How do drone gentle exhibits handle to place 1000’s of drones flying within the air with out them crashing into one another? How do robotic garden mowers stay so exact, working in their very own garden mowing lanes? It’s doubtless attributable to a strong know-how known as RTK — and the oldsters over at Drone Dojo have a brand new RTK course that might assist put you forward of the curve.
Drone Dojo, which is essentially thought of the main on-line useful resource for DIY drone fanatics, simply launched a brand new course on RTK GPS. The course, titled “Inches-level Precision with RTK GPS,” will educate you the way to improve your drones (and different autonomous automobiles) and outfit them with RTK GPS know-how for centimeter-level accuracy whereas in flight.
What’s RTK GPS?
RTK GPS, or Actual-Time Kinematic GPS, is a know-how that makes use of two or extra GPS receivers to exactly decide the situation of an object. This makes it excellent for purposes reminiscent of precision agriculture, surveying, and search and rescue.
Drones are more and more getting used for these and different purposes, however their accuracy is restricted by the accuracy of their GPS receivers. RTK GPS can considerably enhance the accuracy of drones, making them extra helpful for a wider vary of purposes.
For instance, RTK GPS can be utilized to create correct maps of agricultural fields, which might help farmers to optimize their crop yields. It can be used to survey development websites, guaranteeing that they’re constructed to the right specs. And it may be used to seek for lacking individuals or objects, offering rescuers with a extra correct location to go looking.
However whereas it’s a lot better for exact positioning, it may be just a little advanced to arrange on DIY drones.
In the event you’re shopping for a ready-to-fly drone, then it’s costly. For instance, the DJI Phantom 4 RTK prices greater than 4x the unique Phantom 4. And DJI continues to roll out even newer, extra superior RTK drone, such because the DJI Matrice 350 RTK.
Whether or not you’re contemplating shopping for an costly, enterprise drone with RTK, otherwise you need to arrange your individual current drone with RTK, this course is important to raised understanding it.
What to know in regards to the Drone Dojo RTK GPS course
The Drone Dojo RTK GPS course is taught by Caleb Berquist, a DIY drone skilled and the founding father of Drone Dojo, which is a web based drone coaching web site that gives programs in a variety of matters together with “Methods to construct a Raspberry Pi drone,” “Methods to program a drone utilizing Python,” and a deep-dive, capstone-type course on “Precision Touchdown and Drone Supply.”
The Drone Dojo RTK GPS course covers the fundamentals of RTK GPS, in addition to the steps concerned in upgrading a drone to RTK. College students will learn to choose the suitable {hardware}, set up the software program, and configure the settings. The course contains a lot of hands-on workouts that can enable you learn to improve your drone to RTK GPS.
And all of it extremely sensible. Whereas there may be some idea concerned, that’s simply sufficient to grasp the ideas. It’s primarily a sensible course that exhibits you the steps to improve a robotic from regular GPS to RTK GPS.
Theoretical classes embody:
- Regular vs RTK GPS
- F9P vs M8N U-Blox Chips
- Sorts of RTK Boards and antenna connector (and extra)
Sensible classes embody:
- Establishing RTK in your roobot
- Establishing base stations
- Surveying within the location of your base station
The course work itself is about 2 hours lengthy and is out there in video format, and is appropriate for inexperienced persons and skilled drone pilots alike. That stated, the precise time wanted to observe the movies straight by shall be completely different relying on in case you are upgrading your {hardware} to RTK on their robots (so count on about 4 hours should you observe together with an precise robotic).
To take the course, college students will want an ArduPilot automobile, reminiscent of a drone, rover, or boat.
And are there any stipulations? Berquist says the “How To Construct A Raspberry Pi Drone” course can be a great pre-requisite for people in search of extra data on the way to construct a drone.
How a lot does the Drone Dojo RTK GPS course value?
The Drone Dojo RTK GPS course is out there now for a month-to-month charge of $27. In the event you end the course inside a month, it’ll have value you simply $27 — or you may proceed entry at that charge. It’s a part of the brand new Drone Dojo month-to-month subscription mannequin launched at the start of the 12 months — which is essentially a monetary win for learnings.
Previous to this 12 months, programs ranged in value from roughly $100 to $400. Whereas shopping for it as soon as granted you entry for all times, it was an enormous upfront cot. With Drone Dojo’s $27 Blue Belt Membership, you may lurk into the course — or decide to the entire thing. However both means, your monetary dedication can have been simply $27 — somewhat than the substantial many tons of.
Blue Belt Membership additionally will get you different advantages together with $30 off any drone or rover equipment, Discord entry and an entry in a month-to-month drawing, amongst different advantages.
