Tello EDU: Let Creativity Fly

Introduction

Tel­lo EDU is the sec­ond ver­sion of the pro­gram­ma­ble drone that came out after the pop­u­lar Tel­lo. Unlike the first ver­sion, EDU pro­gram­ming is pos­si­ble in one of three avail­able lan­guages, such as Scratch, Swift and Python (only Scratch is avail­able for the first ver­sion). The drone has an updat­ed SDK 2.0 with more advanced com­mands and an expand­ed data inter­face, allow­ing the user to eas­i­ly write code to com­mand mul­ti­ple Tel­lo EDUs to fly in an orga­nized group, as well as devel­op amaz­ing AI fea­tures. Pro­gram­ming has nev­er been so fun!

Peculiarities

• 14-core Intel proces­sor
• Sup­ports Scratch, Swift and Python pro­gram­ming
• Drone Swarm (pro­gram­ma­ble syn­chro­nized flight up to four Tel­lo EDU)
• Updat­ed SDK 2.0
• Mis­sion Pads (labels for enhanced pro­gram­ming options)
• Flight con­trol sys­tem from DJI
• Visu­al posi­tion­ing (2 × ultra­son­ic + 1 × opti­cal sen­sors)
• Obsta­cle avoid­ance sys­tem (option­al)
• Auto take­off and land­ing
• Alti­tude Hold
• Take­off and land­ing by hand
• 5 × pre­pro­grammed flight modes
• Short movie record­ing (for Cir­cle, 360 and Up & Away flight modes)
• Exe­cu­tion of flips in 8 direc­tions
• Pro­tec­tion in case of loss of com­mu­ni­ca­tion (car­ries out auto-land­ing)
• Max. flight time 13 min
• FPV removal dis­tance 100 meters
• 2 × anten­nas for more sta­ble video trans­mis­sion
• FPV broad­cast in HD qual­i­ty
• Shoot­ing video in 720p qual­i­ty
• Shoot­ing 5MP pho­to
• Elec­tron­ic Image Sta­bi­liza­tion (EIS)
• Con­trol via a smart­phone or tablet via a mobile appli­ca­tion, or in tan­dem with addi­tion­al­ly pur­chased Game­Sir T1d Con­troller con­trol equip­ment
• Adapt­ed for pair­ing with VR head­set and Game­sir and Apple MFi Blue­tooth gamepads
• Weight 87 grams

Equipment

1. Drone Tel­lo EDU
2. Bat­tery
3. 4 × rotors (2CW/2CCW)
4. 4 × spare rotors (2CW/2CCW)
5. Rotor pro­tec­tion
6. Micro USB cable
7. Main screw wrench
8. 4×Mission Pad

Specification

Drone

Flight weight:

87 grams

Dimen­sions:

98×92.5×41mm

Built-in fea­tures:

Range Finder/Barometer/LED Light/Vision System/WiFi 802.11n 2.4G/FPV 720P

Motors:

col­lec­tor type

Charg­ing port:

Micro USB

Removal dis­tance:

100m

Max. hor­i­zon­tal flight speed:

28.8km/h

Max. flight time:

13 min

Food:

remov­able 3.8V 1100mAh LiPo bat­tery

Camera

A pho­to:

5MP (2592 × 1936)

Video:

1280×720p@30fps

FOV:

82.6°

For­mats:

JPG (Pho­to); MP4 (Video)

Image Sta­bi­liza­tion:

elec­tron­ic (EIS)

Stor­age:

smartphone/tablet resources

Appearance

Programming

Tel­lo EDU can be pro­grammed using Scratch, Swift and Python. It is built on the new SDK 2.0 with more com­mands and an advanced data inter­face. With the help of pro­gram­ming, you can set the drone to per­form sequen­tial actions accord­ing to a pre-set algo­rithm, as well as imple­ment the abil­i­ty to rec­og­nize objects and much more.

The Swift pro­gram­ming lan­guage has an inter­est­ing cur­ricu­lum called “Tel­lo Space Trav­el” where novice pro­gram­mers can learn cod­ing through inter­ac­tive lessons in an inter­est­ing sto­ry­line using an iPad.

Anoth­er new cod­ing lan­guage avail­able for Tel­lo EDU is Python. Cod­ing in Python allows you to sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand the func­tion­al­i­ty of the quadro­copter. For exam­ple, a user can pro­gram sev­er­al EDU drones to imple­ment syn­chro­nized flight (Drone Swarm). A sim­i­lar idea has long been used by Intel to present light air shows.

