Embedded Firmware Development for Flight Control, Telemetry, and Video Streaming for DIY UAV Research

Abstract

This paper presents the design and optimization of quadcopter firmware for a low-cost UAV based on the dual-core ESP32-S3 microcontroller, targeting real-time flight control, telemetry, and video transmission within stringent embedded resource constraints. The firmware leverages dedicated task allocation across the two cores: 400Hz control loop on Core 1 implements sensor fusion with a Madgwick filter, a hybrid fixed-point PID controller enhanced by selective derivative scaling and feedforward braking. Core 2 handles 50 Hz telemetry encoding and UDP-based video and data streaming at 25FPS VGA frames, ensuring separation of control and communication workloads to prevent latency interference. Inter-core communication employs zero-copy buffers with mutex protection for minimal overhead and deterministic execution. Custom event-driven threading and RTOS-inspired static scheduling guarantee real-time responsiveness and jitter-free operation despite ESP32-S3's limited memory and floating-point performance. Experimental evaluation confirms that this firmware architecture provides precise, stable flight stabilization and robust telemetry support, enabling resource-constrained ESP32-S3 platforms to handle DIY projects and research with minimal investment and full customization capability.