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Supported Hardware

The ADOS Drone Agent ships with 17 board profiles. Each profile is a YAML file that tells the agent what SoC it is running on, which buses are available, what video encoders exist, and which features to enable.
Ready to install? Use the Flash Tool in Mission Control. Pick your board from the catalog, then copy the install one-liner for it.

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Board profiles

The agent reads /proc/device-tree/model at boot and matches it against the patterns in each profile. If no match is found, it falls back to generic-arm64. Every board installs the agent on top of its stock vendor OS through the Flash Tool’s install one-liner. The “Video Encode” column lists hardware encoders; boards with decode-only video acceleration fall back to software encoding. NPU figures are the vendor-stated on-chip accelerator capability where one exists.

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Tier system

Tiers control which agent features are enabled based on available system resources. The agent selects a tier automatically from the board profile, but you can override it in config.
The bare minimum: only the MAVLink proxy runs, with no REST API, video, or cloud connectivity. This is a capability floor for ultra-low-memory boards. No board profile currently defaults to Tier 1 (the sub-512 MB boards were retired), but the tier remains as an override.Enabled services: ados-mavlink
Adds the REST API and basic health monitoring. You can query the agent over HTTP and get telemetry. No video pipeline.Enabled services: ados-mavlink, ados-control, ados-api, ados-health, ados-discoveryBoards: Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3, Raspberry Pi 3, Radxa Cubie A7Z, generic-arm64
Adds the full video pipeline and cloud relay. This is the minimum tier for a useful companion computer on a real drone.Enabled services: All Tier 2 services plus ados-video, ados-wfb, ados-cloud, ados-peripheralsBoards: Raspberry Pi CM4, Raspberry Pi 4B, Jetson Nano, Radxa CM3, RK3566, RK3576, RV1126B
Full feature set. Everything from Tier 3 plus the vision host, the vision model registry (fetch, download, cache, and select NPU-optimized inference models), and the vision-nav extension for GPS-denied navigation. An NPU or GPU helps with on-device inference.Enabled services: All Tier 3 services plus ados-vision and ados-plugin-host, which back the vision model registry and the vision-nav extensionBoards: Raspberry Pi CM5, Raspberry Pi 5, ROCK 5C Lite, Radxa CM4 (RK3588S2), Orange Pi 5, Jetson Orin Nano

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For development and testing

Radxa ROCK 5C Lite (16 GB) This is the primary development board used by the ADOS team. The RK3582 SoC has 6 TOPS of NPU compute (RK3588 model zoo compatible), hardware H.264/H.265 encoding via the VPU, and 16 GB of RAM. The GPU is fused off, but that does not matter for a headless drone. Runs at Tier 4 with all features enabled.
The ROCK 5C Lite uses a 31-pin 0.3mm Radxa-proprietary FPC connector for MIPI CSI, not the standard Raspberry Pi ribbon. Check camera compatibility before purchasing.

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For ground station use

Raspberry Pi 4B (4 GB or 8 GB) The Pi 4B is the recommended ground station board. It has proven WFB-ng RTL8812EU driver support, a 40-pin GPIO header for the OLED display and menu buttons, USB 2.0 ports for WiFi adapters, Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI output for standalone kiosk mode. The board profile includes ground-station-specific GPIO button mappings.

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For production OEM builds

Rockchip RK3576 (reference design) The RK3576 is a production-oriented SoC with 6 TOPS NPU, H.265 4K60 encode, triple MIPI CSI inputs, native Mini-PCIe for 4G modems, and USB 3.0. A single board profile covers both air-unit and ground-station configurations.

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For budget builds

Rockchip RV1126B A good option for cost-sensitive builds. Hardware ISP, H.264/H.265 encode, and 2 TOPS NPU in a small package. Runs at Tier 3 with the MAVLink proxy, REST API, video pipeline, and cloud relay.

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WiFi adapter for WFB-ng

The video link requires a WiFi adapter that supports monitor mode. The recommended chipset is the RTL8812EU (also labeled RTL8812AU in some listings). The adapter runs in monitor mode on the 5.8 GHz band. It does not use standard WiFi. Instead, it broadcasts raw 802.11 frames using the WFB-ng protocol with forward error correction (FEC). This gives you HD video at ranges of 10-50+ km depending on antennas and line of sight.
The RTL8812EU requires a DKMS kernel driver. The install script handles this automatically on supported boards. If you are building a custom kernel, make sure CONFIG_RTL8812EU is enabled or install the out-of-tree driver.

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Adding a new board

If your board is not in the list, the agent falls back to generic-arm64 (Tier 2). To add full support:
  1. Create a YAML file at src/ados/hal/boards/your-board.yaml
  2. Define name, vendor, soc, arch, model_patterns, default_tier
  3. Add bus definitions (UART paths, I2C paths, USB ports)
  4. Specify video codec support (hw_video_codecs)
  5. List GPIO pins if applicable
  6. Submit a pull request
See the HAL and Tiers page for the full YAML schema and detailed instructions.