Ground Agent supported hardware

A ground station is a Linux single-board computer, a WFB-ng USB radio for the drone link, and a USB-C power source. Everything else is optional.

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Required components

1. A supported board. See the table below.
2. An RTL8812EU or RTL8812AU USB Wi-Fi adapter for the WFB-ng receive path on 5 GHz.
3. A USB-C power source that sustains the board under radio load. Sizing is on Power and runtime.

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Tested ground-station boards

These boards carry a ground-station block in their hardware profile. The Cubie A7Z profile does not include the video relay, USB tether or HDMI kiosk features. Use a Raspberry Pi 4B when the ground station itself must serve live video. The Raspberry Pi 3 and the Radxa ROCK 5C Lite also carry a supported SPI LCD, see Front panel. The full board list for every profile is on Drone Agent supported hardware.

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Bench build (Raspberry Pi 4B)

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SPI LCD build (Radxa Cubie A7Z)

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Front panel (optional)

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Standalone flight add-ons (optional)

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Cellular modem (optional)

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The radio adapter

The WFB-ng receive path needs an adapter that the agent recognises as a WFB radio: the RTL8812EU or the RTL8812AU, by USB ID or by driver. The RTL8812EU needs a DKMS kernel module, which the installer builds. If the build fails (usually missing kernel headers), the installer continues and reports it. Install the headers for your running kernel and re-run the installer with --upgrade.

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OLED display

Any SSD1306 or SH1106 I2C OLED at 128x64 or 128x32 works. The agent probes I2C address 0x3C, then 0x3D. Wire SDA, SCL, VCC (3.3 V) and GND. Controller and size settings are on Front panel.

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GPIO buttons

Four momentary pushbuttons, each wired between a GPIO pin and GND. The agent enables internal pull-ups, so no external resistors are needed. A board profile can declare other pins in a buttons block; these four are the fallback. What each button does is on Front panel.

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Gamepads

Any USB HID gamepad works in the on-box cockpit through the browser’s Gamepad API. Pair Bluetooth gamepads from Mission Control (node panel, Buttons tab) or with the agent’s Bluetooth routes (POST /api/v1/ground-station/bluetooth/scan, then POST /api/v1/ground-station/bluetooth/pair).

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Mesh hardware

A node in the relay or receiver role needs a second RTL8812EU or RTL8812AU adapter in another USB port. The first adapter stays on the drone link; the second carries the batman-adv mesh on 2.4 GHz (channel 1 by default). The agent counts WFB-class radios when it decides whether a node can join a mesh, so adapters with other chipsets do not qualify. A direct node needs no second adapter. See Local mesh (batman-adv).

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Next steps