DroneBridge/ESP32

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

1080 stars · 232 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

DroneBridge for ESP32 is open-source firmware for ESP32 modules that provides a secure, transparent, bidirectional telemetry link between a drone's flight controller and a ground control station over WiFi, WiFi Long-Range, ESP-NOW, or Bluetooth LE. It natively supports MAVLink, MSP, and LTM protocols plus a fully transparent mode for any payload, with AES-GCM 256-bit encryption and a built-in web interface for configuration.

Use cases

• establish a cheap telemetry link between a Pixhawk flight controller and QGroundControl
• control drone swarms over ESP-NOW broadcast with one-to-many communication
• extend telemetry range beyond 1km using WiFi LR mode with external antennas
• pass serial data transparently over WiFi for any custom protocol
• connect a ground station to a drone via Bluetooth LE without cables
• encrypt drone telemetry with AES-256-GCM out of the box
• flash firmware to an ESP32 directly from the browser
• run drone light shows with Skybrush using the Drone Light Show Edition

When to choose

• you need low-cost (<10 EUR), lightweight (<8g) telemetry hardware for a drone or UAV
• you use MAVLink, MSP, or LTM with GCS software like QGroundControl, Mission Planner, or mwptools
• you want encrypted telemetry by default without extra setup
• you need one-to-many communication for drone swarms or light shows
• you want a transparent serial-to-WiFi bridge for arbitrary protocols

When to avoid

• you need video transmission or camera streaming - the ESP32 cannot encode video
• you require high-bandwidth links beyond ~250kbit/s over ESP-NOW or long-range modes
• you need ranges far beyond 1km, where dedicated long-range radio modems are better
• your project does not use ESP32 hardware

Facets

application · maturity active

networking security cryptography embedded middleware robotics iot embedded-systems hardware iot embedded cross-platform telemetry mavlink esp-now drone uav firmware datalink wifi ble msp ltm ground-control-station automation

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="DroneBridge/ESP32")