u/uavfutures

G day
Before we start, I'm writing this as a straight brain dump (no ai) so please forgive any spelling mistakes etc i’m just super pumped to share this with you guys

My site https://www.diyfpv.com/ is the site I wished I had when i started flying 10+ years ago, before I knew anything or anyone in this hobby. It is packed full of awesome stuff for pilots but this is all about what i think is the most impressive part yet.

 We have just released our builder. https://studio.diyfpv.com/ as part of the studio we have there. The aim is to have a centralised database of all fpv parts, with correct wiring logic that can also be used in an interactive soldering studio. This studio can then check connections, flag possible issues, be shared as setup guides between pilots and much more. 

Features that made it in 1.0

• Take a product in the database (which is also the largest fpv component database online) , select its picture and start building
• Designed to be both intuitive/easy but also very powerful. Drag and drop features make building a part a breeze
• Logic is built into all connections that auto populate on entry. If you place a pad and label it as RX3, a drop down will then happen where you can correctly set the function/logic of that pad to a (uart 3 receive/inbound) the same can be done with things like voltages and setting the flow, set min and max cell count or output volts from a pad. 
• Double sided parts are common, easily create both sides that can be flipped inside the studio, with cutout and through pads placing a pad on one side of the board correctly links a sister pad on the other side. 
• The parts are almost a 1:1 recreation of the real thing, add a ton of details like chips, caps, boot buttons, usbs etc. making identification easy when someone is using it. New pilots should be easily able to reference the part and plan their real life builds. 
• Heaps of tweaking functions, label directions, spacing, groupings, arc tools etc that could be an entire write up on its own.

Beyond 1.0 plans

• Currently we can only do parts like and fc, rx for vtx. But in future update soon we have a simple and easy to to implement cameras and motors
• Later this week I think there will be a function that lets users use their own photos for references while creating a part
• Double sided stack parts are currently in the “how do we do this” - I think our current plan is to take a part that is a stack, and then link that schematic to the already created single boards.

Originally I was drawing parts alone but realised it was impossible to do by myself. This required a ton of work behind the scenes, making it much more user friendly, a whole moderation, and approval back end system. Checks and comments, review stages etc. 

The studio where we connect all the parts is currently in an unlock at 250 parts stage. There was no point in having a studio to connect parts if those parts were not drawn in the first place.

Out of all my work in fpv this is one of the things I am the most proud of. I truly think that so many pilots are going to benefit from this. A huge thank you to all the people who have already gotten on board and started to help drawing parts

This post isnt about getting donations or youtube views etc. (thats actually why I didnt even share my youtube video on it) This is just about sharing the tool with the community and showing the awesome work the DIYFPV team has done. If you want to help out and build some parts it would be greatly appreciated.

Happy flying

Stew

G day. My name is stew and I have been teaching people about FPV drones for the last decade. My simulator vibe code journey started with questions.

What is the best FPV simulator in 2026? How can I make the best simulator? What is the best way to learn to fly a drone? What is holding people back from learning to fly? Why would I want to make a sim and most importantly WHAT IS REALISTICALLY POSSIBLE with my skills

These are all questions I wanted to answer when I started planning the drone simulator. https://www.diyfpv.com/resources/fpv-drone-simulator  My goal was to create a free FPV simulator that would allow anyone to learn to fly and train their drone skills, with minimal barriers to entry. Below is a bit of a breakdown on my thoughts and process used to make my dream a reality

Here is what I wanted/goals, in my simulator

1. Make it free
   1. Being Free was important to me because I don’t want people to have to choose between learning to fly and buying their groceries. People are more likely to try something if there is no cost so this means more people would be flying and entering the hobby. 
   2. Being a free drone simulator also meant that there was less pressure to produce the perfect sim. It is hard to complain about something when you get that thing for free. (some people still complained but it wasn't too many)
2. Make it run on almost anything, low hardware requirements
   1. I want as many people to learn how to fly a drone as possible. If the system requirements of the simulator were high, then only people with expensive computers would be able to run it. A low poly count, low system requirement was a must. We even ended up getting it to run on most phones.

