Fly Your Tello With the Smart Controller

Now about a week ago, i posted a clip covering the new firmware that was released for the smart controller, which made it fully compatible with the mavic air 2 and the phantom 4 pro v2.0. And i love a product like this, where a company can release new firmware and greatly expand its use case. It allows it to do things it couldn't do when i first bought it because i've been using it for the last year or so with my mavic 2. Pro my mavic 2 zoom and the mavic 2 enterprise, but that was kind of all it did and the fact that i can now control the mavic air 2 and the phantom 4 pro v2.0 means i'm. Bringing one controller with me for all those drones out in the field just makes things a whole lot simpler, but when i was doing that clip i innocently mentioned that. I also use it to fly my tello in the house and had a few people call me out on it. They sent me emails going. How is that possible? I went to the dji store and i don't see the tello application there and i can't download the google store. So how did you get the tele working on your smart controller? Now, to be honest with you, no one's going to buy an 800 smart controller to control a hundred dollar drone. So this is a bit of a futile exercise, but the reason i'm putting the clip together is because the way you fly, the telo involves installing an apk which is an application package kit that's, an android executable it's, almost like in windows, an executable file where they Package up everything they need for the program to run into an apk and i'm going to show you this concept of side loading, how you can actually take that apk and side load it onto the smart controller.

Now it won't work for every program. I know a lot of people out there tried to get litchi and a bunch of other things, working to some extent, they're working, the big problem, not the problem, but the big limitation on the smart controller is that there is no standard version of android when android's Released everybody tweaks it so if you buy a phone from one company, it's gon na have a slightly different version of android than a phone from another company, because the companies tend to load them up with a lot of proprietary programs. But the bigger challenge is they turn off a lot of the services and in the case of this product right now, the google services are turned off. So there are no google services, even though you can load the google store without the google services. Underneath you can't really load a lot of the programs that you like to use and i think the reason dji did. That is because, when you're using a device like a phone connecting up to a controller and you've got a million other programs running. In the background, all of those programs are taking up memory, space and compute resources and, if you're, trying to run a heavy application like dji go 4 or dji fly, those need a lot of resources and if those background programs are running, they can't really get the Resources they need, so you get spotty performance out of it.

So having a dedicated device like this means, it's a pure version of android that's been tweaked to run all the dji products and they don't really want you loading a bunch of other stuff on there. Now the good news is the tello application is a really lightweight application, so it's a great example of how to side load an apk onto the controller to actually fly your telo, and i use it in the house in the winter time, when i'm just kicking around And it's raining or snowing outside i'll power up the telo grab my smart controller and fly it around the house and it's a lot of fun to do that now there are some limitations with this particular program because it wasn't written for the smart controller. So you have to control it using the screen, you won't be able to use the joysticks but again it's more an example of how you load or load an apk onto the controller. Now i would be really curious if you guys want to put it down in the comments some of the other programs you've been successfully able to sideload onto the controller that we can play around with so let's see how that goes, but it's a really simple process. So the first thing you need to do is to get the apk and now i'm going to warn you. You don't, want to try and find an apk out there for a program that you should pay for.

So, if you're paying for a program, if you grab an apk from one of those sketchy websites for free, you're, really bootlegging the program. So if you paid for the program, there are programs on the android store where you can go and actually generate an apk from a program you've already paid for but find an apk like the telo that's free, so you're not violating any rules or laws or anything And then side load it and what you'll need is the apk file and then i've dropped that onto my micro sd card from my computer. So i found the apk file dropped it on my sd card and slid it in here and all i'm going to do. Is power up the controller we'll start on the main page and in the lower right hand, corner you'll, see a circle with four dots in it. Tap that and that'll bring up the main application page and here's, where it's, showing you all the applications that are currently installed on your smart controller. Now you're looking for settings and in my case it's in the top row, all the way to the right, just tap on that and that'll bring up the main settings page and here's, where you can make all the adjustments to whatever settings you need to change on Your smart controller you'll want to scroll up and about two thirds of the way down. You'Ll, see, storage, tap on that, and that brings up both your internal storage and your external storage.

