Meet Stanley, my NVIDIA Jetson Nano drone | DIY drone pt. 4

[@pat_trudel]

If KZbin had a good algorithm, your videos would of been introduced to me way sooner. Amazing.

[@akamatchstic]

Thanks! Part 5 of the series is shaping up to be a solid conclusion to this particular project, with updates posted more regularly on my Twitter: @akamatchstic

[@i_think_2_much277]

Extrodianarily awesome what your up to i wish more people were interested in this kind of stuff. This is the groundwork of the future. I have a jet-son nano myself and love doing projects with it. keep it up!

[@akamatchstic]

Totally agreed, theres a huge amount of potentional for aerial platforms like this. One idea I think is fantastic is autonomous search and rescue - send out a fleet of drones with an onboard AI model to help locate people!

[@TechMechanism]

this kid is really doing good. Go Ahead buddy

[@akamatchstic]

One thing I didn’t mention in the video is what the Jetson Nano is currently doing. Right now, I’ve set it up to forward MAVLink packets over a WiFi network to every device on that network. This is helpful for me to connect multiple ground stations, like my laptop and phone simultaneously. Longer term, it’ll run the navigation software I’m writing and directly control the PixHawk.

[@waleedjaved4581]

Using pydronekit or mavsdk? I'm pretty curious to know.

[@akamatchstic]

@@waleedjaved4581 at the moment I’m using DroneKit, though wasn’t aware of MAVSDK… so far I’ve built my code to abstract away sending navigation commands into a single class, so should be relatively easy to switch if needed

[@waleedjaved4581]

@@akamatchstic Sweet! You'll obviously be using TCP for drone to GCS comms over wifi. If for whatever reason you need UDP do check block_tx for loss catering on UDP. Cheers mate.

[@vinniecavalieri2789]

I am currently doing a project using a similar build to do vehicle tracking and identification for my graduation. I just want to put it out there that I appreciate the very human trial-and-error approach to your trials. Those alone feel like their own set of guidance and overall this was a great piece of work.

[@akamatchstic]

I'm glad its been helpful for you! Best of luck for your graduation project :)

[@zaidshaikh2903]

Hey, I have the same project for my graduation. Could you possibly help out and advice on how you finally got it done?

[@tolly2holly788]

Thats great work. Can you post the design of your NVIDIA case cover for 3d printing. I like the mount on drone. Thank you

[@chetmyers7041]

Education is expensive, but a smart man can learn from his mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others, but a fool never learns from his own mistakes.

[@mohammedshoaib9847]

Could you please share the 3d model of the Jetson nano case and mount?

[@shyamraa]

It's ok to make mistakes 👍

[@codified-avp9158]

Can you please give the Design of jetson nano and pixhawk holder

[@akamatchstic]

All the STL files I’ve created / used are available here: www.dropbox.com/sh/ip13e0wacflxtbb/AADVNoiI6ry5AH1D5ktzPIPRa?dl=0

[@Augmented_AI]

Really awesome video! It would be great to have a chat about drones & AI - Ritesh Kanjee (98k subscribers)

[@akamatchstic]

Sounds a plan 👍🏻 I’m available at [e-mail] for email, and @akamatchstic on Twitter

[@mohammedshoaib9847]

Could you please share the 3d model design of the Jetson nano mount? :)

[@eliasgeiger5445]

If you are looking for more advanced drone Project ideas, I suggest you look into telemetry and remote control over cellular internet using a LTE/4G modem. It opens the door for long range applicationsand is very powerful because the distance to the ground station doesn't really matter anymore.

[@akamatchstic]

This is exactly the idea behind a planned video I need to make soon 😅

[@derekzuo3070]

Hello, great project, I was wondering if you 3d printed the leg attachment for the Jetson case? I looked at your 3d files and couldn't find them there, would you possibly still have those files? Thank you so much!

[@nathanvidal9172]

Hello, very nice video, I have one question though. I have some real trouble calibrating my esc's, how did you do that? I have exactly the same as you, though my RC is using elrs. How did you calibrate your esc?