    

3. Make it browser based, no need for a big install
   1. People are more time poor than ever. If there is a choice between trying a simulator now vs waiting 1hour. Users will choose now. Also in Australia we have terrible internet. I wanted something that could load almost instantly and require almost no data.
4. Prove good enough physics so pilots could use it as a tool
   1. What is the point of a drone simulator if it doesn't teach us anything right? The physics didn't have to be perfect. But they did have to be useful. The first simulator I ever tried was fpv freerider 10 years ago. It also wasn't perfect but it was good enough for me to start with.

    

5. Use current real life radios as the controls
   1. The sim had to be able to connect to and use a real drone radio. I tested a lot of the radiomaster radios for this one. The pocket, tx16s, ax12 etc. A good perk of reviewing all these radios was I had them on hand to test with the sim
6. Make it fun.
   1. As a teacher I know that when something is both fun and educational we learn best. So we needed a fun environment for pilots to learn in. making gates, chasing planes, racing around a track. All these things were designed to make the actual learning to fly a drone part fun. It’s the same when we go fly a drone in real life. I don’t want to just fly around an empty field. I want gaps, trees, cool things to fly through and around.

    

7. Provide ways for users to extend the sim to suit their needs. 
   1. How could we extend the functionality of the sim? I don’t feel like it's my sim, more like this is the community sim for all DIYFPV.com users. If they want to change the physics, go for it. If they want to make new maps, go for it.

 

The process. 

Let’s be clear. I have almost zero coding skills. I knew right away that I would need the help of AI if I wanted to create something. I had previously already spent some time building some other projects, (a latency tool, a radio tool etc with AI. all unpublished) these mini projects gave me enough confidence to start a larger project like a sim. I actually had a plan on how I wanted to build this sim so I set about using the AI in a way which I would assume a real life dev would built a project with. So instead of just saying something like
“Hey AI build me a sim” it was more like “ I want to build a sim but first lets just make this one step work” then I would take that step and build with it into the next step. I had an idea of why I was building something so the next version could build from it. It felt logical to go from one step to the next (at least in my mind)

These were the main steps in the actual AI using Claude.

