Builds, field notes and guides from giving AI a body: a voice-controlled PX4 drone, computer vision, and whatever comes next.https://techwithharoon.com/enhttps://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-11-04-seventeen-logs-and-a-metre-and-a-half/https://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-11-04-seventeen-logs-and-a-metre-and-a-half/Turns worked on some flights and were ignored on others, with no pattern I could see from the ground. The pattern was in the flight controller's logs, and it was seven centimetres wide.Wed, 04 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMTjournalfieldpx4ekfyawlogscamerahttps://techwithharoon.com/guides/fielding-an-llm-controlled-px4-drone/https://techwithharoon.com/guides/fielding-an-llm-controlled-px4-drone/Twelve things that bit me between the simulator and the field, each with the log line that proved it and the fix that held. Safety layer, estimator, radio, voice, camera, macOS.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideautonomyhttps://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-26-the-nose-and-the-switch/https://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-26-the-nose-and-the-switch/Sideways moves swung the camera, a fix for that made it worse, and the log showed a voice order taking control back from the transmitter 0.4 seconds after I selected Land. Two of those are fixed. The third was the design.Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTjournalfieldpx4yawsafetyoverridecamerahttps://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-24-the-twelve-second-takeoff/https://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-24-the-twelve-second-takeoff/Two sessions on a second laptop. Orders went out in a tenth of a second, moves still waited twelve. The cause was in my executor, not the voice. Plus a camera stream that died by phone design and a GPS that stayed red.Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTjournalfieldlatencypx4cameragpsexecutorhttps://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-22-flying-with-a-dead-screen/https://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-22-flying-with-a-dead-screen/The laptop's display died. Hawk flew anyway, driven from a phone over SSH, after a macOS microphone rule that cost most of the day. Then the latency turned out to be somewhere I had not looked.Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTjournalfieldheadlessmacoslatencytoolinghttps://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-19-the-barometer-was-honest-all-along/https://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-19-the-barometer-was-honest-all-along/Five flights, two overrides, one slow sink to the ground that nobody commanded. The estimator was still trusting a GPS altitude that wandered by metres, and one bitmask fixed it.Mon, 19 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTjournalfieldpx4ekf2gpsulogsafetyhttps://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-14-building-the-hub/https://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-14-building-the-hub/A site to put the builds on, a plan for recording the first real session, and the two parameter changes that have to happen before the aircraft flies with Hawk again.Wed, 14 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTjournalwebsiteplanrecordinghttps://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-13-the-day-it-climbed/https://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-13-the-day-it-climbed/The first voice takeoff on the real aircraft worked. Then, a metre off the ground on the way down, it climbed, and I hit kill. The flight log says why, and the why was in my code.Tue, 13 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTjournalfieldincidentpx4uloggpssafetyhttps://techwithharoon.com/guides/how-i-connected-an-llm-to-px4/https://techwithharoon.com/guides/how-i-connected-an-llm-to-px4/Structured plans from a language model, a safety gate written in code, and MAVSDK commands to a real flight controller. The architecture, the limits, and the two bugs the real aircraft found.Tue, 13 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTguideautonomyhttps://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-11-eyes-and-a-first-handshake/https://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-11-eyes-and-a-first-handshake/Hawk got a camera, a detector and a look tool. The Action 4 streamed into the Mac over WiFi on the first try. Then the telemetry radio met the real aircraft, and the numbers started telling a different story.Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTjournalvisionyoloosmo-action-4sik-radiotelemetryhttps://techwithharoon.com/guides/holybro-x500-setup-guide/https://techwithharoon.com/guides/holybro-x500-setup-guide/Frame, Pixhawk 6C, M10 GPS and SiK telemetry. Assembled, wired, calibrated, with the transmitter and failsafe configuration I actually fly with.Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidehardwarehttps://techwithharoon.com/guides/streaming-action-4-video-into-opencv/https://techwithharoon.com/guides/streaming-action-4-video-into-opencv/A DJI Osmo Action 4 with no cable to the ground, into Python at under a second of latency, over a phone hotspot. MediaMTX, RTMP in, RTSP out, YOLO on every frame.Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTguidevisionhttps://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-10-hawk-learns-to-talk/https://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-10-hawk-learns-to-talk/Voice in, voice out. The pilot got a name, a personality, a local speech pipeline, and then a long day of making it fast enough and honest enough to show someone.Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTjournalvoicewhisperclaudelatencyelevenlabshttps://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-07-a-drone-that-cannot-crash/https://techwithharoon.com/journal/2026-10-07-a-drone-that-cannot-crash/Before any of this touched a real aircraft, I needed one I could crash a hundred times. Getting PX4 and Gazebo running on a Mac was the first day's work, and the decision that shaped everything after.Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTjournalsimulationpx4gazebosetup