Flying a drone with twitter, bananas & Web APIs

on YouTube ↗38m

" summary

Five concrete hacks to control a toy drone: network sniffing of a cheap SG900X fails so a Parrot Mambo Mini is bought instead; BLE and Web Bluetooth are used to send UDP-like commands; drone.js + Node code provides programmable commands; an accelerometer-backed phone controller and Accelerometer Sensor mapping takeoff/tilt into motion; a Makey Makey with bananas and WebUSB triggers keyboard events and reliably moves and flips the drone; hand tracking with Leap Motion / handposejs and a Web Speech API voice mode work but suffer disconnects and crowd-driven Twitter/Slack control causes chaos.

AI-written summary · about

" chapters (11)

1. 0:00Introduction
2. 7:09Hacking drone with JavaScript
3. 9:34Better drone with Bluetooth
4. 11:42Drone with JavaScript libraries
5. 13:07Drone with phone sensors
6. 15:33Drone with bananas and circuits
7. 21:14Hands-free drone with AI
8. 26:43Audience control via social media
9. 31:17Accessibility reflections
10. 32:18Drone with voice commands
11. 37:57Why playing with tech matters

" related talks

• 29mFlying a drone with twitter, bananas & Web APIsNhlanhla Lucky Nkosi · NDC Melbourne 2025
• 33mFlying a drone with twitter, bananas & Web APIsNhlanhla Lucky Nkosi · DevFest WI 2020
• 45mFlying a drone with gestures, bananas & Web APIsNhlanhla Lucky Nkosi · NDC Copenhagen 2025
• 43mTo kill a working drone: flying a drone with twitter, bananas & Web APIsNhlanhla Lucky Nkosi · JSConf Budapest 2022
• 18mFlying drones with Twitter, Bananas and WebAPIsLucky Nkosi · CodeLand 2020
• 44mFLYING A DRONE WITH TWITTER, BANANAS & WEB APISNhlanhla Lucky Nkosi · jsday 2020
• 29mControlling a swarm of drones with JavaScriptJasper Schulte · NationJS Frontrunners 2019
• 33mControl a Drone with JavaScriptSuren Gasparyan · JS Conf Armenia 2021