1G: Keyboard Remote Control

Make sure that your CoDrone Mini is paired before starting the lesson! If you forgot how to do this, make sure to review how to pair to Blockly here.

You might be thinking, “But Robolink! There’s a remote control with my CoDrone Mini! Can’t I just learn how to use that!” The answer is yes, but in a different lesson. In this lesson, you will get to apply everything you’ve learned so far into one big program.

Just to see how exactly this works, you’re going to program your drone to take off, and then when you hit a key (we picked t), it will turn to the left. When you hit the spacebar, it will land. First, drag a take off block to your workspace.

Since you want your program to constantly check if you are pressing a key, you will need to use a forever loop. For this example, use a while loop block and connect an “is code running?” block from the orange status checkers menu.

Now it’s time to check for keyboard input! Since your program needs to make a decision, you should use a conditional. Go to the logic menu and drag a conditional block to your workspace.

Next, go to the light gray keyboard input menu and attach a when backspace key press block to your conditional. Be careful! There are two, so make sure to use the one that looks like a puzzle piece on the left.

Change backspace to t using the dropdown menu, and then add a turn left block from the flight directions menu.

To add the spacebar key for your drone to land, click on the gear icon in the conditional block and attach an else if block to the if block.

Next, go back to the keyboard input menu, select the same when backspace key press block, and attach it to the else statement. Select spacebar from the drop down menu.

Go to the flight directions menu and attach a land block to your program.

Now that you have the basic idea, you can start making a keyboard remote control! Start a new file and set up the structure of the statements you will use for forward, backward, left, right, and emergency stop.

Next, add in your flight commands. With this remote control, you will move in a direction for half a second. If the spacebar is pressed, the drone should emergency stop and exit out of the forever loop. If no key is being pressed, the drone should hover. For this last part, you should use an else statement.

We picked keys that matched our keys to the direction (like u for up), but you can use whatever keys you like. However, they should be something that’s easy for you to remember so you don’t use the wrong key. Using backspace might clear your code, so that should be avoided.

If you want your drone to turn or fly forward or backward, you just need to go back to the gear icon in the conditional block and add as many else if blocks. Next, add your keyboard input and flight direction blocks. 

Activity: Obstacle course

Now that you have your new flight controller, build an obstacle course and try to fly to the finish line without hitting anything! If you need to, adjust the values of the delays and add more keys for more functionality!