[@birendrakumar-gl5gq]

I was wondering if we can do autonomous navigation(autonomous waypoint mission) without gps. Avoiding obstacles in the way.

[@ensam9317]

so I want to supply power to Jetson nano via bec, but I don’t know where to pierce the wiring from the module could you help us please

[@hundredwaves8459]

You really should encourage people to use microcontroller for home made drones. Nvidia jetson is computer, it is not an instant execution microcontroller. Use Atmel SAMD or STM32. Jetson uses its cpu power mainly to run the OS and other background tasks not really suites for this job. But I like the way you are trying hard, spirit for moving forward is really what person need when doing this type of stuff.

[@akamatchstic]

A microcontroller approach is a good shout. For this project I want to make sure I have the compute capability to do things like onboard hand gesture recognition, so it felt like a Jetson Nano would be a better choice for this case

[@AarohiJadav]

what are the connections between pixhawk and jetson could u tell specifically

[@miguelcuevas2976]

What are you installing at 8:27? Extra antennas? Why?

[@akamatchstic]

That’s the wireless antennas for the WiFi card I have hooked up to the Nano. These ended up causing some wonky interference with GPS in the next video, so ended up getting removed in favour of a small USB dongle 😅

[@vtrandal]

Are there at least two variants of the Oak-D-Lite: Fixed focus and Auto focus. If that is indeed the case which one did you use? My apologies if you mentioned that in the video and I missed it. I'm guessing you chose the Oak-D-Lite with Auto focus. Yes? No?

[@akamatchstic]

It’s been a long time since I made the choice, but I’m 90% sure it was fixed focus - the auto I believe has issues with the vibrations due to the propellers

[@struggle375]

lol you deserve way more views man, your ai drone videos are awesome!

[@berayuksel4702]

How did you provide power to Nvidia Jetson Nano from the battery?

[@ais_robotic]

use Hornet 30A esc for this motor ,, for low power stable and long time

[@djgunner922]

Hello, i really like your videos, I have a decent experience with ardupilot and drones since i work as a drones engineer, if you would like some help with setting everything up correctly to fly safely without crashing, hit me up, i would be glad to help you out.

[@akamatchstic]

Thank you very much for the offer! At the moment, I’m pretty sure that the last crash was caused by me simply failing to do up the prop nuts tightly, and assuming they would self-lock nicely. Ie, my theory is that vibration of the motors prevented that happening, since other prop nuts were close to falling off too on post-flight inspection

[@lomaaa499]

I was wondering about the battery, could we use more than 5000mAH? like 6500mAH . I couldn't find 5000 anywhere.

[@akamatchstic]

Absolutely! Since the larger battery is heavier, it may reduce the max payload weight on your multicopter. I’m planning to rig up my two 5000mAh batteries as a combined 10,000mAh

[@eliasgeiger5445]

Great Video. I made a very similar quadrocopter build with a pixhawk and a jetson nano last summer. I had the same struggle when I built my first drone ( instant flips, propeller fly aways and vibration issues ) The ardupilot flightstack is very powerful and feature rich but it takes time to learn about all the details that matter to make your drone fly nice and safe.

[@NanoCreator]

Nice project.

[@クズネツォフ-y3u]

Great! Is the power supplied via GPIO?

[@saritasahu6293]

I appreciate you choice of pading material 😅😅

[@pythonking_stem1527]

PixhWk flight controllers Jetson nano

[@masterelibott2121]

You've already explained that the Jetson Nano gets its power from the 5V BEC, but (maybe this is a silly question) where does the PixHawk get its power from? I sit here for hours trying to figure out where that one mysterious black POWER cable with the red stripe goes 😅!

[@akamatchstic]

It’s uh, another BEC 😅 I have something like this plugged between the battery and the power distribution board to power the PixHawk: ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-3dr-power-module.html

[@masterelibott2121]

Thank you very much. That helps me a lot 😊

[@gozita12]

What controller do you use? I notice you list everything else that you use for this project but not the controller.

[@akamatchstic]

It’s a Spektrum DX7 (gen 1 I think?). Got it cheap off eBay a while back!

