Have you ever thought your gameboy can control your drone?
Paparazzi UAV
It was a matter of time before nostalgia entered the drone industry. And we don’t mean the guys that claim to have built a drone you can play Pokemon Go with. We’re referring to a recent story of ingenuity involving an old-school GameBoy controlling a Parrot ARDrone2.
From there he decided to to take matters into his own hands. And with a few ingenious alterations, it soon became clear that flying a drone with an old-school GameBoy was more than possible.
Using a GameLink – a Nintendo accessory that keen gamers will remember allowed for co-op play and competition, Hattenberger connected the GameBoy to an Arduino microcontroller and an FTDI semiconductor.
After that, Hattenberger says, “a small program on the ground station converts this into actual commands for the drone.”
Paparazzi UAV
And as for the inspiration behind this little tech project? Hattenberger said: “So I spent some time searching the web to see if I could find some idea to solve my problem. And if it seems that [although] piloting unmanned aircraft with a Game Boy is not so common, you can find everything you need to program it!”
From the video footage it looks like a pretty effective control system. If you fancy having a go yourself, Hattenberger has released the entire source code on Github. Good luck!
