A few months ago, I watched this TED talk where they setup an indoor arena and did some amazing things with drones. It got me thinking, and it inspired me to build something like that for myself – but on a much smaller and cheaper scale.

In the video they use an expensive real-time infrared motion tracking system (I am guessing something like these Optitrack systems) to measure the position of the drones, and then uses a computer to calculate and send control signals to coordinate the drones. At a high level, my setup works in a similar way, as shown in this diagram:

Here’s a photo of what my setup looks like:

This is a list of the items needed to build this:

Total cost for these items was around $85. In addition to the above, you might also need a folding table and stack of books to hold up the webcam as I did, but you can probably think up something more refined!

Here is a video of it working:

Here are some links to further information on how this all works:

Source code:

nrf24_cx10_pc – The source code for the Arduino to send 2.4GHz wireless signals to the drone pc-drone – The Python / OpenCV code used to track the drone and decide on how to adjust the drone controls

We will also be sharing this project at the Bay Area Maker Faire from May 20-22, so please stop by the MakeHardware.com booth and check it out!

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