[@md.shariarkabir7350]

11:05 this is a lesson for who thinks buy components than build me and fly.

[@akamatchstic]

Most of the videos you see of component assembly then immediately go to working flight must be glossing over this phase 😅

[@jeremyk727]

Awesome project! Why did you switch to the OAK-D lite from the IMX219-83?

[@akamatchstic]

From memory, the main reason was I wanted to free up resources on the Jetson Nano to allow hand gesture recognition in the future. I’ve finally started looking into that in some downtime this past weekend 😅

[@jeremyk727]

@@akamatchstic gotcha, thanks!

[@jtech3454]

You are the best

[@intricateartist711]

Do you happen to have the link to the exact kit with all of the parts, or is it just the individual parts as listed in the description above?

[@akamatchstic]

It was a one-off eBay purchase unfortunately - haven’t seen the same kit listed again, but it’s been a long time since I last looked!

[@intricateartist711]

@@akamatchstic Ahh i see, thank you!

[@korayerdemir758]

hi i didn't quite understand the power connection of the jetson do you have any instructions on how to do this i thought the 5v pins were not enough to power the nvidia jetson

[@miguelcuevas2976]

how did you power the jetson nano? Was it from the distribution plate or from the pixhawk?

[@akamatchstic]

It’s from the distribution plate - I’ve got a 5V UBEC wired up to the +5V and GND GPIO pins

[@miguelcuevas2976]

@@akamatchstic Thank you for the reply!

[@spacelovers472]

Hey ! I would love to make quadcopter like you and additional many things But I am not quite sure about how to start to learn Can you tell me a roadmap ? Yes there is lots of videos about robotics but there is not much especially about UAV's Can you help me, which programming languages and cards should I learn ? C++/Python, Arduino/Raspberry Pi ? I am quite confused

[@akamatchstic]

Its a bit of a minefield, that's for sure! When building the quadcopter, you'll want to purchase a flight controller thats easy to communicate with, so you can give it flight commands. I'm a fan of PixHawk, and my recommendation would be to choose something that supports MAVLink. Other than that, it would be a standard drone build. There's a good course available here that covers pretty much the whole process: dojofordrones.com/courses/21-part-drone-building-video-manual/ In terms of programming, I'm writing all my code on a Jetson Nano using Python. A Raspberry Pi would work just as well for most tasks, and is a fair amount cheaper too. Arduino technically would work too, but if you're just starting it would be easier to avoid that route and stick to RPi + Python. The main process to go from parts to a drone you can program is: - Build your quadcopter and make sure it can take off - Go through the tuning process (this is where to look if you use PixHawk: ardupilot.org/copter/docs/tuning-process-instructions.html) - Connect the Raspberry Pi (or, whichever board you end up) using a serial link, and make sure you can get MAVProxy working At this point, you'll be in a position to connect from eg Python using a library like DroneKit or MAVSDK, and then be able to send commands over the serial link to fully control the drone from code.

[@yassinebouharb1032]

how much does it cost?

[@ChilliCao]

You gotta fail many times in order to know how to win, you've got it my friend!

[@SRINIX4356]

do I need any lisence for this drone or FAA registration?

[@akamatchstic]

I needed to gain a license here in the UK, which involved passing an online course to get a flyer ID and operator ID. I assume its the same elsewhere!

[@Robert-lm7xo]

The Pixhawk 2.4.8 flight controllers I've found say they can control 4-axis multi-rotor drones. But your drone has six rotors. Can the PixHawk control a drone with six rotors? Or did use a specific model?

[@akamatchstic]

It’s controlling it just fine 👍🏻 there’s 8 output rails for motors, and ArduPilot does support all 8 available

[@yuriselektro2236]

Nalice drone brother.. 😍😍😍👍👍👍

[@theabyss5647]

Hi! I love the project and I like your videos! Watching the motors spin the wrong way and propellers fly off gave me an idea for maybe an interesting side-project. Maybe you could design and implement a neural network that could learn to compensate for missing propellers and still give some higher degree of control? You probably wouldn't even have to experiment on the real, physical machine. Sentdex some time ago used some Nvidia and Open Source software to utilize the idea of digital twins to teach a "robot" dog to walk so that might work for simulating a drone maybe.