Drone Swarm

Using the pro­gram code and the Mis­sion Pad check­marks, the user can real­ize syn­chro­nized flight (up to four Tel­lo EDUs at a time) asso­ci­at­ed with var­i­ous acro­bat­ic aer­o­bat­ic maneu­vers.

Mission Pads

Mis­sion Pads — con­trol marks, serve to more accu­rate­ly per­form pro­grammed tasks and expand pro­gram­ming oppor­tu­ni­ties. The user can pro­gram spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion for each tag indi­vid­u­al­ly, there­by allow­ing the drone to rec­og­nize each of them and per­form the mis­sions spec­i­fied for each tag, for exam­ple, per­form­ing var­i­ous aer­o­bat­ic maneu­vers.

AI Capabilities

Tel­lo EDU gives the user full access to video stream data, thus cre­at­ing more oppor­tu­ni­ties for image pro­cess­ing and AI devel­op­ment. The new SDK 2.0 allows the drone to be fur­ther enhanced by imple­ment­ing more AI fea­tures such as object recog­ni­tion, track­ing, 3D recon­struc­tion through pro­gram­ming, com­put­er vision, and deep learn­ing tech­nolo­gies.

Price

Tel­lo EDU is sold through offi­cial devel­op­er sources in a sin­gle pack­age for $129.

Add. acces­sories:

1. Bat­tery — $19
2. Charg­er for simul­ta­ne­ous charg­ing up to 3 bat­ter­ies — $ 19
3. Game­Sir T1d con­trol equip­ment — $39
4. Replace­ment pan­els (white/blue/yellow) — $9
5. Bear­ing screws — $ 4

Conclusion

Tel­lo EDU $129

Func­tion­al­i­ty

7/10

Flight time

5/10

flight qual­i­ties

6/10

com­pact­ness

10/10

Equip­ment

10/10

Reli­a­bil­i­ty

10/10

Price qual­i­ty

10/10

pros

• Design/Quality
• Man­age­abil­i­ty (even with a smart­phone)
• Dynamism
• Func­tion­al­i­ty (new pro­gram­ming lan­guages, Drone Swarm, Mis­sion Pads)
• Updat­ed SDK 2.0
• Cam­era (cap­ture qual­i­ty)
• Flight time
• Ready for FPV flight and pro­gram­ming out of the box
• Price

Minuses

• Col­lec­tor motors
• No exter­nal stor­age (the record­ed mate­r­i­al is saved on the resources of the paired smart­phone)
• Some func­tions of the Tel­lo EDU appli­ca­tion are paid
• Swift Play­grounds is only avail­able on IOS

The best drone offer to date with a focus on pro­gram­ming. The poten­tial of the drone will be ful­ly appre­ci­at­ed by young users who want to not only quick­ly learn how to fly a UAV, but also learn the basics of pro­gram­ming in the most acces­si­ble and excit­ing way.

FAQ

Drone

Q. What are the main dif­fer­ences between Tel­lo EDU and Tel­lo?
A. Tel­lo EDU has all the same fea­tures and func­tion­al­i­ty as Tel­lo, plus an improved SDK 2.0, Mis­sion Pad check­marks, and one-time syn­chro­nized Drone Swarm flight.

Q. How can I man­age Tel­lo EDU?
A. You can con­trol Tel­lo EDU using a smartphone/tablet (IOS or Android), as well as in com­bi­na­tion with the Game­Sir T1d Con­troller con­trol equip­ment (pur­chased sep­a­rate­ly).

Q. What inter­est­ing things can a drone do while fly­ing?
A. Tel­lo EDU can per­form eight dif­fer­ent flips, take off and land in Bounce mode, and auto­mat­i­cal­ly record short videos with EZ Shots.

Q. Can the Tel­lo EDU be flown indoors?
A. Yes, the Tel­lo EDU can fly safe­ly both indoors and out­doors. It is rec­om­mend­ed to start out­doors in calm weath­er.

Q. Is Tel­lo EDU water­proof?
Oh no.

Camera

Q. What fea­tures does the drone cam­era have?
A. The Tel­lo EDU cam­era is capa­ble of tak­ing 5MP pho­tos and record­ing HD video. The EZ Shots fea­ture allows the drone to fly in pre­set pat­terns and record short videos.

