Drone Server Documentation

This project comprises of a server that facilitates the remote control of a drone using Dronekit (MAVLink) commands over a network. It provides an interface to communicate with the drone via HTTP.

Key Components

1. server.py: This is the main server file. It sets up a Flask server, which listens to HTTP POST requests at the /send-data endpoint. The data sent in these requests is expected to be in a specific format that can be translated to a MAVLink command.

2. drone_control.py: This file defines a DroneControl class, which is used to interface with the drone itself. The DroneControl object maintains a queue of commands to be executed and processes them one by one. It can connect to the drone, execute commands on the drone, and handle the drone's response.

Server Usage Guidelines

1. Ensure your phone's hotspot is enabled.

2. Start or reboot the Raspberry Pi.

3. SSH into your Pi with ssh pi@raspberrypi.local.

4. Use hostname -I to retrieve the IP address of the Pi.

5. Run the server using python server.py.

6. Use the companion app, connect to the server using the IP from step 4, and start sending commands. It's recommended to use testing mode first, which can be enabled in the config file (config.yaml).

Initial Setup Guidelines

1. Start the Raspberry Pi with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse connected.

2. Enable your phone's hotspot and connect to it on the Pi's monitor.

3. Edit the wpa_supplicant.conf file (this is the configuration file for the Wi-Fi) located at /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf. Add priority=1 to the configuration block for your hotspot. This will make the Pi connect to your hotspot by default upon startup.

network={
    ssid="Your_Hotspot_Name"
    psk="Your_Hotspot_Password"
    priority=1
}

4. Change the mDNS (Multicast DNS) hostname of your Raspberry Pi to raspberrypi.local. You can do this by editing the hostname file (sudo nano /etc/hostname) and hosts file (sudo nano /etc/hosts), replacing the existing name with raspberrypi.local.

5. Connect your serial cable from the Raspberry Pi to the Pixhawk. A detailed tutorial on this will be provided in the future.

6. Continue to the usage instructions above.

Recording Feature

If the record_video configuration is set to True in config.yaml, the server will start recording a video from the Pi Camera as soon as the drone is connected. The recording will be saved as output.h264. This feature requires a Pi Camera module to be connected to the Raspberry Pi.