[@roystonishappy]

Just curious how did you power the jetson ? dont see any power connection to the battery

[@akamatchstic]

Over GPIO! I installed a 5V BEC on the power distribution board, which in turn fed the Jetson via the 5V and GND pins with a couple of jumper wires

[@roystonishappy]

@@akamatchstic is there anyway to provide the jetson nano with 10W ?

[@antoniotonisi2419]

Hey there, I would like to know if it is possible to build a control system for a drone without using devices like pixhawk, or navio2, using only IMUs, giroscopes, and a raspeberry pi?

[@Michael-cl9gf]

You could, the Problem with the raspberry is that you‘ll Need a realtime kernel… next thing is youll Need to decode pwm/sbus on the rasp, which could be not fast enough (realtime…), the navio itself is not much More than imu, barometer, gps reciever (and a processor for Decoding/encoding sbus/pwm)

[@propcircles4082]

my first drone build was an X8 cinelifter and i made sooo many mistakes i reckon it took me 50 hours to complete the build and get it flying smooth lol

[@akamatchstic]

You really do learn a LOT on that first drone build 😂 worth it at the end

[@aditawks]

Such a Wonderful Video and loved the part where you didn’t give up❤

[@jaimecandelmartinez1233]

Really fun and inspiring video man!👍👍

[@robertparenton7470]

Thank You for this video. From Frisco, TX.

[@rafdjislampura6454]

Thanks for the video. I can totally relate to your frustration. Key is that you stay safe and keep making progress towards the goal.

[@wahyuadnyana2296]

Great! I would definitely recomend you to install the propeller shield 👍

[@guylionel9909]

I’m so sad for you when you done your first test Really And you smile it’s incredibly strong Congrats I’m waiting for your next video You will be good sooooooon ❤️

[@akamatchstic]

Stanley will live again!

[@mariaisabellopez6061]

Awesome explanation and nice videos btw!

[@nonameguy1427]

Hey im a bit late to the party but I just wanted to say that I too built a diy hexacopter from a very simmilar frame and I too crashed at least ~7 times before I figured everything out. I had voltage regulators that just randomly stopped (cheap chinese besc what a surprise I know), propellers breaking in mid air, sudden radio loss.... Tldr: Keep up the good work! Btw your editing quality is amazing

[@akamatchstic]

Cheers! I’m glad to know it’s not just me having these kind of troubles building a hexacopter! On the topic on ESCs, I have noticed one of the 6 motors occasionally loses power and regains it a second later, causing a sudden pitch of the aircraft. Is this similar behaviour to what you observed when voltage regulators stopped working?

[@nonameguy1427]

So my problem was: Some esc have a built in 5v output to power the flight electronics, i think its called bec. My goal was actually to built a flight cobtroller from the ground up out of an stm32 microcontroller, there's a cool KZbin series from a guy named Joop Brooking. I noticed in flight, my custom flight controller suddenly reset itself mid flight (resulting in a crash obviously), even though I had tested it on a bench working for hours. I also think the esc whose bec I used didnt drive its motor properly afterwards or something. This was a school project and it has been a few years so I dont remeber all the faults in detail anymore. But I know that after I bought a deticated 5V buck converter rated for 1A I never had my fc reset itself anymore.

[@nonameguy1427]

@@akamatchstic Probably the esc got to hot or something, even though they were rated for 30A and my motor took max 15, and my 5v Load was also only around 300mA. I never really investigated it further since with the dedicated buck converter everything works fine. Now to your problem: I would guess that maybe yes, one of your esc is overheating. Are you using a bec or a dedicated voltage regulator? For how many amps are the escs rated? Your drone looks quite heavy, I would at least have the esc rated for double what you are likely to pull at a maximum. Good and THICC power wires are also importand, as well as good connectors. Btw, I also had a crash because my XT60 connector wasnt solder on porperly and went loose mid flight.

