SD Card

[briest]

Out of curiosity, I connected a microSD card to my Tello via an microSD microUSB reader. An empty file was created, named "scratch_drv.log". Of course, it's nothing useful, maybe if I used Scratch, I'd get some information. But it clearly states that Tello out of the box can use SD card, understands FAT fs and can write to it. Maybe -- one can hope -- there is some debug mode, that dumps visual data to card, or a way to read commands from file? I know that it's a long shot, but -- there should be a reason for SD support and maybe it's there not only for "scratch log"...

I have searched for "scratch_drv.log" but found nothing, so it seems no one tried this yet.

 

[Krag]

Interesting. Did you try a flight with it connected? Maybe it would save more data.

 

[briest]

Yes, I took off, recorded a short video, snapped photo and landed (all manually, with stock Tello app). The app had even shown two warnings (about weak ambient light and need of calibration), but nothing found its place in the log.

 

[DRN1]

My solution in the end to video problems was to purchase a thieye DX drone (red) and also sold as the Wimius DR10 (Black). I brought the black version.

The fact it has a 1080p 8mp Camera and on board SD Card storage made the whole thing fun to film and take the footage off the SD Card at full 1080p it also can record 720 to the phone and do both simultaneously.

I love my Tello but for taking videos the DR10 just makes it so much easier. The Tello is more fun to fly but the DR10 is more sedate but this helps with filming video. I also then process the video through a stabilising video app. Which works to improve the look as the EIS is not up to that of the Tello.

 

[brick72]

So any news to your sdcard Project?

 

[briest]

Not yet. I have just confirmed, that nothing I do with Tello itself (catch midair and flip bottoms-up, turn off the light, crash into wall, lose a propeller mid-flight ) gets logged. The ideas I have next are:
1. use SDK
2. use Scratch (although I despise Adobe, and my experiences with Air on Linux are rather disappointing. If Scratch uses standard SDK, I'll gladly skip this step; but the filename "scratch_drv.log"...)
3. try bruteforce with fuzzer-like solution: feed Tello a string of random commands, first via SDK and English dictionary, then maybe really random payload in raw packets.

If anyone has better idea to try before #3, I'd be really thankful, for I fear bricking my Tello this way (say, it'll start upgrading firmware, overwriting it with my garbage stream...).

 

[brick72]

Sound like a hard Work. But if if will work a least, it will be worth the Work. It will be a big major Hack for every one who would like filming with Tello.
Good luck!!!!!!

 

[briest]

Sound like a hard Work.

Not at all, it would be just automatic feeding with garbage in hope some part of it would accidentally resemble a command Don't get your hopes too high, by the way; I have speculated, but there are some big IFs: IF there is something to be discovered at all, IF I manage to find it, IF it would be useful for anything...

 

[daddmc]

Any new news about using SD cards?

 

[briest]

Unfortunately no. But due to time constraints I'm still stuck on the SDK+dictionary level, so scratch, binary and fuzzing are still to try.

 

[ChazBarros]

Is there a custom firmware available? I would love to take a look into the source code. It may be possible to modify the video streaming methods to also save into a storage puggled into the micro usb port.

 

[briest]

None AFAIK. There is Tello firmware and Tello EDU firmware and that's it.