Building your own Raspberry Pi drone has never been easier

There is nothing more instructive than building a drone yourself. Today, there are even ready-made kits for sale that contain all the parts you need, such as the Raspberry Pi Drone Kit from Drone Dojo. As the name suggests, the beating heart of this DIY drone is formed by the popular Raspberry Pi mini computer.

Flying Raspberry Pi drone

DIY videos have been available on YouTube for years, explaining how to assemble a drone yourself, whether or not based on a Raspberry Pi. But even though each step is clearly explained, it can sometimes be quite problematic to get all the parts. This often puts your patience to the test, especially if parts have to come from China and/or you accidentally ordered the wrong parts.

Drone Dojo now has a DIY kit on offer that contains all the parts to build your own Raspberry Pi drone. For just under $900 you get everything you need. The kit includes access to an explainer video that explains the building process step by step.

The contents of the DIY kit are as follows:

• Raspberry Pi 4B
• Pixhawk flight controller
• frame
• Four brushless motors
• Four ESCs
• RC transmitter and receiver
• 3D Printed Vibration Damper
• SD card and SD card reader
• mounting material
• lipo battery
• Lipo battery charger
• Lipo Battery Fire Resistant Holder
• Eight propellers
• GPS and compass module
• GPS confirmation
• All necessary connectors
• Telemetry modules
• Screws, screwdrivers, hex keys

Programming the Raspberry Pi drone yourself

Once everything is put together, the real fun begins. Because you can program the drone yourself. For example, it is possible to perform automatic missions based on Python. Or have your drone deliver a package. It is even possible to have your drone perform a precision landing based on computer vision.

Ultimately, your imagination is the limiting factor. For example, there are already people who have used the Raspberry Pi drone for drone fishing (yes, that’s a thing), conducting surveillance missions, and even creating entire drone swarms.