Quickstart: Drone Agent - ADOS Documentation

What You Will Build

By the end of this page, ADOS Drone Agent will be running on a companion computer connected to your drone’s flight controller. You will open the local setup webapp, confirm MAVLink telemetry, and connect Mission Control.

The agent is a Rust-first hybrid. Native Rust services run the REST front on port 8080, MAVLink routing, video, radio, and the cloud relay. Python handles AI and vision, hardware bootstrap, and the plugin runtime. systemd supervises every service.

Prerequisites

Hardware you need:

A supported Linux single-board computer.
A flight controller running ArduPilot, PX4, Betaflight, or iNav, connected by UART or USB.
A USB or CSI camera if you want video.
Internet access on the SBC for install.

Software requirements:

Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm, Ubuntu 22.04+, Armbian, Debian 12+, or another supported Linux distribution.
SSH access to the SBC.
curl.

Install

The recommended path is to open Mission Control’s Flash Tool and pick your board. The Flash Tool hands you a one-line install command to paste over SSH on a board running a stock OS (Pi 4B, Pi Zero 2 W, Radxa CM3, CM4, Rock 5C Lite, Cubie A7Z). See Install paths for the full decision tree. The install usually takes 3-8 minutes. It installs dependencies, creates the ados user and directories, detects the board, writes config, sets up systemd, and starts the agent.

Run the install script with sudo. The agent needs root access during install to create services, set up device rules, and configure hardware. Runtime services run with restricted permissions where possible.

Open Local Setup

After the script finishes, run:

ados

Open the setup URL shown at the top of the terminal page. Common URLs are:

Access path	URL
Same machine	`http://127.0.0.1:8080`
mDNS	`http://ados.local:8080`
Hotspot	`http://192.168.4.1`
USB tether	`http://10.55.0.1:8080`
LAN	`http://<sbc-ip>:8080`

Use ados status for a compact terminal summary, or ados status --json for support scripts.

Finish the Checklist

The setup webapp walks through:

Identify device.
MAVLink.
Video.
Network.
Remote access.
Mission Control.
Finish.

MAVLink and video are local-first. They can work over hotspot, LAN, USB tether, or direct Mission Control before any cloud or tunnel link is configured.

Connect Mission Control

If your laptop and the SBC are on the same network:

Open ADOS Mission Control.
Use the agent URL shown in setup, usually http://<sbc-ip>:8080.
Use the advertised WHEP URL for video when Mission Control asks for a video source.

If you want remote access, open the Remote Access page in the setup webapp and configure Cloudflare Tunnel with the token or install command from Cloudflare.

Useful Commands

ados                 # terminal status page and setup URLs
ados status          # compact status
ados status --json   # machine-readable setup status
ados update          # update the agent
ados uninstall       # uninstall the agent

Troubleshooting

Agent will not start:

journalctl -u ados-supervisor -n 50 --no-pager
ss -tlnp | grep 8080

Flight controller is not detected:

ls -la /dev/ttyUSB* /dev/ttyAMA* /dev/ttyACM* 2>/dev/null
journalctl -u ados-mavlink -n 50 --no-pager

Camera is not detected:

ls -la /dev/video*
v4l2-ctl --list-devices

See the full Troubleshooting guide for more.

Next Steps

Setup Webapp

Finish onboarding and find local URLs.

Terminal Status Page

Learn what ados shows over SSH.

Video Pipeline

Configure video and WHEP playback.

Cloud Relay

Add optional remote access.

​What You Will Build

​Prerequisites

​Install

​Open Local Setup

​Finish the Checklist

​Connect Mission Control

​Useful Commands

​Troubleshooting

​Next Steps

Setup Webapp

Terminal Status Page

Video Pipeline

Cloud Relay

What You Will Build

Prerequisites

Install

Open Local Setup

Finish the Checklist

Connect Mission Control

Useful Commands

Troubleshooting

Next Steps