OpenDrone - A Drone Made in Austria

About Us

Our team consists of 4 computer science students of HTL Perg in Austria. But we do more than writing code. We Designed this Drone from nothing only based on our Drone knowledge. We wrote an Open-Source Flight Controll Software, which has in the near future all benefits of a Modern Drone. By the way, all files are Free, you can download them, even better help us improve this Project by giving us feedback.

You see we are not normal computer science students, we love hardware, challenges and have fun trying new stuff.

We participate currently in a total of 3 Competitions:

• Jugendinnovativ 
• Austrian Competition amongst all Austrian Schools 
• jugendinnovativ.at 
• AXAward 
• Austrian Mechatronics Award 
• axaward.at
• And this one 😜 but we are currently not allowed to speak about it
• but its international

The Drone

Short overview over our used technologies:

• C++ - Our FC runs on C++
• Android - Our App runs on Android
• Raspberry Pi - The brain of the drone

and last but not least

• our PCB or your own assembly does the rest

The drone is a 3D-printed quadcopter that can be controlled manually and should also be able to fly autonomous in the near future. The Flight Controller, which is implemented in C++, reads and analyzes the data from the sensors and calculates the rpm of the brushless motors with different PID-Controllers. The PID-Controllers are used to stable and control the drone. The App controls the drone by sending commands to it, the job of the Flight Controller is to analysze and interpret those commands.

One of our goals was to keep the drone as cheep as possible, so that everybody who wants to have a drone, can have a drone.

Another goal was to keep the weight below 5kg, because we want to have a registracion from "Austro Control" (Air Traffic Control of Austria). If the drone has more than 5kg you need to have a PPL (Private Pilot License) and the registration is much more complex. To achieve this, we printed our drone with a 3D printer, so that our frame does not get too heavy.

All our files (including the files for the 3D printer and the code for the Flight Controller and the App) can be downloaded from GitHub at www.github.com/OpenDroneAT/ and from our website www.opendrone.at

Our Circuit Boards

The OpenDrone Sensor Board

is a board with all necessary Sensors, a PWM module 3.3V and 5V Power distribution and an AD converter for messurements. Its designed to be used as a PiHat but its also possible to use it with an Arduino or even an completly other Platform.

Why Support us?

Support from PCBWay would be an enormous advantage to our team. At the moment we play jigsaw puzzles with our sensors. Furthermore we have neither the time or the budget to source your own PCBs. It would also provide all 4 Team Members with the opportunity to Develop independently from each other. At the moment we have only one prototype to fly, so only one can test his code. Furthermore, this PCB can also be used for other projects. And Competitions.

For more information about OpenDrone, you can visit opendrone.at or our social media @OpenDroneAT

Or visit us on MakerFaireVienna