Day 2: Autopilot
Welcome to Day 2. Today the drone flies itself — because you told it to.
Yesterday you flew with joysticks. Today you write code: the drone takes off without you touching it, flies a pattern you programmed, and lands. While half the class codes, the other half pilots a ground robot through a search-and-rescue mission. Then you swap.
Phantom 4 rotation continues outside — Rich will pull groups of 4 to the field.
A windstorm rips through Shasta County overnight. Branches down, lines arcing, possible outages from Cottonwood to Lakehead. Before they can re-energize, PG&E has to send a drone down every transmission corridor to check the conductors, insulators, and pole hardware.
The pilot doesn't fly each line by hand. They write a flight path once, and the drone repeats it — same speed, same altitude, same camera angle — over every span. That's the only way they cover 12,000 miles of line in a week.
Today you do the junior version. You'll write code that flies a Tello in a precise inspection pattern: forward, photograph, turn, forward, photograph, turn — without your hands on the joysticks.
A PG&E Helicopter & UAS Inspector based out of Redding makes around $95,000–$120,000 a year flying inspection routes through the North State. The job needs an FAA Part 107 license — same Part 107 we mentioned yesterday — plus the kind of methodical code-it-once-fly-it-many-times thinking you're about to practice.
Stay in your seats — phones out. You're going to write your first program in DroneBlocks, a block-based coding tool. It looks like Scratch, but every block you drag onto the screen is a real command the drone will execute.
We do this in the simulator first — a 3D Tello you fly in your browser. No batteries, no crashes, no waiting. Try things, break them, fix them. Then we go to real drones.
- On your phone (or library iPad), go to coding.droneblocks.io.
- Click Simulator (the rocket icon). A 3D Tello appears in a grid environment.
- On the left you'll see Block Categories: Flight, Movement, Flips, Loops. On the right, your code workspace.
- Bottom-right: a green Launch Mission button. That's the "run" button.
Drag these blocks into the workspace, in order:
Click Launch Mission. The simulator drone takes off, flies a right-angle path, and lands.
Watch the path it traced. That's a flight path you wrote. No joysticks.
Now the real mission. A transmission line runs straight across the gym floor — we'll tape it down with two lines of painter's tape. Your job: fly the line three times in a zigzag survey pattern, like an inspector flying a corridor.
Forward 200 cm → yaw right 180° → forward 200 cm → yaw left 180° → forward 200 cm → land. Three passes, alternating direction, then land.
Build it block by block in the simulator. Run it. If the drone runs off the grid, your distances are too big — adjust. If it spins in place, your yaw direction is wrong — flip it.
Look in the Loops category. Drag a repeat 3 times block around the forward-yaw pair. Same flight in half the blocks. That's how real flight programs are written — every PG&E inspection mission is a loop.
Save your code. Click the floppy-disk icon, name it something you'll remember (your name + "PGE"). You'll load it on a real Tello in the next block.
Break + station move. Rich will assign you to Group A (start: Tellos) or Group B (start: RoboMaster). You'll swap at 11:55.
10:40 – 10:50The transmission line is taped on the gym floor — two parallel strips of painter's tape, ~6 meters long. Your drone has to fly the corridor three times, capture a photo on each pass, and land at the end.
- Same Tello as yesterday (your numbered drone)
- Phone with the DroneBlocks app (not the Tello app — different one)
- 📋 Flight Log (1 per pair)
- Section of taped "transmission line" on the gym floor
- Power on your Tello. Connect your phone to the
TELLO-XXXXXXWiFi (same as yesterday). - Open the DroneBlocks app (not the Tello app). Tap Load and pick the code you saved earlier.
- Tap Connect to Tello. The app shows a green light when it's talking to your drone.
Your drone is about to do exactly what you wrote — even if you wrote it wrong. If your distances are too big, the drone WILL fly into a wall. Look at your code one more time. Spotter, look at the floor — is the path going to fit?
- Place the drone at the start of the line, facing along the corridor.
- Stand back. Pilot's finger on Launch. Spotter calls "CLEAR" once nothing is in the path.
- Tap Launch Mission. Hands off. Watch what you wrote.
- On the Flight Log, record: (a) did it complete? (b) where did it drift? (c) did it fly the corridor or wander off?
Run it three times. Each time, change one thing in the code — distance, yaw angle, or add a photo block. See what happens.
A real PG&E inspection drone takes a photo every few meters. You'll do the same. In DroneBlocks, drag a Take Photo block (Camera category) between each forward and yaw block.
Run the mission. After it lands, open the Tello camera feed — your inspection photos are saved on the drone.
Take a video on a phone of your best autonomous run. Upload it to the workshop Padlet: [PADLET LINK]. Caption it with your drone number + your names.
