Tello. Whats possible?

Galahad · Apr 21, 2018

deadprogram said:
Just published a new blog post about hacking the Tello:

Hello, Tello - Hacking Drones With Go

Thank you to everyone on this group who has helped make it happen!

Thanks, it worked for me! But the video feed is still not at his best. Especially the lower half of the screen is blurred.

trelo · Apr 21, 2018

We are patiently waiting for a mobile app that may add some new functionality. What I personally most want is to bypass the 10m height limit.

RawrGuthlaf · Apr 21, 2018

Hi again everyone! It seems you have all been very busy in the past couple weeks

I've been keeping up a bit but fallen behind recently.
My Android app is coming along, as I started and spent a lot of time today on it. Thanks to Krag and his C# code I had a reference to look at, and I successfully connected and issued the take off command to my Tello!

I ran into a lot of problems simply because I've never worked with raw bytes much, as I have only been developing web applications in my career. Also I'm an Android app development noob. Also C# uses unsigned values and Java uses signed. So I am a bit of a drone hacking novice so to speak and this has been an uphill battle. For now I'm referencing the commands as plain hex strings as this is the easiest format for me to work with at the moment.

Once I get things together a bit more I'll put up a proof of concept. Thanks to everyone for their hard work, this has been very educational for me.
Edit: Also i'm sure bluejune's work will be helpful for me shortly, thank you for your efforts as well

bluejune · Apr 22, 2018

more packet information updated at

1. Tello Control Message Parsing
2. Control Packet Commands
3. Overall Control Message Flow
4. Tello Video Packet Analysis
more information will be updated..

And android app information for Tello control

deadprogram · Apr 22, 2018

bluejune said:
more packet information updated at

1. Tello Control Message Parsing
2. Control Packet Commands
3. Overall Control Message Flow
4. Tello Video Packet Analysis
more information will be updated..

And android app information for Tello control

Great work once again, bluejune. Thanks!

trelo · Apr 22, 2018

deadprogram said:
Great work once again, bluejune. Thanks!

This is amazing! When will you release?

Will it work with a USB joypad connected through otg cable? Any joypad recommendations?

Is it possible to bypass the 10m height limit? How about face tracking? Is it smth we can hope for in a future release?

Will it be a paid app? How about a donation account?

deadprogram · Apr 22, 2018

bluejune said:
more packet information updated at

1. Tello Control Message Parsing
2. Control Packet Commands
3. Overall Control Message Flow
4. Tello Video Packet Analysis
more information will be updated..

And android app information for Tello control

Seems like perhaps the image is missing for the page "Overall Control Message Flow"?

Krag · Apr 22, 2018

Great job bluejune! Can't wait to try your app.

Krag · Apr 22, 2018

I am going nuts trying to figure out how to start the Tello without taking off. I cant find a command for it and I have no way of sniffing the packet. In the Tello App you can do it by holding both sticks down and in or down and out for a second or two. Its called CNC. My only way of capturing packets is in Nox and you can't do that move. Could someone who has a rooted device try to capture that traffic?

bluejune · Apr 23, 2018

Krag said:
I am going nuts trying to figure out how to start the Tello without taking off. I cant find a command for it and I have no way of sniffing the packet. In the Tello App you can do it by holding both sticks down and in or down and out for a second or two. Its called CNC. My only way of capturing packets is in Nox and you can't do that move. Could someone who has a rooted device try to capture that traffic?

Hi Krag,

starting motor without taking off is done by sending the stick packet like the following for seconds.
roll, pitch and throttle should be minimum while yaw is maximum.

Code:

User Datagram Protocol, Src Port: 6525, Dst Port: 8889
TELLO_CMD
    SOP   : 0xcc
    SIZE  : 176
    CRC8  : 0x7f
    PACT  : 0x60
    DIR   :  -> TO DRONE
    CMD   : TELLO_CMD_STICK (80)
    SEQ   : 0
    DATASZ: 11
    DATA  : 6c 61 0b 5b 28 0d 06 13 21 45 02
        STICK - roll: 364, pitch: 364, thr: 364, yaw:1684, fastmode:0
    CRC16 : 0x7cec

bluejune · Apr 23, 2018

trelo said:
This is amazing! When will you release?

Will it work with a USB joypad connected through otg cable? Any joypad recommendations?

Is it possible to bypass the 10m height limit? How about face tracking? Is it smth we can hope for in a future release?

Will it be a paid app? How about a donation account?

Hi trelo,

yes, it is working with usb joypad connected through otg cable.
Any joypad with 4 axis and some buttons will be okay.

I didn't try to set height limit yet but I'll update the result once I test it.
Actually I can't find the feature about face tracking in the tello spec but it may be possible on the smartphone side..

The tello feature is integrated into BTCon4Drone but it I have plan to separate it.