1.  create an environment where I could manipulate an object with my radio. It was a red cube that after some trial and error I could move up, down left , right and rotate. 
2. Add basic physics. Move the cube forward and backwards and try to fly around. Add gravity. Add a map. (the map was just flat green large square)
3. Add some basic poles to a map  to use as a guide that I would later use to dial in the physics
4. Fly around the field and poles and explain to the AI how I wanted the drone to feel, was it too floaty, was momentum tracking, how was the thrust feeling. Was there too much drag, was gravity correct etc. THIS TOOK A LONG TIME. AI has no idea how a drone is meant to feel. Luckily I do know how a drone is meant to feel so using normal english I was able to describe what i wanted to drone to feel like. Sometimes the AI would try to do things just to achieve my goal that were counter intuitive. For example when trying to do a powerloop at first I just wasnt feeling like I had enough backwards momentum. Well the AI thought it would fix this by randomly giving me a boost while upside down. Issues like this kept me busy for a while. It was important to dial this feeling in before going any further. I didnt want shortcuts with the AI, I wanted a drone that behaved like the real thing in real life.
5. Let's build a map. Now i had a somewhat ok physics model down. I wanted to make something that was more fun to fly around, this is where I was also careful to stress that the assets used needed to be very easy for any pc to run. I needed to stick to my goal of “any pc can run it”. I first asked ai to make a mock up of a field with a bridge and some trees. IT WAS TERRIBLE. AI has no idea where anything should be unless you specifically tell it like “Put a bridge in the middle of the field” after a few back and fourths it became apparent I would need to manually build my own map for it to be any good. I just didnt know how. 
6. ASK AI FOR A MAP MAKER/LEVEL EDITOR. i told the AI i want to build the map so lets get to work on making a basic builder. Once this was done I was able to make a map much more accurately than before. 
7. Go crazy and make bridges, trees, gaps, gates, poles, basically anything I wanted to use in a level that would be fun to fly around. This is also where I chose an art direction or theme. I couldn't actually decide between a neon theme or a natural theme. So I let users have the choice.
8. Menu work. Now I needed a way for users to easily change settings in the sim, get started with their radio,go full screen etc. This was usually just back and forth prompts. Pretty simply stuff, BUT it took A LOT OF THE TIME. This was a lot of trial and error. Does this feel right here? Will this be more beneficial for a user if advanced physics is the default option. Do we hide menus in subsets or show every setting at once. Eventually I broke the menu down into radio settings, world settings,drone settings and advanced options. 
9. At this point the sim was really coming together and I knew it would be great because I WAS HAVING FUN JUST FLYING IT. if I had an idea. I could use the AI and get it implemented. This is where I went back and did a revision of the first default map. I put a lot of work hand placing all the items in the world, making a track and adding little things like a plane flying around in the sky. This is also where I realised I wanted more than just one level. I was building my dream beginner level but I wanted to sim to have more options so….
10. I created a level editor and map import export function. This allowed me to create some other more simple levels but most importantly let users build their own levels using the very same builder I had used. It wasn't perfect, BUT IT WAS FUNCTIONAL. It also let users save and share their creations
11. Created a timing system so pilots could track their progress. It was also where I implemented the ghost feature. Race against your best time around the default track and also against the best UAVfutures time. I spent some time getting a good lap down. Something that wasn't slow, but was easily beatable by top pilots. This also turned out to be the biggest step for AI. To get this data I got the AI to make another import export tool that would record your lap position, the path you flew. After i had my good lap data I asked the AI to hardcode the data into the sim. THIS TOOK MORE TOKENS AND AI POWER than doing anything else in the sim. Literal hours of it thinking and going through it. I dont know why but after a long time. My flight was finally hard coded into the sim and every user would have the option to race against my time,
12. Mobile implementation - this is where we start to get into some extra features. I started to think about getting more people flying. Not just those with a radio. So I implemented touch controls and made it better for mobile.
13. Experimental features, Now the sim was working better than ever but it was one of those things where you start to realise there might be so much more you want to do. I was torn between making more awesome features but still being a lite weight, beginner sim that will run on anything. SO I implemented some ideas and shelved some others for a future project maybe one day. This is where we got line of sight mode LOS. a wing mode and a latency mode so piltos could  FEEL the difference between say HDzERO and DJI etc
14. Now I went back and tried to polish a lot of the things I missed over. Cleaned up some assets, made some new things like a crane and a sky scraper. Made the bridge a suspension bridge, fixed some menu widths to be static so it didn't jump around. Made the defaults nicer, made it so the lap timer didn't display unless you actually flew through the gate. Changed the start block color so it was more defined. Shaped some trees better etc. Generally this took a lot of work because it was lots of little things one after another. 
15. Hand it off to the diyfpv team so they can get it implemented in the diyfpv.com site under the resource section. They did an awesome job
16. Fixing bugs, adding lots of customizable options so more pilots can get it working with their radios and setups. Mac, iphone, android. - We even discovered an issue where android users and a usb radio would have issues with yaw because our drone radios are old school and the way android handles things for old school it to not actually have a rotational yaw axis…. Unlike a modern xbox controller with would be totally fine with inputs)

 

Overall it was a blast to make a simulator for the drone community. I know it's not perfect, that there are better sims out there that look better, feel better. BUT no sim is free, browser based and runs on almost anything like the DIYFPV simulator. I really can help pilots learn to fly an fpv drone. Regarding the AI, without it I would simply not have the time to make this tool for pilots. Do i wish I had the coding skills. YES. but for anyone with an idea that they want to try with I recommend giving it a go. This whole process has taught me so much and as a result I have since learnt all about commits and github etc. So even though the sim was made with Claude it provided a good catalyst to start understanding some very basic coding principals. 

My biggest advice if you are going to make something with zero coding knowledge is have a plan. You dont need to know the exact code but you should have an idea where you are going and which step you are up to. There should be some logic to which part you are developing next.

If you have any questions please let me know. Maybe you have some more suggestions that would make it even better. And maybe just as a challenge I dont expect most users here to have a spare drone radio around but if you try it on mobile and select touch controls you will see why drone pilots need simulators when they start. It is not nearly as easy as most people think.

https://www.diyfpv.com/resources/fpv-drone-simulator

PS. I also need to go fix a full screen option on mobile so some users don't need to go full screen and rotate their screen back and forth to change an option. This is fixed in the current build just not updated on the site.