Open Source Summit Europe 2022

The growing use of drones for data capture across a diverse range of scientific domains is driving a need for open and configurable solutions. While COTS drones offer easy to use systems with uniquely high spatial and temporal resolution of mounted sensors, their pitfalls become apparent when attempting to tightly integrate novel sensors, acquire metadata from closed source firmware, or ensure long term operation of expensive platforms given industry fluctuations.The result is hardware duplication to acquire metadata in order to contextualise captured data.This presentation showcases a prototype design for a fully open, 5G capable, modular hexacopter intended for professional use by the scientific community. It is intended to provide the high quality and easy user experience of consumer platforms in a form that enables advantageous tight integration of custom sensors with full access to necessary data and metadata capture process provenance. Features include:1) reconfiguration between a hexacopter and quad-copter, 2)Cube pilot based for professional operation 3)a versatile sensor mounting strategy, 4)integration of Open Air Interface mobile network based 5G telemetry link, 5)containerised automated tooling for metadata and data capture and streaming for fleet wide deployment.