About
I'm Rodrigo Ortega. I built DroneOS to understand how intelligence, control, and software come together in physical systems. Same instinct that led me to build on Ethereum and work with AI — go deep enough to know what's real and what's hype, and see how systems work end-to-end.
The project started as a way to explore autonomous drone control using open-source tools. I wanted to understand how PX4, ROS 2, and real-time systems actually work together — not just read about it, but build something that flies. This site documents that journey: the architecture decisions, integration challenges, and what I learned along the way.
What I Built
Custom drones with Pixhawk 6C flight controllers and Raspberry Pi 5 companion computers
A ROS 2 control framework (drone_core) for autonomous operations
Docker-based development environment for SITL and production deployment
Web interface with real-time telemetry over 4G/VPN
Experimental AI agent for natural language drone control
Technical Stack
PX4 Autopilot + Micro-XRCE-DDS for flight control
ROS 2 Humble for the middleware layer
C++ for the core SDK, Python for tooling and AI integration
Docker + Docker Compose for containerized deployment
React/TypeScript web interface with rosbridge WebSocket
Connect
Working on something similar? I'd love to hear about it.