Tzivaras - Building a Quadcopter with Arduino

Vasilis Tzivaras is a software developer and hardware engineer who lives in Ioannina, Greece. He is currently an undergraduate student of the Department of computer science and Engineering at Ioannina. Alongside his studies, he is working on many projects relevant to robotics, such as drones, home automation, and smart home systems using Arduino and the Raspberry Pi. Furthermore, he is enthusiastic about clean energy solutions and cultural innovation ideas.

He has worked for the University Hospital of Ioannina as an assistant for various computer issues, and he has been part of the support team of his CSE department for over a year. He has participated in IEEE UOI Student Branch and other big organizations, such as FOSSCOMM, with personal presentations for website designing, programming, Linux systems, and drones.

As a member of IEEE University of Ioannina Student Branch, he has proposed many projects and solutions to automate homes and many other life problems by reducing the time of everyday routines. In addition to this, he has come up with ideas to entertain kids with funny and magical projects using Arduino-like hardware and open source software. Many of the projects can be found at his GitHub account under the name of BillyTziv .

Apart from this book, he has also worked on another book Programming in C, which is not yet published. In addition to this, he has written for blogs, forums, guides, and small chapters, explaining and sharing his knowledge of computers, networks, and programming.

Firstly, I would like to thank my entire family and my close friends, Joe Polenakis, Marios Balamatsias, and Kostis Karantias for supporting me every single day. Secondly, I could do nothing without Vasilis Megas who stood by me from the first day, assisting me while building my first drone and giving me instructions about safe flights. Furthermore, I would like to thank my advisor, Kostas Vlaxos, for helping me out with my research about drones. Lastly, everyone else who said that I could not do this; they set me a challenge, which I finally accepted.

Joseph Monti is a software engineer who has worked in the field of software engineering for more than 12 years. His programming languages of choice are Scala and Python. He is currently the director of software engineering at ZenoRadio, which combines telephony and internet-based radio to connect listeners to broadcasters. His range of expertise includes web services, data processing systems, ad serving technology, and robotics. Whether it is an algorithm, data model, or software architecture, he relishes a challenge.

From an early age, Joseph's passion for technology motivated him to build and race radio controlled cars and program his calculator to do his homework. His interests in both hardware and software lead him to the field of robotics, and more recently, quadcopters, AI, and machine learning. He is currently working on a quadcopter as a prototype platform, controlled by Arduino and the Raspberry Pi. While he enjoys flying quadcopters, this project is intended for the challenge of overcoming the complexities of flights and taking advantage of the freedom it allows. His website and blog can be found at http://joemonti.org/.

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Preface

Quadcopters have made an unexpected comeback from 1907, where all the research about multicopters paused due to stability issues. Nowadays, this kind of aerial vehicle is the perfect solution for many applications. If you want to capture a photo or record a video, transfer low-weight payload quickly and securely, or join races with other hobbyists, then you will have to buy one or even create one on your own.

As an author, I have tried to keep the simplicity of the quadcopter but also give plenty of instructions on how you can easily create one for your own application. As kids, we always wanted something that could fly and that we could play around with. Through this book, this dream can come true.

What this book covers

, Introduction to Quadcopters , provides information on various categories of drones, and you will be able to understand why a quadcopter is stable and can hover. Furthermore, some possible applications will be mentioned as well.