[@NewbieTetris]

Really great attempt on flying the drone. I suggest using a propeller with auto-lock features like the DJI uses on Phantom 3. You'd get more thrust in using 9.4 inch props than using the 10inch one. I also recommend auto-tuning the Pixhawk first (though I don't use Pixhawk, I use the 8bit arduino based Flight Controller Multiwii. Yes, I know its too old but I got more stability in using this. The performance is really close to the iNav)

[@akamatchstic]

Thanks! I’ll have to take a look at the 9.4inch props, though could have sworn my 10inch ones are auto-locking? Either way, on this video’s final test I didn’t do them up tight enough, leading to the spectacular crash! Yup, auto-tuning was on my list of things to do in this video, and has since been done. I’m now seeing very nice, stable flights (when there is no pilot error involved) 👍

[@NewbieTetris]

@@akamatchstic oh sorry, what i meant was the propeller with integrated bolt in it, not auto-locking propeller. That way you can just tighten it by hand. I don't have any issues using it. One more thing I suggest is Prop balancing, it adds stabilization on your flight, less chance of crashing. Happy flying, I'm hoping to see the next part of the series 🙂

[@robrever]

Honest question, is the Jetson capable of handling everything on its own? Could you eliminate the Rasbery pi altogether?

[@akamatchstic]

In this drone I’m no longer using a Raspberry Pi! On the previous one, I used a Raspberry Pi Zero as the flight controller - I’m assuming that’s the one you mean? In that setup, I found that it could pretty much only run ArduPilot and basic OS stuff. The Pi 4 might be able to handle additional overhead, but I haven’t looked into that.

[@theabyss5647]

@@akamatchstic About that... Look into the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 (the 2nd gen. board that was released recently). That is if you want to have a simpler Pi-power drone. The 0-2 now has a 4-core CPU instead of 1-core and it seems to be between 3 to 5 times more powerful in benchmarks.

[@akamatchstic]

@@theabyss5647 Good point! That should definitely help with performance. At some point I plan to get one in for a future project 😅

[@aboudezoa]

Why do you need jetson nano and not just rpi with Oak-D ? Great video and sorry it broke on you

[@akamatchstic]

An RPi would be able to handle my initial use case just fine to be honest. I went for the Nano since: a) I had already bought it thinking I would need the extra compute for stereo depth b) my future plans involve running further neural nets directly on the Nano for eg hand gesture recognition, as well as spoken command recognition

[@aboudezoa]

@@akamatchstic in that case then yes . 👍 keep the good content coming 😃

[@syedabdullah25]

Really great video!! I was following your drone project and saw that you used yolov4 for object tracking in jetson nano. Now that you got the oak-d lite, are you using it for object/person detection also? It should be capable of doing that very fast as per their demo. By the way, for jetson nano, nvidia's deepstream should give you huge speed boost with inference.

[@akamatchstic]

Thanks! Yep, I’m currently doing the initial work to have Yolov4 running on the OAK-D. The initial results are FANTASTIC: last night, I was seeing 25fps for person detection! The next steps from here will be to write the second half of my follow-me setup, and then do enough testing under a SITL environment that I’m happy enough to run it all on the Jetson. Potentially might try and get gesture recognition running on the Jetson itself, in which case Deepstream will come in super handy 😅

[@syedabdullah25]

@@akamatchstic Thanks a lot for the info on the oak-d lite. Will order some for testing soon. Looking forward to your next videos. 👍👍

[@CraigWedd]

this is soooo cool, i love it

[@dmusafir3169]

Can you please share the nano case 3d print file

[@akamatchstic]

I've not uploaded it to Thingiverse this time, but you can download the .stl files directly from my Dropbox here: www.dropbox.com/s/dm42uize3ltzcpa/S550%20Jetson%20Nano%20adapter.zip?dl=0

[@Michael-cl9gf]

I‘m currently building a similar drone with jetson nano and raspberry+navio… mounted on tarot x8 Frame…

[@akamatchstic]

Nice one, best of luck! It’s very rewarding when it all works 😅