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4g LTE Drone Proof of Concept

Just for the heck of it, I’ve heavily modified an old foam RC plane fuselage into a 4G LTE aerial drone back in 2014. The UAV is controlled by my mouse and keyboard via the labview software on my laptop. Onboard equipment includes: a raspberry pi, arduino uno (as an Analog/Digital converter), GPS, cellular usb dongle, accelerometer, 10,000mAH 4S LiPo battery, 5MP camera. The operating system used on the onboard computer is Raspbian (debian-based os) and the entire onboard program is written in Python. Feel free to contact me if you are interested in my glorious spaghetti code.

In theory, I should be able to fly this from anywhere in the world as long as the UAV has 4G signal and I have access to the internet. Will be attempting to integrate a PID control to account for wind/air turbulence. Also I will probably use the new RPi… Still a work in progress.

Total spent on this bad boy: approx $250 (excluding 3d printed parts)

source

4g lte

35 thoughts on “4g LTE Drone Proof of Concept

  • Hi, I have the same project for an airplane but I'm not sure about the power supply for the whole thing. Do you have a diagram of your installation?
    Thanks!

  • bro your LabVIEW interface is amazing, how do you do your OSD ibterface video?
    good vibes from México regards.

  • Please send the code on my email I'd hpgcet@gmail.com
    N please share your WhatsApp number if possible I want to talk to you
    N your work is awesome
    Thank you dear

  • Brooo please send me some information about how do something like this is very fucking awesome

  • Bro thats awesome !!!
    Its gratefull see it works
    I want to make something similar can you send me a copy of report or some information about how do you did your uav please,
    Good vibes from Mexico

  • Hey! Great project. How much date would this use though? It seems like it would max out any prepaid SIM quickly.

  • hello sir , first of all nice work and it's amasing to do some stuffs like this drones and mini planes , keep on working and i will preciate if you share your works with IOT lovers
    second , my questions are :
    – how to setup the cellular usb dongle to offer connection to the raspberry ?
    -the raspberry has its analog/digital convertors why you use an arduino , i think you had used the arduino because you cant to strem video better
    thanks

  • brilliant project, I am planning to build a custom UAV with rpi 3b+ and arduino uno and would appreciate it if you could share your code, specs, and your main difficulties to make this?

  • can you please share your code and method of working?….I'm interested to do a project very similar to that

  • Could you provide some information on you camera mount I am new to flight and love that camera setup

  • Hey could we see an update on this baby!! looks amazing… I would love to know more about how you did it 😀 I want to make my own:)

  • Hi Philip, looks really great! what were the specs for the main thrust motor that you have used (how much was the weight of the aircraft)? Also, what was the torque of the four control surfaces' servos. Lastly, how much flying time were you able to get? Thanks. All this info will help me greatly in my project. Cheers, JD.

  • hi philip can you post the schematic diagram and the code iam intrested in doing one like this

  • How you did it? Im now learning Python, is possible to share your code with me? 🙂

  • Really jaw-dropping, what are you using for the OSD?

  • +Would be cool if you added some lightweight solar panels on the wings for % extended flight time.

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