Raspberry Pi Drone Project

Syma drone with Raspberry Zero W and RGB LED - syma drone modded with raspberry pi zero w, pi Camera v2.1 and monkmakes RGB LED (aka the squid). Who needs a DJI phantom X for £££ when you can have this, much more fun?

Summary

I know a little bit of programming, a little pi, a little electronics and I've put it all together in this project - soldering has been a great skill to learn. It's been a heck of a lot of fun and I'm still working on it. I'd love to hear more from anyone with tips or code comments. This has got to be one of the most enjoyable pi projects I've done and it's inspired me to write this and publish it here - my first github repo.

Bill of materials

Items	Amazon Link	Rough Cost
Syma drone - X5SC-1	http://amzn.to/2mC9hP7	£40
Pi Zero W	http://amzn.to/2ngRIYi	£10
Pi Camera v2.1	http://amzn.to/2mCuIPO	£20
Monkmakes RGB LED	http://amzn.to/2mCmebz	£5

Tools

Items	Amazon Link	Rough Cost
Soldering iron	http://amzn.to/2mC21CQ	£20
Glue gun	http://amzn.to/2ngUxbL	£10
Multi-tool	http://amzn.to/2ngYbT2	£20

How it works

I've added a Pi Zero, Pi Camera and RGB LED to the drone. Everything on the drone is powered from the original drone LIPO battery. To power the Pi Zero I soldered a positive and negative wire from the Pi GPIO header (5V header and ground) directly to the Drone controller board. Pi Camera is connected to the Pi Zero with a Pi Zero ribbon cable, I had to fold it over to get it to fit but seems to work fine. The RGB LED (monkmakes squid) is connected as per this excellent guide.

Currently the rough flight sequence is as follows.

Drone is powered on (by connecting the drone's lipo battery cable)
Pi boots, as it's fed off the drone's power
Pi launches the drone.py python script
drone.py reads config variables in top of file
drone.py activates the LEDs to indicate status to pilot
Take off
After the green light, drone.py actvates video recording for specified time (default 2 mins)
LEDs change to indicate video recording finished and photo sequence commencing
Photo stage begins and camera takes a sequence of high resolution photos
LED indicates python script nearly finished
Pi shutdown command is issued (have disabled this currently)

The Pi is on my home wifi network so after the flight I connect to the pi and SCP the files and videos off it.

Enhancements

I've got many ideas for how to enhance this project but need to keep in mind weight at all times. I think I'm at the limit of the payload for this drone as it is. However I'd like to investigate the following.

GPS module or barometer, primarily for altitude data
Real time clock module
Different drone - X8C more powerful
Buttons/ switches to allow pi to be shutdown properly
Make the pi a wifi access point rather than a wifi client
Airborn wifi network ESSID scanner
Automate getting the photos/ videos off the pi
Light webserver and interface to access photos/ videos/ data

Yellow wire - there's a yellow wire running from the syma control board that was used with the original camera, you pressed a function on the remote control unit and it signalled to the camera to start / stop recording or take a photo. I wonder if it would be possible to connect this yellow wire to the Pi GPIO directly and have the remote unit send signals to the Pi, e.g. take a photo, or shutdown.