David McGriffy - Drones: Teach an Arduino to Fly

• 2016-10-05: First Release

The successful people I have known all seem to have gotten there by some personal mix of talent, luck, and work. I hope that the mix turns out right in this book and that I succeed in inspiring you to make something. It will probably be a drone, but if its a great new garage door opener, Ill count that as a success as well.

I have put my unique talents into this book, as you will into your project. I was born with a soldering iron in my hand, or almost, thanks to my fathers ham radio hobby. Also, largely due to his efforts, I started finding things to program when I was still a kid. I happen to love mathematics, which has served me well as a coder, of course. And there are several pilots on my fathers side of the family. But there are other threads in my life that led to drones.

From my mothers side I get music. My love of music and my love of gear came together in recording technology. This led to computer audio and digital signal processing. And now we get back around to drones. Many of the very same algorithms I have coded for audio processing get used in drones to process sensor data and control inputs.

Add in some professional experience doing consulting in the control systems business, and perhaps you can see why I love building drones. It all comes togetherbuilding electronics, flying, radios, programming, signal processing. But there was also some luck involved in the creation of Make: Drones.

My old friend Tim Deagan was working on his book, Make: Fire, and I shot some drone video of his fire projects. Then Roger, who would become our mutual editor, said, Drones are hot, send me a book proposal on drones, so I did.

Then there is the work. And I dont just mean mine. Roger Stewart makes all those things happen that turn a bunch of files into a book on a shelf. Ron Parsons has saved me from many an error as technical editor. He also let me play on his Processor Technology Sol personal computer when I was a kid, giving me one of my very first programming experiences. And without the constant support of my wife, Marva, and kids, Stella and Sean, the production and marketing teams would never have had anything to work on.

The real success, of course, is not just a book on a shelf. I hope that this book inspires you to make something that pulls the threads of your life together. I hope that this book helps you see that even something as complex as a drone control system can be broken down into fundamental, understandable parts. Over and over we see that the same technologies that make a drone fly make many of our other modern gadgets possible. I hope that they will make your project fly, figuratively and perhaps literally.