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Tello EDU Tethered Flight

YeuhBru

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I've found a way to create a tether for the DJI Tello drone. It allows the drone to fly without the need for swapping and recharging batteries. The tether is not super long, but it is long enough for close proximity applications.

The drone's SDK still thinks that there is a battery, even when tethered. Now I am trying to figure out how to bypass the SDK to stop the drone from "Losing battery percentage". The tether provides the current and voltage needed for everything. Takeoff, hover, camera and sensors, movement, etc.

The next step includes finding out how to "trick" the Tello into staying at 100% battery, as it should, since it is tethered to a constant power source that does not lose charge over time.
 
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Please tell us how to do this. We have been working on this without success. you can communicate wit me at dfkott@ao;.com. Thank you. I appreciate your work.
 
Even if you find out, how to "trick" the Tello into staying at 100%, I would have concerns about the motors. They are not brushless and get pretty hot. I would expect them to wear out or even fail completely pretty soon when using Tello tethered.
 
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This is coming for the perspective of a military surgeon and SAR concept. These cheap, small drones have amazing capabilities. We are really living in a world of throw away concepts. Every policeman and solider can do amazing thinks with these drones. The discardN them. have A back up or two. At $100 plus that is possible. I spent 34 years in the military and have considerable experience disaster management.. Much the same as weapons. Pistil to rifle to automatic to cannon. A teetered drone is a useful tool for many situations. Once the concept of long term flight sinks in. Also you may find it interesting that some are using the much less rigid kite laws for teetered drone flying. I still recall this similar approach to change from a three tube video cameras to a one tube and than a chip. My three tube medical video cameras cost $60,000 and was so heavy you needed a heavy duty levered platform. SO GO AND GET THIS GREAT TOOL TEETERED.
 
One of the biggest problems of our subsequent generations is, that we have been living in a world of throw away concepts...

I agree, that there may be use cases, where you know from the beginning, that you most propably sacrifice the drone and in that case, Tello may come in as a good choice. A tethered drone is typically not such a use case.

For practical tethered drone applications, Tello is too weak. The cable length, that it could cope with, will be very limited, given that the cables must be able to transport about 4 - 5 amps.
 
I do not like the idea pf a throw away civilization. But good or bad it is here. Most hospital people in the past wore white when it was hard to keep white, starched and clean. Now they were black, and purple pajamas. An operating room bulky sheets, etc are now bagged and disposed of. They used to be re-used..i spent many hours shrp3emndinh venipuncture needles. Now they are used once and disposed of. The world will continue to change and evolve. It is the concept of long flight that matters, not os much what drone is used. We and policemen have tested the DJI Mavic Mini for much of this indoor work also. As we know the Tello is at EOL. It is now the Robomaster , advances and distribution is determined now by DJI. in disaster and war environments. it is the usefulness of the tool that counts. A good one to follows the FLIR. The USA army paid a toymaker in Europe to hand make a soldier drone to the tune of $90,000. ( interesting specifications for this micro recon drone ) In video, i worked with 1 inch profession videotape that is now not as good as the quality on an micro SD in my Autel EVO 2 pro 6K. At my age of 90, I have lived through many of these things that were said cannons be done, and in some cases suffered in my medical profession because of lack of foresight of my leaders. Fortunately most of my leadership was good. interesting discussion on teetering concepts. Our security at the last Super Bowl had a test between teetered and non -tattered drones.
 
I've found a way to create a tether for the DJI Tello drone. It allows the drone to fly without the need for swapping and recharging batteries. The tether is not super long, but it is long enough for close proximity applications.

The drone's SDK still thinks that there is a battery, even when tethered. Now I am trying to figure out how to bypass the SDK to stop the drone from "Losing battery percentage". The tether provides the current and voltage needed for everything. Takeoff, hover, camera and sensors, movement, etc.

The next step includes finding out how to "trick" the Tello into staying at 100% battery, as it should, since it is tethered to a constant power source that does not lose charge over time.
@YeuhBru Would you share? I'm trying to tether my tello, but can't figure out how.
 

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