Project Beatha

Project Beatha

"Bringing Dead Drones Back to Life"

A Weekend Project Experiment

📜 The Story (Read This First)

Project Beatha started as a midnight idea on a Friday. It was built in under 12 hours over a single weekend.

While commercial tools like SpeedyBee exist and are fantastic, this project is about:

1. Open Source Freedom: Hackable, modifiable, and free.
2. AI-Assisted Engineering: This entire project—code, docs, and architecture—was brainstormed and built with the assistance of AI agents.
3. Differentiation: Focusing on "Headless Recovery" and "Cloud Sync" rather than just configuration.

Disclaimer: This is v0.1 (Alpha). Expect rough edges. It is a proof-of-concept.

🔮 Future Vision: The Drone Database

By automatically uploading dumps to the cloud, Project Beatha lays the foundation for a global Drone Database.

• Analysis: Automatically analyze your configuration against known "good" tunes.
• History: Track changes over time.
• Blackbox: Future support for uploading and analyzing Blackbox logs to diagnose crashes instantly.

Overview

Project Beatha is a "Headless" field recovery tool for FPV drones. It runs on a Raspberry Pi Zero W and automatically extracts dump all firmware configurations from a connected flight controller and uploads them to the cloud.

Features

• Bus Powered: The Pi provides power to the connected drone FC via USB.
• Modes:
  • Idle/Proxy: Acts as a TCP bridge allowing wireless connection to Betaflight Configurator.
  • Extraction: One-button firmware dump extraction.
  • Pairing: Dedicated button to enable Bluetooth discovery for configuration.
• Visual Feedback: Clear 4-stage LED status indication.
• Audible Feedback: (Optional) Buzzer beeps for start/success/fail.
• Cloud Sync: Automatic upload to Google Drive via rclone.
• Web Interface: View dump status, firmware version, and full dump contents via browser. See docs/FEATURE_DUMP_DISPLAY.md.

Hardware Specification

For a complete list of materials, please see BOM.md.

• Controller: Raspberry Pi Zero W v1.1 (Minimum)
• Interface: Custom "Hat" using a Prototyping Board (Buttons + LEDs + Buzzer).
• Case: 3D Printable STL files available in assets/3dmodels/.
• Input: USB OTG to Drone Flight Controller
• Power: 5V 2A+ Power Supply

Wiring & Connections

For detailed wiring instructions, please refer to WIRING.md.

Quick Pinout Reference:

• GPIO 23: Dump Button
• GPIO 24: Pairing Button
• GPIO 25: Buzzer (Optional)
• GPIO 18: LED Data Line

Setup Guide

1. Prerequisites

Ensure your Raspberry Pi Zero W is set up with Raspberry Pi OS Lite and has internet access.

2. System Dependencies

Install rclone and configure it (RUN AS YOUR USER, NOT ROOT):

curl https://rclone.org/install.sh | sudo bash
rclone config
# Follow prompts to create a remote named 'gdrive' pointing to Google Drive
# Create a folder 'BF_Dumps' in your Drive.

3. Project Installation

Clone the repository:

cd /home/pi
git clone https://github.com/antoine-voiry/Beatha.git beatha-project
cd beatha-project

4. Automated Installer

We have provided a setup script that creates a virtual environment, installs dependencies, builds the frontend, and sets up the systemd service.

sudo ./scripts/setup.sh

Note: The installer will automatically detect your user (e.g., pi) and configure the service to run as that user to avoid permission issues with rclone.

Usage

LED Status Indicators

1. Breathing Blue: System Idle / TCP Proxy Mode Active. (Connect via WiFi to port 5000).
2. Orange (LED 1): Connecting to Serial Port.
3. Orange (LED 2): Reading Dump Data.
4. Yellow (LED 3): Saving Dump to Local Storage.
5. Green (LED 4): Success - Cloud Upload Complete.
6. Red (LED 4): Error - Extraction or Upload Failed.

Manual Operation

• Button Press: Triggers Extraction Mode.
• Wait: Watch the LEDs progress from 1 to 4.
• Finish: After success/fail indication (3 seconds), system returns to Breathing Blue.

Documentation

User Guides

• Bluetooth Pairing Guide - How to pair and connect via Bluetooth
• Dump Troubleshooting - Common dump extraction issues
• Dump Display Feature - Using the web interface

Technical Documentation

• Known Bugs & Issues - Current issues and workarounds
• Bug Fixes Documentation - Detailed bug fix history
• Deployment Summary - System status and deployment guide

Known Bugs

See KNOWN_BUGS.md for a list of current issues and workarounds.

License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

• You are free to: Share and Adapt the material.
• Under these terms:
  • Attribution: You must give appropriate credit.
  • NonCommercial: You may NOT use the material for commercial purposes (e.g., selling units).
  • ShareAlike: If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license.

Commercial Use: If you wish to sell Project Beatha units or use this for commercial purposes, please contact Antoine Voiry via GitHub.