Ravi Butani Shows Off PiWings, a Custom Raspberry Pi Pico Flight Controller for Educational Drones
Lightweight tricopter and heftier hexacopter builds show off the PiWings' capabilities — but the board's not yet publicly available.
Maker and educator Ravi Butani has unveiled a compact tricopter drone, driven by an on-board Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller-based flight controller: the PiWings.
"Its [a] fully programmable drone specifically designed for STEM/STE(A)M [Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math] education for kids," Butani writes of the project, which he showcases as "Made in India."
A video showing off the project's maiden flight reveals a custom carrier board for an off-the-shelf Raspberry Pi Pico board, adding in an Espressif ESP8266 ESP-01 for Wi-Fi connectivity. A nearby smartphone runs a graphical app that provides control over the three-rotor drone, which can be seen flying indoors under manual operation.
The custom PiWings carrier board is only part of the build: Butani also highlights a 3D-printed lightweight chassis for the board and a battery, which includes two fixed rotor mounts and a third that can be moved under servo control to steer the craft.
For those looking for a bigger build, Butani has also shown off a hexacopter variant based on the same PiWings controller. In neither case, however, has he yet released design files or source code.
Interested parties are advised to keep an eye on Butani's Twitter account for more.