Q. Where is the received pho­to and video mate­r­i­al stored? And how can I export it?
A. Pho­tos and videos are stored on the smartphone/tablet paired with the air­craft. You can export files from your smart­phone as need­ed.

Q. Does the drone sup­port SD card instal­la­tion?
Oh no.

Q. What is the max. video trans­mis­sion dis­tance?
O. Max. The flight range is approx­i­mate­ly 100m, but this dis­tance may vary depend­ing on the inter­fer­ence present at the drone launch site.

battery

Q. How can I charge the drone bat­tery?
A. You can charge the bat­tery with­out remov­ing it from the drone using the includ­ed micro USB cable, or charge up to three bat­ter­ies at the same time using a charg­er (sold sep­a­rate­ly).

Q. Does the drone sup­port bat­tery hot swap­ping?
Oh no. If this is done, then there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty of los­ing the pho­to and video mate­r­i­al record­ed in the last flight.

Propellers

Q. How is the drone rotor replaced?
A. Pro­pellers can be changed man­u­al­ly with­out any tools. But, just in case, the kit comes with a spe­cial key to remove them.

Q. How can I dis­tin­guish between CW and CCW rotors? And how to install them cor­rect­ly?
A. CW pro­pellers and motors have spe­cial marks (notch­es) that must match. There are no such marks on CCW pro­pellers and motors.

Update

Q. How can I update the drone firmware?
A. Through the mobile app.

Q. What should I do if an update fails?
A. If the update fails, sim­ply recon­nect Tel­lo EDU to the mobile app and restart the update process.

Q. Is it pos­si­ble to update the drone soft­ware using a com­put­er?
Oh no.

Accessories

Q. What Blue­tooth con­trollers are com­pat­i­ble with Tel­lo EDU?
A. The drone is cur­rent­ly com­pat­i­ble with the Game­sir T1D con­troller.

Q. What soft­ware plat­forms can I use to pro­gram Tel­lo EDU?
A. Tel­lo cur­rent­ly sup­ports pro­gram­ming with Scratch, Swift Play­grounds, and Python. More soft­ware plat­forms will be avail­able in the future.

Tello EDU mobile application

Q. Is it pos­si­ble to use the Tel­lo mobile app and Tel­lo EDU at the same time?
Oh no. The Tel­lo mobile appli­ca­tion is designed to imple­ment dynam­ic FPV flights and aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy, while the Tel­lo EDU appli­ca­tion is focused on pro­gram­ming. Although both appli­ca­tions are com­pat­i­ble with the drone, one of them must be com­plete­ly dis­abled before using the oth­er, and the drone itself must be reboot­ed.

Q. Is the Tel­lo EDU mobile app com­plete­ly free?
A. Despite the fact that most of the fea­tures of the appli­ca­tion are free, some games still include lev­els that require pay­ment.

Q. What should I do if the Tel­lo EDU mobile app is not work­ing?
A. The mobile app is devel­oped by Wistron (Shang­hai) Ltd. If you have any ques­tions relat­ed to the oper­a­tion of the mobile appli­ca­tion, please con­tact the devel­op­er by phone num­ber: 86–21-64952384 or send a ques­tion by e‑mail to: [email pro­tect­ed] Thanks for under­stand­ing.

Swift Playgrounds

Q. How can I use Swift Play­grounds to learn Tel­lo Swift cours­es?
A. Use Swift Play­grounds — iPad with iOS 10.3 (or lat­er) to down­load, then search for “Tel­lo Space Trav­el” in the app. Down­load the course and fol­low the instruc­tions to learn how to pro­gram, con­trol, and acti­vate syn­chro­nized drone flight.

Mission Pad

Q. How can I use Mis­sion Pad Tags?
A. Please refer to the Tel­lo Mis­sion Pad User Man­u­al for instruc­tions on how to use the check marks.

Q. What is the max. How many Tel­lo EDUs can I con­trol in one syn­chro­nized flight?
A. You can con­trol up to 4 drones in one flight using the Swift Play­grounds app.

Video

Video with Tel­lo EDU drone.

Learn­ing block pro­gram­ming through the Tel­lo EDU app.

An exam­ple of pro­gram­ming in Python.