I would like to run some experiments with drones in a remote property. What would be a recommended drone, and a programmable, "hackable" open source OS?
I am in the same position. I want a drone, but it must be well-supported by an open source autopilot (and surrounding tools).
After looking at the contenders, I found the px4 project to be most impressive in terms of documentation of both the flight systems as well as the drones that have been used. They have a list of development kits to consider:
To expand a little here, betaflight is by far the most widely used for anything that isn’t a navigational drone. Mainly freestyle and racing.
Ardupilot is the most popular for navigational or ‘serious’ drones. It’s way more complicated to setup but offers many advanced features for different craft types and navigation. I used this system for the first time last year for a VTOL aircraft and the setup was daunting - and I’ve been using Betaflight/iNav since their inception many years ago.
INav is kind of a middle ground between the two. It’s a fork of Betaflight with added navigation features and a heavier focus on fixed wing aircraft- way easier to configure than Ardupilot but not nearly as many advanced features. Mainly used for long range or wing pilots who want navigation features but don’t need the kinds of advanced stuff Ardu offers.
To add to this, most of the time one doesn't need to hack on the drone firmware itself. Just configuring/hacking the mission planner alone would go a long way: https://ardupilot.org/planner/
But if you're interested in more readable codebases without too much legacy headaches:
After looking at the contenders, I found the px4 project to be most impressive in terms of documentation of both the flight systems as well as the drones that have been used. They have a list of development kits to consider:
https://px4.io/devkits/