You can build a working Remote ID receiver for the price of a takeaway dinner. This guide walks through the cheapest build we recommend to people starting out: an ESP32 development board running open-source firmware that listens for the Bluetooth broadcasts every compliant drone sends. No soldering iron required for the basic version.
What you are building
A small passive receiver that hears Remote ID broadcasts and prints them to a serial console or a small display: drone serial number, position, altitude, and the pilot’s take-off point. It receives only — it never transmits, jams, or interferes with anything. The build uses the open-source OpenDroneID receiver firmware, which decodes the ASTM F3411 Bluetooth flavor of Remote ID.
The parts list
- ESP32 development board with Bluetooth — any WROOM-style devkit works; budget $8–15
- Micro-USB cable and a phone charger — most drawers have these
- Optional: 0.96″ OLED display (~$5) so you can read detections without a laptop
- Optional: an external 2.4 GHz antenna module if your board supports U.FL — worth it outdoors
The build, in five steps
- 1. Clone the OpenDroneID receiver firmware from the project repository and open it in the Arduino IDE or PlatformIO
- 2. Select your ESP32 board profile and flash — no configuration needed for a first test
- 3. Open the serial monitor at 115200 baud; you should see the receiver scanning
- 4. Walk outside with a drone (yours or a friend’s) broadcasting Remote ID; within seconds the serial output should show the decoded serial number and coordinates
- 5. If you added the OLED, wire it per the repository pinout and re-flash with display support enabled
Our honest limitations list
We have built this class of receiver ourselves, but our build is not your build — ranges vary enormously. What is structural, not luck: this setup hears Bluetooth only. Remote ID also travels over Wi-Fi Neighbor Awareness Networking, and roughly half the broadcasts you will encounter use it, so a lone ESP32 sees about half the compliant world. The stock antenna is the second ceiling — indoors, expect tens of metres; a cheap external antenna outdoors changes the picture. Third: Wi-Fi NAN reception and direction finding need more hardware than an ESP32 alone can offer.
Failure modes we have hit, so you do not have to
The serial monitor staying empty usually means the drone is a Wi-Fi-NAN broadcaster, not Bluetooth — check the aircraft specs before blaming your soldering. Boards with the older ESP32 revision drop BLE connections under load; a recent devkit avoids a weekend of pain. And if you power it from a laptop USB hub, brownouts corrupt the serial output — a proper charger fixes “mystery garbage characters”.
| You want to… | This build | Next step up |
|---|---|---|
| Learn what Remote ID sounds like | Perfect fit | — |
| Cover Wi-Fi NAN broadcasts too | Not with one ESP32 | RTL-SDR + decoding software |
| Protect a real perimeter | A learning tool, not a security layer | See the receiver comparison |
References: github.com/opendroneid (firmware, Apache-2.0). Checked 2026-09-11. When you outgrow the breadboard, our commercial receiver comparison shows what changes — with sources and dates on every row.
Content last reviewed: 2026-09-11. Vendor-reported figures labelled as such; ranges depend on your site and antenna.