HackQuad

An open-source esp32-based IoT quadcopter intended to be controlled over WiFi (STA or AP) via an xbox controller.

Why

I made this in 2020, early 2021, because I like building stuff and wanted to test my mechatronics / full-stack product development skills. I always planned on open-sourcing it. However, after I got it flying I moved on to other projects and forgot about it. Today I decided it's about time. I didn't have the heart to clean it up much (kinda nostalgic for me now) so its still very much in that dirty development stage. I did organize it for the repo though. I hope this serves as a good reference for anyone interested in what makes a minimal quadcopter tick -- from the ground up.

Media

Flight test video

Otherwise unlisted specs

Part	Description
Battery	350mAh
Motors	8.5x20mm DC
Propellers	75mm D (60 works too)
USB-C	charging, programming & debugging
Frame	PLA+ here, ABS or other gummy polymer

Notes

The camera

I wired the camera connector up backwards like an idiot, but if you reverse the pin order it should work.

Possible improvements

Something to make this project more practical would be dropping the camera, adding a better imu w/ magnetometer, a several watt RGB led, larger battery, maybe GPS, etc... and using the mesh networking capability of the espressif chips to make a very cheap drone light show platform. I say maybe GPS because dead-reckoning imu data combined w/ rssi info in a massive cluster might be enough to get stable quad-to-quad relative positional information (saving on cost of the individual unit).

Improvements for this implementation

• neutral boyancy
• better IMU w/ magnometer
• proper multi-position IMU calibration routine to correct for axes skew
• linear acceleration control layer
• better battery capacity estimation