Don't Crash Me Bro!

Global Nominee

Don't Crash Me Bro! received a Global Nomination.

THE CHALLENGE: Don’t Crash My Drone
Aeronautics

Create an app that will enable small drone operators to know more about specific weather parameters, local terrain and no fly zones within a five-mile radius of their GPS location.

Explanation

The thoughts for this project was to give amateur and commercial drone pilots a system that would be easy to interface with to give information about where they are operating their drone.

What was accomplished:

This was done using three main pieces: The Dronr Server which aggregates data from the sources listed below to a RESTful web api. The Dronr App which can then query this server with a location and get information about that location. Finally a Drone Simulator, because we didn't have an actual drone to interface with. We created an app that reported GPS data to the Dronr Server which then allowed the app to query it.

Plans for the Future:

Future work would revolve around getting an actual drone and be able to modify the firmware. We would then allow the option for the drone to autonomously return to base or safely land itself if it flies into a hazard area or weather changes to conditions that are unsafe for operation of the drone.


Resources Used

Data sources used:

  • NOAA and the API 'forecast.io' for weather data
  • Google Maps for terrain hazard data. Also for displaying in the app.
  • FAA for temporary flight restriction data

Technologies used:

  • Dronr Server: This is a server we built in Node. The node server was then attempted to be put on a Microsoft Azure Server.
  • Dronr App: A cross platform web based app built on IONIC.
  • Drone Simulator: An android only app built using Xamarin and Visual Studio
Made inReno, NV USA
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How they did it