Krag · Apr 23, 2018

bluejune said:
Hi Krag,

starting motor without taking off is done by sending the stick packet like the following for seconds.
roll, pitch and throttle should be minimum while yaw is maximum.

Code:

User Datagram Protocol, Src Port: 6525, Dst Port: 8889 TELLO_CMD SOP : 0xcc SIZE : 176 CRC8 : 0x7f PACT : 0x60 DIR : -> TO DRONE CMD : TELLO_CMD_STICK (80) SEQ : 0 DATASZ: 11 DATA : 6c 61 0b 5b 28 0d 06 13 21 45 02 STICK - roll: 364, pitch: 364, thr: 364, yaw:1684, fastmode:0 CRC16 : 0x7cec

Aha! Thank you so much. Looks like I wasn't getting large enough values due to rounding errors.

trelo · Apr 23, 2018

bluejune said:
Hi trelo,

yes, it is working with usb joypad connected through otg cable.
Any joypad with 4 axis and some buttons will be okay.

I didn't try to set height limit yet but I'll update the result once I test it.
Actually I can't find the feature about face tracking in the tello spec but it may be possible on the smartphone side..

The tello feature is integrated into BTCon4Drone but it I have plan to separate it.

Please try to bypass the height limit. Face tracking should happen on the app/smartphone side I think.

Thanks a lot for getting back!

tincdron · Apr 23, 2018

Hello everyone,
Excellent work done by all this forum.
I am starting to work with GoBot and I try to run tello.go error messages appear, do not find "gobot.io/x/gobot" and "gobot.io/x/gobot/platforms/dji/tello".
I am not able to find the tello API.

Can you help me.
Cheers.

bluejune · Apr 23, 2018

Tello is controllable with python codes now.
Codes are shared here
Run run.py

Keys are mapped like the following.
ESC, 1, 2 and space are toggle keys.
Sticks use status keys so you can press them simultaneously.
(if up and right keys are pressed simultaneously, drone will move up-right direction)

Code:

Tello Controller                       
+------------------------------------+
|  ESC(quit) 1(360) 2(bounce)        |
+------------------------------------+
|                                    |
|      w                   up        |
|  a       d          left    right  |
|      s                  down       |
|                                    |
|         space(takeoff/land)        |
|                                    |
+------------------------------------+

deadprogram · Apr 23, 2018

tincdron said:
Hello everyone,
Excellent work done by all this forum.
I am starting to work with GoBot and I try to run tello.go error messages appear, do not find "gobot.io/x/gobot" and "gobot.io/x/gobot/platforms/dji/tello".
I am not able to find the tello API.
View attachment 223

Can you help me.
Cheers.

Looks like you need to still need to follow the "Getting Started" instructions for installing Gobot itself?

Getting Started - Gobot - Golang framework for robotics, physical computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT)

I'd suggest opening a Github issue to reduce noise on this Tello forum:
hybridgroup/gobot

tincdron · Apr 23, 2018

Thanks to all.
I forgot to mention that OS is windows 10.

I think the intrucion "$ go get -d -u gobot.io/x/gobot/ ..." is Linux, as is the installation for windows.

Cheers.

Hugh · Apr 23, 2018

bluejune said:
Tello is controllable with python codes now.
Codes are shared here
Run run.py
[/CODE]

Wow, that is very cool. I started to build a python Wx widget interface using the tello scripts written by Microlinux (see here) but I do not have time to continue. This script of yours is really an improvement as it allows real time movement (and not only moving of a given distance). When I have time i'll continue to improve my beginner's coding skills by adding your script and in the end maybe we will be able to add the live feed from the drone... who knows.

One of the best improvement we can imagine would be to be able to access the Movidius chip features it contains and allow this drone to be "smart" (i.e. obstacle avoidance/tracking/etc...)

But, again, congrats, this is really impressive.

Hugh.

artrix · Apr 24, 2018

bluejune said:
Tello is controllable with python codes now.
Codes are shared here
Run run.py

Keys are mapped like the following.
ESC, 1, 2 and space are toggle keys.
Sticks use status keys so you can press them simultaneously.
(if up and right keys are pressed simultaneously, drone will move up-right direction)

Code:

Tello Controller +------------------------------------+ | ESC(quit) 1(360) 2(bounce) | +------------------------------------+ | | | w up | | a d left right | | s down | | | | space(takeoff/land) | | | +------------------------------------+

I added support for x360 controller and i couldn't make pull request.
Map control like a touch control mode 2.
iArtrix / pytello / source / — Bitbucket

JasonR · Apr 26, 2018

I''ve started work on a pure swift implementation (For iOS / Mac / and Linux (Raspberry Pi anyone?)). I'd like to thank everyone who's hacked, bloged and posted source to this point.

I have command encoding done.
I'll throw it up on github once I am communicating w/ the Tello.

-Jason