DJI Tello Drone Controller

Note: This project was developed with significant help from LLM agents (Claude and ChatGPT) for code generation, documentation, and problem-solving. It's been a great way to learn drone programming while leveraging AI assistance.

What This Is

I built this Python controller for my DJI Tello drone because the basic controls weren't cutting it. I wanted to do more complex flight patterns, capture photos automatically, and have better safety features than what comes out of the box.

The project started as a way to learn about drone programming, but it's turned into a pretty solid SDK that can handle everything from basic takeoff/landing to complex geometric flight patterns.

What It Does

• Flight Control: All the basic movements plus some fancy stuff like automated patterns
• Camera: Live video streaming and photo capture
• Safety Features: Battery monitoring, emergency stops, connection checks
• Complex Patterns: Pre-programmed flights like squares, circles, and flip sequences
• Computer Vision Ready: Set up to work with OpenCV for autonomous navigation (still working on this part)

Project Structure

The code is organized pretty simply:

tello_controller/
├── src/
│   ├── tello_controller.py    # Main drone interface
│   ├── flight_control.py      # The fun flight patterns
│   └── utils.py              # Helper stuff
├── examples/
│   ├── basic_flight_demo.py   # Simple demo to test everything works
│   └── advanced_patterns.py   # The cool stuff
├── photos/                    # Where captured photos go
└── tests/                     # Unit tests (because crashes are expensive)

Getting Started

What You Need

• A DJI Tello or Tello EDU drone (obviously)
• Python 3.8+ on your computer
• WiFi connection
• Somewhere safe to fly (not your living room - learned that the hard way)

Setup

Clone the repo and install dependencies:

git clone https://github.com/curohn/tello_controller.git
cd tello_controller
pip install -r requirements.txt

Connect to your Tello: 1. Turn on the drone 2. Connect your computer to the Tello's WiFi network (something like TELLO-XXXXXX) 3. Wait for the connection light to go solid 4. Run one of the flight files:

Basic Usage

python src/flight_control.py

Available Commands

type help for a list of available commands

Safety Stuff (Important!)

Please don't crash your drone. I learned some of these the hard way:

• Fly outside or in a big space - drones are bigger than you think when they're spinning
• Check battery constantly - land when it gets to 20% or the drone will land itself wherever it is
• Keep a strong WiFi connection - if you lose connection, the drone will hover and land on its own
• Don't fly in wind, rain, or when you can't see well
• Know your local drone rules

What I Learned

This project was a great way to dive into drone programming and learn about: - Real-time communication with hardware over WiFi - Next up: Computer vision basics (still working on the advanced stuff) - Working with AI assistants for code generation and problem-solving

Future Plans

• Better autonomous navigation with OpenCV
• More complex flight patterns
• Maybe some basic AI for obstacle avoidance

Resources I Used

• DJI Tello SDK Documentation - The official docs
• djitellopy - Python library that does the heavy lifting
• OpenCV Tutorials - For computer vision stuff
• Various drone forums and Reddit threads when things broke

The AI assistants (Claude and ChatGPT) were incredibly helpful for generating boilerplate code, suggesting safety features I hadn't thought of, and debugging connection issues.

This has been one of my more fun projects - there's something really satisfying about writing code that makes a physical object fly around. If you build something similar, I'd love to see it!