With the DroidDrone you can easily control your INAV, ArduPilot or Betaflight drone via the Internet. You only need two Android phones (requires min version 7, Android 11+ is recommended) - one is on the drone and connects to the flight controller with the OTG USB and the other connects to your remote controller.
You have to install the Flight and Control apps on the phones. You can download them from the Releases page.
Flight app controls the INAV or Betaflight drone via MSP commands, so you need to change your receiver type to MSP in your configurator:
In the Modes tab you can also add a Camera Control 2 Mode to start or stop video recording.
ArduPilot should work with the defaults. However, you need to check these settings: Mavlink target system ID should match the parameter SYSID_THISMAV (default 1) in ArduPilot settings and Mavlink GCS system ID - the SYSID_MYGCS (default 255). Ignore MAVLink Overrides bitmask in the RC_OPTIONS parameter must be deactivated. You can set the RC_OVERRIDE_TIME parameter to one second (default is 3).
You can set the "Camera Record Video" RC option (166) to the free channel to start and stop video recording on Android.
The mobile phones usually do not have a public IP address and you have two options to connect both together:
-
Use Direct connection mode - if both phones are in the same VPN network (or Wi-Fi network for testing).
You should connect the control app to another phone's local IP.
You can use the ZeroTier as a free VPN server (however, bandwidth may be limited on the free plan) - register an account and create your network. Then you can download the ZeroTier One app and connect your phones.
Note that the VPN connection has a little more delay due to encryption.
-
Connect over server - you start a Server app (Java) on your PC or virtual server and connect both phones to its public IP address.
You can also use your home PC as a server, but you have to configure port forwarding (default is 6286 / UDP) in your router and allow this port in the firewall first (and don't forget to turn off the sleep mode...).
Of course, your router should have a public IP for it to work, but most internet providers give one.
If you use the server app, you can also connect other phones as viewers. You need to configure a different key for viewers. The default key is "DD" for both - controller and viewer.
In the Control app you can configure various settings, such as Camera ID (for internal phone cameras). If your phone has a wide-angle camera, it's best to use it. A wide-angle camera usually has ID 2 or 3, but on some phones, it can be different (my old Redmi has ID 21...).
You can also connect an external USB camera (UVC) using the USB OTG splitter.
Cameras with high frame rates have lower internal latency.
Before the first flight you also need to check in the settings of control app that the channels mapping is correct for your remote controller:
The channels mapping in your FC is automatically recognized.
Note that every time before connect the control app you need to move all sticks and switches on your transmitter to correctly recognize all channels. Some channels can only work as two position switches via USB.
Please only use the DroidDrone if your drone has a GPS and return to home/launch (GPS rescue) works correctly. It's recommended to configure a switch for this mode.
For your first flight you should use Angle/Stabilize or position Hold mode, only when everything is running smoothly you can switch to Acro.
The Flight App can run as a service when your screen turned off. The Control app must always be in the foreground. If it is not in the foreground or screen will be turned off then it causes a failsafe.
It's probably a good idea to set the power saving settings for the Flight app to "No restrictions", but I don't have any problems with the default settings either.
Not all OSD elements (but many important ones) are supported by DroidDrone.
At the top of the screen you can see the specific OSD items such as the battery level and cellular signal strength for both phones, camera and OpenGL FPS, video bitrate and network latency. You can also start and stop video recording with the button on the right. The recorded video should be saved in the "Android/media/de.droiddrone.flight/Video" folder.
You can create a fork and contribute your pull requests to this project or create issues, discussions and documentation.
You should use the latest Android Studio to compile the app sources and the Eclipse IDE for Server. To create a sprites map you can use the Adobe Air ShoeBox app and the BMFont for font textures.
- Google Maps tracking