COEX Clover Aims to Simplify Drone Coding with a Solderless Raspberry Pi-Powered Educational Kit
With a custom PX4 flight controller, GPS, laser rangefinder, camera, and a Raspberry Pi at its heart, Clover aims to be the drone for STEM.
California-based autonomous drone specialist COEX has launched a crowdfunding campaign for Clover, a solderless kit to build an open-source programmable drone powered by a Raspberry Pi 4 single-board computer.
"Clover is for anyone who wants to learn not only how to operate a drone but also how to code it," claims COEX's Oleg Ponfilenok. "The kit comes with all the parts you need to build a quadcopter and take it to the air. It includes step-by-step tutorials to get you coding in no time. It's light, sleek, and flies like a charm. Perfect for indoor use."
"As a teacher you can dive into the following subjects: Physics - Electronics, electromechanics, aerodynamics, acceleration, and gravity; Math - Geometry, functions, scale factors, and vectors; Technology - Telemetry, data logging, lithium battery technology; Arts - Design a drone payload using 3d-printing materials; Invent your custom Clover; Programming - Coding blocks, Python, and C++."
The Clover drone comes a kit of parts, centered around the custom PX4-based COEX PIX flight controller with GPS receiver and including a speed controller, brushless motors, props, radio controller, laser rangefinder, Raspberry Pi Camera Module, and the 1GB variant of the Raspberry Pi 4 single-board computer.
The frame measures 355x355x125mm (around 14x14x4.9in) and has a claimed take-off weight of 1kg (around 2.2lbs) and a peak speed of 72km/h (around 45mph) plus a flight time of 15 minutes based on the supplied batteries. As well as programming the physical drone, the hardware can be simulated in the bundled Gazebo software.
"At the moment," Ponfilenok admits, "our project is at the prototype stage. After testing many versions and iterations, different components, and electronics, evaluating the performance of the quadcopter, we were able to develop and manufacture Clover in the form you see it now. Moreover, for Kickstarter we made a solderless version of the kit in order to simplify the assembly process for the user."
The Kickstarter campaign to fund production of the Clover kits starts at $399 for the full kit or $499 when the early bird rewards have expired; those with existing quadcopter systems can instead opt for the $99 COEX PIX flight controller, which includes power distribution board and GPS receiver.
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