- Loop refactor — rewrite your pattern using a
repeatblock. Half the code, same flight. - Tower inspection — add a fly up 100 cm at the start of each pass, hover (delay 2 sec), then back down. Now you're inspecting at two altitudes.
- Wind report — Cal Fire's UAS team wrote inspection routes that adapt to wind. Watch what happens if you set distance to 250 cm vs. 200 cm. Where does the drift come from?
Rich will pull one group of four outside during each rotation today. When your name is called, your spotter takes over coding the Tello. You're flying the big drone for ~15 minutes. Day-2 outdoor mission: a wider-area "inspection sweep" of the football field — same idea, real aircraft.
A hiker hasn't come back from a day trip near the Trinity Alps trailhead. The ground crew won't enter the brush until they have a position — too much risk of dislodging a slope or losing a second person.
The Sheriff's Search & Rescue ground robot rolls in first. It has a video camera and tank treads. Someone in the command vehicle drives it through the terrain, looking for the hiker on the screen.
That person is you. Drone-style aerial searches are great when the ground is clear. When it's not — heavy brush, fallen trees, smoke — the operation goes to ground robots.
Shasta County Sheriff Search & Rescue is a volunteer team that responds to roughly 30–50 missions a year — lost hikers, vehicle off-roads, Whiskeytown swimmers. They train on unmanned ground vehicles like the one you're about to drive. Many county SAR drone-team members work day jobs at PG&E, Cal Fire, or local construction — the SAR work is unpaid but it builds the resume.
- 1 DJI RoboMaster S1 (4 robots, ~2–3 students per robot)
- 1 program iPad with the RoboMaster app loaded
- "Trinity Alps trail" obstacle course — chairs, gym mats, boxes (set up by Rich)
- 3 "missing hiker" markers hidden in the course (printed cards with a number on the back)
- 📋 SAR Report Log (1 per team)
- Power on the RoboMaster (button on top). It boots up in about 30 seconds — listen for the chime.
- On the iPad, open the RoboMaster app. Tap Connect. Pick your robot from the list (each has a number).
- Tap Solo Mode. You'll see the robot's camera feed on the iPad — that's your view from the field.
Like the Tello, the RoboMaster needs practice before you trust yourself with a real mission. Rotate driver every 3 minutes.
- Drive forward and back in a straight line. The robot is heavier than you think — give it time to respond.
- Practice the camera — the turret rotates separately from the chassis. You can drive forward while looking left.
- Test the gimbal — tilt the camera up and down. Useful when you're looking for someone who might be under brush or above on a slope.
- Drive only by camera — last 3 minutes, put your back to the actual robot and drive it just by what you see on the screen. This is how real SAR pilots work.
Three hikers are missing in the obstacle course. Each is marked with a number card (1, 2, 3) face-down on the ground. Your job: drive the robot through the course, find all three numbers, and report them on your SAR Log in the order you find them.
Rules:
- Driver can only use the iPad camera view. No looking at the robot directly.
- Spotter can stand near the course and call out obstacles to the driver — like real SAR command/field comms.
- Reader logs each found number on the SAR Report. Times each find.
- Rotate roles every 7 minutes. Everyone drives.
When you've found all three, take a photo of your SAR Log + a screenshot of the iPad camera view showing one of the hikers. Upload to Padlet: [PADLET LINK].
A real Trinity Alps SAR operator runs the robot from a command truck, sometimes a mile away. They've never seen the terrain — only what the camera sends them. Driving by feel through a hallway feels fine; driving by camera through unfamiliar ground is a totally different skill. You're practicing the harder one.
If you found all three hikers fast, try this: define a search pattern (an organized route — like the line-inspection pattern you wrote on the drones). Most teams default to "wander randomly." A grid pattern is twice as fast. Sketch yours on the back of the SAR Log and run it.
Swap stations. Group A → RoboMaster · Group B → Tellos. Leave equipment where it is. Move yourselves.
11:50 – 11:55Same station instructions above — just at the other station. New equipment, same expectations. Phantom rotation continues outside.
Drones down. iPads in. Stand by your station.
- Wrote autonomous flight code in the same kind of platform a PG&E inspection pilot uses to script a line survey.
- Drove a ground robot through a search pattern — by camera only — the way a real Sheriff SAR operator does.
- If you flew the Phantom: experienced what professional-grade aerial photography actually feels like.
Day 3 is about drones that save lives: medical delivery, disaster response, post-fire structure assessment. You'll meet Zipline (drones delivering blood in Rwanda) and REACH Air Medical (the Redding life-flight team). Then you'll use AI tools to design your own humanitarian drone mission for the North State.
Same gym, same drones, tomorrow at 10:00.