drone Topic Hub. We have over 300 tutorials and projects with 50,000 community followers - all waiting for you to spark up the conversation!
To help jumpstart your exploration, the Hackster Staff has picked a few projects to explore:
- A HoverGames Drone to Sustain a Quarantine Zone (🇷🇴)
- Drone Pi: A Windows 10 Raspberry Pi 4G Drone (🇮🇹)
- Using Hovergames Drone to find lost people (🇺🇸)
- TinyML Aerial Forest Fire Detection (🇺🇸)
- NXPHoverGames: Face Thermal Measurement (🇯🇵)
- Vega - Drone Health Monitor Systems (🇮🇳)
For those ready to dive deeper into the drone world, follow the top 2 open-source drone developer communities, PX4 and Ardupilot.
This month Hackster is organizing interviews, articles, projects and giveaways to promote what's happening in the world of drones. Follow our platforms to stay in-the-know.