Doom on a Drone Controller




 Back in 2018

I bought a terrible drone manufactured by GoPro, called the "GoPro Karma." The idea behind it was really clever, a drone that worked with the GoPro ecosystem you have already been purchasing from over the years. Slap a camera you already own into a drone, fly it, and when you get back, you can remove the gimbal from the drone and use it handheld. 

Truly a good idea, but it felt a little hacked together on the software side. The GoPro didn't always want to enter the drone mode, the controller refused to connect to Google WiFi networks, etc. My favorite part, is the controller actually runs Android, and the software for controlling the drone is just an Android launcher and app. 

What I Did

In 2021, 3 years after the GoPro Karma was discontinued, a youtuber found out you could install a different version of Android to the controller. There was a hidden recovery/reflash mode on the controller, accessible via a button combination, and with a custom driver on the Windows side of things, you could send over a different system image. 

I was really interested in this idea, could I have regular Android on my controller, but still pilot the drone? No, I wish, but the app and launcher system GoPro developed did not want to run on just any OS. But, so long as I put a different OS on my drone controller, I realized I should see what else was possible. The controller has around 5GB of storage, so I put a couple of games on, including Minecraft, and of course, Doom. Both ran flawlessly, with the drone controls recognized as a game controller.

What Might be Possible

The fact that the entire OS on the controller can be replaced with just a driver and app on a Windows computer is incredibly cool. The Karma has had a bunch of technical difficulties since it's discontinuation, with the GPS failing in 2020, and an issue with the drone not pairing to the controller more recently. Perhaps we could get some kind of cool homebrew community around this, but I think by now most of the enthusiasm about the GoPro Karma is loooooong gone. Hopefully someone can do something a little more useful than put Doom on it.

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