Every drone operation depends on reliable communication between the aircraft, its operator, and sometimes a wider network. Here you can explore control links, telemetry, live video, antennas, frequencies, cellular and satellite connectivity, range, latency, interference, and the choices that determine whether information reaches the right place when it is needed.
Topic
Drone Communications: Control Links, Video, Telemetry and Connectivity
Latest topic news
MultiGP records PrincessJ and Virginia Tech as 2026 collegiate drone-racing champions
MultiGP's 2026 Collegiate Drone Racing Championship event results list Joshua 'PrincessJ' Lizee at the top of the individual standings, while its champions record names Virginia Tech as the university winner. Recent race coverage describes a finish reviewed on video.
Read newsArduPilot AP_Periph reviews off-by-one tunnel serial-port validation
ArduPilot PR 35064 changes a port check that rejected serial IDs only above an array's element count; a value equal to the count could pass and index beyond the final valid entry.
Read newsBetaflight VTX table command proposal closes a frequency-array write boundary
Betaflight PR 15989 describes an optional FACTORY or CUSTOM flag in vtxtable band parsing that leaves the channel index at -1 when writing frequencies. The proposed fix advances the parser correctly.
Read newsPeer-reviewed ESCAPE swarm exploration revisited in new forest-flight reporting
New reporting on 8 November revisits the ESCAPE research from Tongji and partner universities, originally published in December 2025. Its authors tested three LiDAR quadcopters outdoors and four indoors with distributed task allocation; simulations compared the method against Racer and Role.
Read newsSkydio says Controller 2 is reaching customers after its October introduction
Skydio CEO Adam Bry said on 8 November that Controller 2 is shipping. Skydio's documentation calls its October 12 software release General Access and describes a seven-inch display, selectable cellular connectivity and support dependent on compatible X10 or R10 drone software.
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Betaflight Receiver tab check: channel map, 1000-2000 endpoints, 1500 centre and the arm switch
The receiver is bound, the Lua script shows a connection and the bars in the Receiver tab move. That is the moment many people stop checking. A few minutes spent on the numbers saves a lot of head-scratching later: the wrong stick moving the wrong axis, a quad that drifts in angle mode, a throttle that never reaches the bottom so the quad will not arm.
Read articleEdgeTX voice alerts for FPV: battery voltage on a switch, low-voltage warning, flight timer and link alarms
With goggles on you can't look at the radio screen, and in the middle of a line you don't always look at the voltage in the OSD either. The radio can speak instead: say the pack voltage when you press a button, warn you when it drops too low, count down the flight time and tell you when the link gets weak. It works the same with analog and digital video, and also when you fly line of sight with no screen at all.
Read articleUpdating ExpressLRS firmware: Wi-Fi, passthrough and USB flashing, and what to back up before moving to 4.x
ExpressLRS 4.0.0 came out in February 2026 and 4.1.0 followed in July. The 3.x line is still maintained: 3.6.4 was released in June 2026. So before you flash anything, decide whether to move to 4.x at all. The 4.0.0 release notes are blunt about it: version 4 is not compatible with 3.x, 2.x or 1.x and will not connect to them. Once your radio's module runs 4.x, every receiver you want to fly with that radio has to run 4.x too. If you only want bug fixes and are happy with 3.x, staying on 3.6.4 is a valid choice.
Read articleRTK correction streams must preserve source identity before reaching the rover
An RTK-equipped drone can receive a healthy-looking stream of correction bytes and still fail to obtain a fixed solution. The correction transport is only one part of the chain. A base station must be suitable for the rover's position, the data must arrive with useful timing, and the receiver must be given complete, correctly ordered messages from the intended source.
Read articleWhen an offboard command is invalid but the link stays alive
A companion computer can remain connected to a drone, keep transmitting setpoints at the required rate, and still be sending commands that the aircraft must not execute. Link health and command validity are separate properties. Treating a stream of malformed flight commands as proof that external control is healthy can defeat the very failsafe designed to protect against loss of that controller.
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