Do you still have an original Nintendo Game Boy tucked away in a drawer somewhere? If you’re not planning on selling it on eBay you can put it to another use — you’re going to need to add a drone, though.
We know that it’s possible to control a drone using a Nintendo Game Boy because the French Civil Aviation University’s Gautier Hattenberger has gone and done it. He successfully created a system that allowed him to pilot a Parrot ARDrone2 but this control method does have its disadvantages. You need to keep the drone in sight as it’s hard to transmit video to a Game Boy’s screen over a WiFi connection.
Setting up an old Nintendo handheld as a drone controller requires a Game Link cable as well as some creative engineering. An Arduino board and FTDI semiconducter sits in between the cable and the notebook that does most of the heavy lifting, acting as translators for the ageing gaming hardware. Once everything is set up the drone can be moved using the direction pad, the A and B buttons control ascent and descent while Start and Select take care of rotating the drone. It’s… rudimentary but it works.
If you actually do have some old Nintendo hardware lying about you can set up your own drone controller. Hattenberger has released his source code on GitHub for any intrepid pilots out there.
Source: The Next Web
