Tello Dronella 🚀

Tello Dronella is a set of python scripts to fly and manage swarms of the Tello Edu drone.
🚧 This project is in early stage so feel free to help get it ready.

How to fly a drone ↗️

1. Clone the repository with git clone https://github.com/marvinpuethe/tello-dronella
2. Run setup.py
3. Switch on the drone
4. Connect your computer to the drone-specific wifi
5. Run python main.py

Simple usage 🚀

Dronella has a simple script called main.py. You can operate in single flight or in multiflight mode.
In single flight mode you need to connect to the wifi of your drone.
In multiflight mode the script can help you to register your drones with your wifi. Set your wifi name and password and connect to your drones wifi. Press Enter and your drone will be registered to your wifi access point. After the register process it will scan your network (with subnet mask 255.255.255.0) for drones and connect to all available drones. Each of them is added to your swarm and can execute commands.
For details of this process see How it works)

The script operates in two flight operation modes scripted and interactive. Scripted mode will be started if you give a file as a parameter to the program or a command.txt is found in the script path.
If not it will start in interactive mode and listen to your keayboard inputs.

Note: The drone communication is started automatically via command. You don't need to specify this in your file.

Scripted mode

In scripted mode Dronella parses a simple text-file. Each line is parsed and sent to the drone. Try this sample code:

takeoff
delay 2
land

Interactive mode

If no parameter is given and no command.txt is found it will start in interactive mode. The script will listen to your keyboard input.
You can type any command found in the Tello SDK 2.0

Retrieving the state 🔧

The current state of the drone is automatically retrieved from the Tello State Stream. The retrieved string is parsed to DroneState. You can access it in the Tello class.

drone = Tello()
print(drone.state.height)

How it works 💡

Tello

Create a drone with drone = Tello(). The standard address of your drone is '192.168.10.1' if it is in station mode pass the ip to the Tello() constructor. This will start a UDP socket to command the drone via port 8889. A UDP socket to retrieve the state of the drone is also established via port 8890.

Now you are able to pass commands to your drone via drone.send_command(command). See the Tello SDK 2.0 for reference.
The commands are being sent to the drone and stored into the log which you can access via drone.log. If the command is executed the response from the drone is stored into the logentry.

When the command has been sent to the drone the script will wait until it was executed successfully or wait until the maximum timeout (Tello.MAX_TIME_OUT) has been reached. If the timeout has been reached the script will try to send the land command to the drone.

The drone is constantly being monitored. The state is retrieved via the UDP socket and the response is parsed into the dronestate. The entries can be retrieved via drone.state. You can access the elements like drone.state.height.

Operator

Create an operator with operator = Operator(). It stores a swarm of Tello drones and can tell each drone to execute commands. If the Operatorget's deleted it will automatically close the socket connections to each drone.

If your drones are not registered to your wifi access point you can call operator.register_drone(address). The address is the ip-address of your drone (standard is 192.168.10.1 when connected to the drones wifi).

The swarm can be generated automatically or manual. If you call operator.scan_for_drones() it will call your network with subnet mask 255.255.255.0 for drones. This is being accomplished by checking if the TCP port 9999 is available (an abyss server hosted on eacht Tello drone). You can also call operator.add_drone(address) where address is the ip address of your tello drone. Each drone is automatically being initialized and ready for commands.

By executing operator.execute_command(command)you can execute commands on each drone parallel.

Keep-alive connection 📡

Tello drones have the safety feature to land if no command has been received during the last 15 seconds. To avoid accidental landing the script sends the sn?command to the drone.

Note: If you use sn? as a command. You will get a fake response with the value of `Tello.tello_sn.

Logging 📄

Dronella logs each command sent to the drone and stats like the duration for the execution. You can get the log via drone.log()