If you have been looking for an quadcopter that you can experiment with then you might well be interested in LiteWing. It uses an ESP32 to create a $60 drone.

The important things to know about this Kickstarter project is that it provides an open source low cost drone that is cheap enough to consider expendable. This is to quadcopters what the ESP32 is to computers - something that you can afford to risk in finding things out. And, let's face it who hasn't lost or crashed a quadcopter?

The design is based on an example project by Espressif - the ESP-Drone - which in turn used open source flight software from Bitcraze. CircuitDigest put together an alternative design and published it on their website. Then somebody else put the project on Kickstarter and was very successful until a copyright claim was made on behalf of CircuitDigest. Now CircuitDigest has launched a Kickstarter of its own and presumably there will be no copyright problems this time around.

The design is based on a single PCB on which you mount the brains of the system and the four motors and propellers:

The MPU6050 IMU provides a 3-axis gyro and a 3-axis accelerometer. These are used by the open source control software to provide stabilized flight. You can control it using an app on your smartphone which connects to the drone via WiFi and this saves having to have an additional transmitter. This gives it a range of about 80m.

You can also add a Lidar, pressure sensor and digital compass. What you cannot do at the moment is add a video camera that offers high resolution.

Take a look at it in action:

So what are you waiting for?

You can get it as a kit for $50 and fully built for $60. Notice that you will also have to by a LiPo battery as these cannot be sent as part of the delivery.

• Harry Fairhead is I Programmer's hardware guru, having worked with microprocessors and electronics in general for many years. A prolific author, his soon-to-be-published book, Programming the ESP32 In C from I/O Press, will be invaluable in programming this drone.

More Information

LiteWing - A Fun DIY WiFi Mini Drone based on ESP32

ESP-Drone

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