The Most Breathtaking Application of Drones

Today drones are being used in warehouses, agriculture, construction sites, aerial photography, etc. They inherently cause a profound effect of awe and the most breathtaking application of drones is the drone light show.

Drone shows have always caught special attention of the audience and are loved all over the globe. It is speculated that with their advanced, efficient solutions, drones may replace the use of fireworks during celebratory occasions.

Why drone shows?

Drone light shows are created by groups of drones that are lighted, synced, and choreographed to produce various airborne formations.

America's Independence Day is right around the corner from Hackster's drone month. It would only be a heavenly sight of imagination to watch innumerable drones fly and leave us mesmerized. On July 4th, 2018, Intel hosted a drone light show, replacing fireworks with the aim of allowing a safe and environmentally-friendly show.

Drone shows aren't just a means of entertainment either; in fact, they also have a social cause of decreasing the pollution caused by fireworks. As fun as fireworks may be, they're loud, can spark wildfires, and cause immense discomfort to animals and humans with underlying heart conditions/diseases.

Intel drone light shows

From the Olympics and Coachella to the Super Bowl, Intel's drone light shows have performed over 1,000 displays in more than 23 countries across six continents. They have two types of drones based on which the pricing per show varies: classic and premium.

The classic drone fits perfect for a cost-effective event showcasing streamlined imagery and text in locations with low levels of ambient light. While the premium drone is faster and ideal for high-resolution animations, quick transitions, and settings with significant ambient light. Read more about their technology here.

Guinness World Records

GENESIS broke a Guinness World Record for the "most unmanned Aerial vehicles (UAVs) airborne simultaneously" in Shanghai back on March 29th, 2021. The drone flight performance named "Genesis of Genesis" painted the sky with the incredible and colourful drone light show. A total of 3,281 drones came together, breaking the previous record of 3,051 drones.

What's behind the technology?

We interviewed Huibean, co-founder and CTO from Vimdrones, to give us an explainer of a typical drone light show architecture.

Vimdrones' flagship Mazzy Star Drone is a ready-to-fly drone light show solution connected with Vimdrones Ground Station System. It can run drone light show projects designed in Vimdrones Designer and provide various key features for light show safety control even manual emergency remote control one of the specific drones in the swarm. The built-in RTK system can enable highly precise light show graphics. Vimdrones' RTK base system is integrated with long-range radio link and on the light show software design side provided various algorithms for path planning to avoid drone collision and improved efficiency for graphics change.

Vimdrones' Drone Show Designer Software allows developers "choreograph" their own idea of drone light show without deep programming skills, the designer itself would handle the path planning and offer various light effectors. Check out Vimdrones' documentation here.

For small companies looking to get into the drone show business and become an indie drone show operator, this is how McDonald launched their own drone light show performance in Ecuador!

Other turnkey drone light show providers

UVify is one of the leading full-service drone light show providers in the world. Their IFO swarm light show drones are designed to bring the beauty of drone light shows to the world.

Uvify's drones have PX4-supported modular flight controller integrated with NVIDIA Jetson Nano companion computer and supports Intel RealSense cameras for indoor navigation and obstacle avoidance. It's a versatile system that is compatible with Intel® RealSense™ D435/D435i, Intel RealSense T265 and Integrated MIPI-CSI Camera. Because it's open source, it is also highly customizable and integration with NVIDIA board gives it the power to run numerous neural networks along with other applications.

Drone light show at the PX4 DevSummit!

If you're heading to Open Source Summit North America and PX4 Developer Summit with us in Austin, you're in for a treat!

This year's Summit is going to be lit as Dronecode Foundation and UVify will fly 300 drones to celebrate open source drone technology.

If you haven't registered yet use our discount code PX422HAC20 to get 20% off your ticket!