Lumipad Drones is a non-profit drone training program based in Davao, Mindanao, Philippines. We train rural Filipinos to build and fly low-cost agricultural drones, then deliver NDVI crop surveys to cooperatives growing cacao, coffee, coconut, and abaca. We build and publish free, open-source tools — including a browser-based drone simulator and a build calculator — so anyone, anywhere can learn.
Lumipad has two parts that share a name. The training program is a 6-week cohort that takes rural Filipino trainees from no drone experience to running their own NDVI-survey microenterprise — building the drone they keep, learning to fly it for cooperative survey work, registering as a Filipino microenterprise, and graduating into a pilot community that supports them through their first 90 days.
The data platform is where survey imagery lives — graduates upload their captures; cooperative members access NDVI maps of their plots; the cohort program references historical imagery for instructor calibration. Both are non-profit. Neither is the product; together they are how rural Mindanao cooperatives get the same crop-health data that large commercial farms have had for years, at a price cooperatives can actually pay.
Lumipad was founded in 2023 in Davao City because we saw the same problem repeatedly across agricultural cooperatives in Mindanao: farmers who would benefit from NDVI crop surveys couldn't afford the commercial services that delivered them. We partner with organizations like Kennemer Foods International and local cooperatives to reach farming communities across the region.
1. The farmers should own the drones. Not a company, not a platform, not a subscription. The pilot who built the drone keeps it. The cooperative who pays for surveys deals with a local person they know, not a call centre. The data lives with the people who fly.
2. Open documentation is infrastructure. Every BOM, every wiring diagram, every lesson plan — published under Creative Commons. If a partner org in Visayas wants to run their own variant of this program, they can. The curriculum is the product we give away; the community around it is what you can't replicate from a PDF.
3. A working microenterprise is the only meaningful graduation metric. We don't count certificates issued. We measure whether graduates are still flying paid surveys 12 months after their cohort ends.
4. We update what we publish when we learn something. The curriculum library you're reading is version 1.0. We update it as we learn — every change is documented.
Our drone simulator is a fully 3D flight simulator that runs entirely in your browser. No download, no install, no account, no ads. Open the page and fly. It works on desktop, laptop, tablet, and phone — any device with a modern browser.
Fly on realistic terrain maps with multiple mission types: racing through ring courses, precision delivery, landing practice, and free flight for open exploration. Each mission tracks your score, flight time, and outcome. Watch replays of your flights to see what you did well and where you can improve.
The simulator supports keyboard controls and USB game controllers (like the FlySky i6 trainer cable) for a more realistic stick feel. It's the same tool our trainees use before they ever touch a real drone — building muscle memory for throttle, yaw, pitch, and roll without risking hardware.
We built the simulator because our trainees in rural Mindanao can't afford commercial flight simulators, and most don't have the bandwidth to download large applications. A browser-based simulator that loads in seconds over a mobile connection is the only version that actually reaches them.
The build calculator helps you plan a drone build before you buy a single part. Select your motor, propeller, and battery configuration and instantly see estimated thrust-to-weight ratio, hover throttle percentage, top speed, flight time, and maximum payload capacity.
Not sure where to start? The build recommendations tool works in reverse — tell it your target payload weight and it suggests the best component configurations to carry it. The comparison tool lets you put two or more builds side by side to see exactly how they differ on every metric.
The calculator uses a database of real components — motors with actual KV ratings and weights, propellers with measured thrust curves, batteries with real capacities and discharge rates. When our trainees are deciding between a 2806.5 1300KV and a 2807 1500KV motor, they can see the concrete difference in hover throttle and flight time before spending money.
The Lumipad platform is where drone survey data lives after the flight. Graduates upload NDVI imagery from their survey flights; the platform processes it into false-colour maps, tree counts, pest detection overlays, and yield estimates. Cooperative members log in to see crop-health data for their specific plots — the same data that large commercial farms have had for years, now accessible to smallholder farmers.
For pilots, the platform tracks flight history, survey coverage, and client relationships. For cooperatives, it provides a simple interface to view survey results, compare seasons, and make data-driven decisions about fertiliser, irrigation, and harvest timing. For the Lumipad program, it provides the feedback loop that makes each cohort better than the last — real data on what graduates fly, what cooperatives need, and where the gaps are.
The platform is in early access and expanding as more graduates enter the field. Like everything else we build, it's designed for the constraints of rural Mindanao — low bandwidth, older devices, intermittent connectivity.
Our training cohorts are 6 weeks of intensive, hands-on training in the Davao region. You build a working quadcopter from components, learn to fly it, practice agricultural survey patterns, and graduate into a supported pilot community. You keep the drone you build. The program covers all materials and training — there is no cost to the trainee.
The goal: graduate with a working drone, the skills to fly it for paid survey work, and a community of pilots who help each other succeed.