1.8: Remote Control

Make sure that your drone is connected with Blockly before starting the lesson! If you are unsure of how to connect, go back to the first lesson to review!

You may be wondering how to use the keyboard to control CoDrone EDU. In this activity, you will learn how to use conditionals to control your LED and flight movements. Start your program with the light off so you can turn it on later with the spacebar.

Since you want your program to constantly check if you are pressing a key, you will need to implement a forever loop. For this example, use a repeat loop block and connect a ‘code is running’ block from the status checkers menu.

Now it’s time to check for keyboard input! Remember that when a program needs to make a decision, you should use a conditional statement.

• Go to the “Logic” menu and grab a conditional block.
• In the “Events” menu, grab a “When backspace key press” block. From the drop-down menu, select “spacebar”.

If the spacebar is pressed, turn on your drone LED to any color.

If you want to check for multiple key presses, you will need to include an else if statement for each new key. Add five new else if statements:

• when up key press
• when down key press
• when left key press
• when right key press
• when “L” key press

Now add flight commands! Add in the flight directions that correspond to the arrow keys. For “L”, land the drone.

Don’t forget the takeoff block! This block should go before the while loop. If it’s inside the while loop, the drone will keep sending the takeoff over and over again.

In this lesson, you learned how to program your very own remote using all of the blocks you have learned about so far. You also had the chance to design your own obstacle course to test your flight skills with your custom controller!