The drone is a single custom circuit board that must be fabricated and assembled before anything else.
ESP-Drone is Espressif's open mini quadcopter built on a single ESP32-S2 board with brushed coreless motors, controlled over WiFi from a phone app or gamepad. Its flight code is ported from the Crazyflie firmware, and add-on boards enable height and position hold.
At a glance
| Parts cost | Not estimated · The drone is one custom circuit board, which has no retail price, and the project gives no figure |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 4/5 Advanced · Requires ordering an SMD board and building with ESP-IDF; tuning flight is unforgiving. |
| Build time | Not stated |
| Tools needed | PCB fabrication and assembly service (or SMD soldering), ESP-IDF toolchain |
| Motors | 4 brushed 716 or 720 coreless motors |
| Controller | ESP32-S2-WROVER on the main board |
| Sensors | MPU6050 IMU; optional flow and height decks |
| Published | ✓ Parts list✓ CAD/STL✓ Assembly guide✓ Wiring✓ Software✗ Video ReadTheDocs site + GitHub hardware folder (schematic, PADS PCB, Gerbers, xlsx parts list, assembly PDF) |
| Activity | Last update 2026-08-10 · 2,215 GitHub stars · 512 forks; GitHub issues |
| Kits | No official kit |
Licenses
| Design files | GPL-3.0 (schematics, PCB, Gerbers and parts list are in the same repo) source ↗ |
|---|---|
| Code | GPL-3.0 source ↗ |
| Documentation | GPL-3.0 (docs folder in the same repo) source ↗ |
Builder notes
Practical points from the project's issue tracker, forum and docs, each linked to its source.
- Espressif has given only limited support since December 2022, though pull requests are still accepted. source ↗
- The PCB source is in PADS format, and builders ordering assembled boards had to ask for the parts list, which now sits as a spreadsheet in the hardware folder. source ↗
- Some MPU6050 clones lock up the I2C bus at lower battery voltage and cause reboot loops, and swapping the IMU fixed it for one builder. source ↗
Other other plans
- Stack-chan · $150–$180 · difficulty 2/5
- LeLamp robot lamp · $310 · difficulty 3/5