AirBlock Drone
INFO
BEN CHARTRAND from liftcodeplay.com
has some great tips to help before your start.
Piloting a drone is challenging
It takes some effort to control a device in a three dimensional space with both hands. Before you get started I suggest you try learning the manual controls.
What if I crash?
The Airblock is it is very forgiving. It’s lightweight, modular and primarily made with Styrofoam so, worse case, if you slam into a wall the unit will fall to pieces but it will be fine. You can put it back together.
Environment
The Airblock can be used indoors and outdoor but, in my opinion, it’s better for use indoors.
The unit is very light so a gust of wind can easily toss it around.
Safety
Remove the shields as it disrupts flight functions
Fly in calm weather and not over water
Keep 2 meters (6.5 feet) distance from other people and objects
Be mindful of pets. They could be scared of the drone
Be mindful of your surroundings.
If you’re flying indoors, is there anything that you could crash into? If you’re outside, is there something like electrical lines nearby?
How do you know which way is forward?
When you assemble the Airblock it’s important that the fan with the red dot on the foot is at the top.
How do you know what section is the “top”?
If you turn on your Airblock the three LEDs will light up. The red LED points to the top.
When you are flying the underneath of the propellers will light up green except for that one special one, which will light up right. That’s how you can tell what direction is forward.
Code tutorials
Airblock Programming Tutorial: Flying in a circular motion
Code
In the slider enter the following code blocks. The code is doing the following:
Takes the value of the slider and dives by 10. The slider goes from 0 to 100 but I want a value from 1-10
Stores the value in a variable called duration, which I created
Displays the value of duration in the numeric display
An example: if you drag the slider to 47 it will produce a duration of 4 (seconds) which will apply to any direction.
For the FORWARD, BACKWARD, LEFT and RIGHT buttons enter the following.
Where it says “drone forward”, change it to the appropriate direction (i.e. for the left button, set drone to left)
Once you’re done you should have something that looks like this.
To take off:
Flick the power switch on
Set the slider. I suggest you start with 10-19, which will give you a value of 1 in the numeric display
Manually take the drone up to an altitude that makes sense for you
Try the left, right, back and forward buttons
One done, click the land button