I want guidance on how to begin taking drone programming courses

#1

Hey everyone,

I have been learning how to program drones. I came across the Dojo for Drones courses & I am wondering if anyone here has any experience with them? I am a beginner so I am a little overwhelmed by all the options and topics covered.

I am interested in learning how to program drones for autonomous flight. What were the most useful lessons for you when you were beginning? Were there any areas you wish you would focused more on early on??

Also, any tips for keeping up with the course material while balancing a full time job would be super helpful I know it is all about time management but hearing what worked for you would be great.

On a side note, if anyone has integrated drone programming with Salesforce or other systems I want to hear how you managed that.

As well, I found these resources when doing research on this; Drone programming course off Raspberry Pi instead of VirtualBox? & if anyone have any resources, tutorials or personal experiences please share with me, It would be greatly appreciated!!

Thank you……. :slight_smile:

#2

Start with the Drone Programming Primer course. This will provide a basic understanding used in other courses and introduce you to the Dronekit python API. More importantly, learning simulation has proved invaluable for me. Clearly, testing programs first on a computer is far easier than in the field.

If you are limited on time, simply watch one video at a time or wait for your days off to focus on multiple videos and test the course material.

You can use an RPi instead of VB as per the link I cited in the reference you highlighted. But I would suggest using VB on a desktop or laptop as you will eventually run out of resources as you create more virtual machines.

Some things to be aware of as a beginner:

Unless you have prior programming knowledge, there is a learning curve to learn Linux, Python and dronekit. When I started, I invested time separately learning Python and Linux. There are a lot of free courses on YouTube and the web. You will eventually spend much more time coding and testing your programs in simulation and on the field then viewing the videos.

The programming course was created five years ago using Python 2.7. Since then this has been deprecated to Python 3. Although you can still learn using the older code, be prepared to learn how to update your programs, which has been discussed numerous times on the forum.

Once you finish the programming course, you then have various options to buy and build either a Rover, RPi/pixhawk drone, or a smaller (less expensive) drone.

In addition to the kits, you will need to purchase tools and equipment such wire cutters, pliers, soldering irons, lights, spare parts, etc.

You WILL crash your aerial drones and break parts as you learn. So you will need to buy spare props, GPS masts, wires, etc.

The courses and kits are a great way to jumpstart into this field. How you progress depends on your background and what you want to do with it. For myself it has been a great hobby. For some it leads to a great career

TAKE NOTES. ASK QUESTIONS. HAVE FUN :blush:.

#3

Just dive in but use the pre-built system. Once your setup goes off track, it is fairly frustrating if you are not an Ubuntu system pro. The professor offers a Virtual Box image ready to go. Learning the concepts first is a good way to go without the distraction of system building.

The course is self paced, just plan a little study every day.

If the entire system for the course is on a micro sim, great. But I still would not go through the pain of building the system and trying to get versions and dependencies all matching up.

closed #4

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