Now i've labeled my external storage card external because i'm goofy, and it makes it easier for me to find it but that's the micro sd card, where i've loaded the program so tap. That and it'll show you all the files that are loaded on that micro sd card now scroll all the way to the bottom, in my case, i've labeled, attelo v1.4.0. So all i have to do is tap that and android immediately recognizes that i've got an android package kit, an apk, and it knows it can install that what this is doing is telling the android operating system. This is a good package to install everything you need in there all the binaries are in there and they're packaged up nice and you'll, recognize it and then it'll install it. Okay, the application is installed. So let me open the application and the minute i do that it brings up the telo app so that's, pretty cool. Now inside this product there are two radios there's, an ocusync 2 radio, that's used at the mavic 2 phantom 4 pro v2.0 and the mavic air 2. there's. Also a wi fi radio inside here, which is what i need to connect to this now. The first question you're going to have is well. This is running on wi fi, my mavic mini's running on wi fi and the spark's running on wi fi. Why can't? I use this to connect to those the difference is. This is just sort of a pure, unfiltered naked wi, fi there's, no special handshaking there's, no enhancements going on with the mavic mini it's, an enhanced wi fi, where there's a special handshake, a secret handshake that goes on between the controller and the mavic mini that i Can'T simulate, so, even though i can load dji fly on here, i can't yet connect to the mavic mini.

That may be something they modify in the future, but for now the teleworks, because it's just a straight version of android. Okay, now it's coming up with the tello app terms of use and that print is way too small for me to read but i'm just going to accept it, because i know what it says: i've read it on a larger screen, so click the box and say Accept and then it's going to ask you a few questions. Allow talent, access to the vice location, sure find by me and allow tell it access photos, media and files on your device. That sounds scary, but that basically allows tello to store the videos and photos on your device. I'M. Okay with that say, allow and then i'm ready to go. So it says how to connect now it's telling you to turn on wi fi and the telo and i'll show you that next we'll start on the main menu i'll go back into settings and this time i'll tap, wi fi now wi fi is currently turned off And it's already warning me it's, saying to see available networks turn wi fi on so i'll turn on wi, fi and now it's searching all the wi fi networks in my vicinity and it should find nutella yep there. It is third one down. Let me tap that and now it's negotiating with the tello it's, making the connection doing a handshake and once it binds like it did now, it's saying, connect it that's good.

Now, let's go back to the main menu and there's the tello application. Let me tap that and it should spin up and see the tello and what i've done now is basically bind it. The telo to this wi fi so i'm, talking to the actual wi fi inside the tello. Let me go back to my main screen when i go into applications there's the telo app. Let me spin it up and as soon as it boots up, i should be able to fly my telo all right there. It is there's the tello now here's the fun part. Let me take off and see what happens here so here's. My take off i'm gon na take off uh. Oh you get ready. Rick there we go wait, wait, wait! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa i'm in the studio. So there's a lot of stuff above me, come on back down, come on back down there. We go all right so i'm controlling it with the controller. Let me spin it pretty fast and again. This is a whole lot of fun in the winter time when it's snowing outside or raining. I can fly this guy around the house and have some fun with it. Drive the dog's mouth watch out. Okay, watch it there rick! Oh, it hit the wall, get away from the wall all right. So let me land this before i crash it all right hold on never fly a drone inside like this.

When you're on camera, all right, land, land land go down, get down, uh land land land. Please land put it down there. We go nice and smooth anyway and there's so much fun with this little guy, all right so anyway, that was just an example of how you fly it. Now i don't recommend you fly in a tight studio like this, but if you've got a big living room or you got a basement, that's wide open to that or if it's not terribly windy, take it out in the backyard fly it around a little bit. Have a lot of fun i'm, not saying: go, buy the smart controller to fly your telo, but if you already own it sideload the application, you can have a lot of fun with it and you can fly your teller around the house, the real reason! I'M doing the clip, though, is to show you that with android, unlike operating systems from apple they're, not closed it's, not a walled garden. So if you have an apk file for any program out there that you paid for you can sideload it on here and as long as it doesn't need some of the stuff that's buried under the covers for google services, you should be able to run the application And control whatever you want to control, so that was pretty much it for today it was more or less on side loading than anything else and a lesson on how much fun this dollar was to fly anyway.

For a hundred bucks, you can't get more more fun than that. If you have any questions about anything, i've covered drop. Those in the comments below i have a ton more clips i'm working on this week so definitely tune in soon there's. Also some pretty interesting stuff. Coming up so you want to be here on the channel to hear about it first um other than that. I really appreciate all the subscriptions we've seen lately. People joining the family, drone valley, family and really just the support we've got, has been tremendous. So thank you. So much for all of that and again questions drop below i'll get back to as quickly as i can. If you haven't, subscribed, hit the subscribe button, i got a ton more stuff coming and we got the drone valley 12 days of christmas, coming up that you're going to want to get in so that's pretty much.