Day-by-day lesson plans, slides, and assessments used by Lumipad trainers across the full Cohort program. Designed for trainees with no prior electronics background — adaptable to any partner organisation running their own program.
The Lumipad curriculum was built around one constraint: the people walking into Cohort 01 had never held a soldering iron. So the first week is foundational — what a drone is, what each component does, why we care about NDVI imagery — and each subsequent week adds new technical and operational skill on top of solid fundamentals.
By Week 6 graduates have built a working drone, completed three real survey flights for partner cooperatives, and have a starter business plan with sample client contracts. The playbook is published openly so any partner organisation — coop, NGO, school, agency — can run the program in their own region.
Each week builds on the last. Weeks 1–4 cover fundamentals and the full drone build. Weeks 5–6 are flight school plus business setup. Trainees finish ready to fly real surveys for paying clients.
Each week's plan below is a self-contained module. Click a week to see its objectives, day-by-day schedule, materials list, and assessment criteria. Partner organisations adapting the curriculum should run weeks in order — the technical sequencing matters.
Trainees arrive with a wide range of backgrounds — some have built radios as kids, most have never soldered. Week 1 is the equaliser: drone fundamentals, electronics safety, the soldering iron, and the first hour on a flight simulator. Nobody touches a real drone yet.
Trainees must pass two checkpoints to advance to Week 2:
If a trainee doesn't pass: extra Saturday session with one-on-one coaching. No one is held back from Week 2 — the curriculum is designed so weak skills can be patched up over the next two weeks during build practice.
The first build week. Trainees assemble the frame, mount motors, solder the 4-in-1 ESC, and wire the power distribution. By Friday each trainee has a powered-up "half drone" — frame, motors, ESC, battery — with no flight controller yet.
Trainees must demonstrate a working "half drone":
If a trainee doesn't pass: their build is reviewed jointly with an instructor on Saturday morning. The most common cause is a cold solder joint — usually fixed in under 30 minutes.
The cognitive peak of the program. Trainees install the flight controller, GPS, and receiver, then configure all three through the SpeedyBee app and BetaFlight. By Friday each drone has a complete flight stack and a bound radio — but no propellers yet.
Trainees demonstrate a working flight controller stack:
If a trainee doesn't pass: this is the hardest week and we expect 1–2 trainees per cohort to need extra time. Saturday catch-up sessions cover the specific tab in BetaFlight that's blocking them.
The drone gets its eyes. Trainees install the FPV camera and video transmitter, integrate the optional NDVI rig, and complete the props-on first power-up — the moment when six weeks ago's bag of parts becomes a flying machine. By Friday the drone is ready for Week 5's flight school.
Trainees must demonstrate end-to-end readiness:
Out of the workshop, into the field. Week 5 happens at a partner cacao farm 40 minutes outside Davao. Days are longer (07:00–13:00 to beat afternoon thermals). By Friday each trainee has logged 25+ minutes of unassisted flight time and has flown a complete autonomous survey mission.
The week 5 final is a complete solo survey:
If a trainee doesn't pass: a Saturday make-up flight with one-on-one mentorship. If still struggling, the program offers an optional 7th week of supervised practice before graduation. No graduates fly client missions until they've passed.
The technical training is complete. Week 6 is about turning a working pilot into a working business. Pricing, contracts, client communication, microenterprise registration, and a final paid survey for a real partner cooperative. Friday is graduation.
Graduation requires:
If a graduate's business plan needs major revisions: they graduate but Lumipad's alumni network checks back at 30/60/90 days to support the relaunch. The drone and platform access are theirs regardless.
Trainees move from "what is a drone" on Monday of Week 1 to "running a microenterprise" by Friday of Week 6. The pacing is intentional — heavy fundamentals up front so the build weeks (2–4) feel like applied learning, not new vocabulary every day.
The 6-week structure is what works for our Mindanao cohorts — daily 7-hour sessions, in person, in Davao. Partner organisations running the program elsewhere may need to adapt. Here's what we've learned from cohorts run by partners in Visayas, Palawan, and Vietnam.
If you can match the format, do. Daily contact and immediate feedback dramatically reduce the drop-off rate. We've seen 90%+ completion in cohorts that follow the format vs 60–70% in adapted formats.
Standard format guide ↗For working trainees who can only commit weekends. The technical content fits, but the build weeks (2–4) feel rushed — most weekend cohorts add a 13th weekend for catch-up. Soldering practice between weekends matters.
Weekend adaptation guide ↗Theory days (drone fundamentals, BetaFlight intro, business setup) work fine online. Build days, soldering, and flight school must be in person. Used by our Vietnam partner — works but requires good local infrastructure.
Hybrid format guide ↗For partner-org instructors before they run their own cohort. Covers the full curriculum from a teacher's perspective — what to emphasise, where trainees commonly struggle, how to grade the assessments. Quarterly intakes.
partners@lumipaddrones.com ↗We piloted both. Four weeks was too compressed — Week 1's fundamentals and Week 4's first flight needed more breathing room. Trainees were getting through the technical content but graduating without the business literacy to actually run a microenterprise.
Eight weeks was too long for working-age trainees who couldn't take that much time off. Drop-off in weeks 7–8 was significant. Six is the sweet spot for our audience: long enough to internalise, short enough to commit to.
Bad solder joints are the #1 cause of drone failures we see in the field. A trainee who builds a marginal joint in Week 2 will have a drone that flies fine for a month and then loses a motor mid-flight at week 8.
The Week 1 soldering checkpoint is non-negotiable for that reason. Trainees who can't pass it on Friday do extra Saturday practice. We'd rather lose a Saturday than ship a graduate whose drone fails on a paying client's plot.
Roughly 1 in 4 cohorts has at least one trainee with prior FPV/drone experience. We don't accelerate them through Weeks 1–4 — instead, we ask them to mentor weaker peers. This serves both: the experienced trainee deepens by teaching, the struggling trainee gets a peer who can explain in their language and at their pace.
For partner orgs running their own cohorts: we strongly encourage this same dynamic. Don't create an "advanced track" — keep everyone together. Lumipad is a community-building program first, a technical training program second.
Yes — the playbook is licensed CC-BY-SA-4.0 specifically to make this possible. The technical content (Weeks 1–5) translates directly. Week 6's business content needs adaptation: tax registration, contracts, and pricing benchmarks are all locale-specific.
If you're planning to translate, please email partners@lumipaddrones.com first — we may have an existing partner in your region we can connect you to, and we'd love to add your translation back to the open library when it's ready.
Week 5 needs an open area with reasonable airspace clearance, but the crop type is flexible. Coffee plots, coconut groves, even a large open field with simulated AOI markers will work. The key is that trainees fly a real autonomous mission over a real polygon — not a sim.
Partner orgs working with rice or vegetable farmers have run Week 5 over their own crop with the same outcomes. The platform processes any vegetation imagery — the NDVI math doesn't care what the plant is.
Lumipad's standard cohort is 15 trainees with 1 lead instructor + 1 assistant — a 7.5:1 ratio. Lower than that and the program becomes hard to fund; higher than that and quality drops noticeably.
For partner orgs starting their first cohort: aim for 8–12 trainees on your first run. The program is dense and the first time through has unexpected friction. Once you've run two cohorts, scaling to 15 is straightforward.