About

Design real boards. Prove it.

One Thousand Drones Academy teaches printed-circuit-board engineering through real projects on the Espressif ESP32-S3, designed in KiCad. You take a board from requirements to fab-ready gerbers, and you advance only when the design passes a clean design-rule check.

What it is

Most hardware courses stop at theory, so the skill stays unproven. Here you design a manufacturable board end to end and walk away able to fabricate it. The catalog runs twenty-two boards across four tracks and three levels, wired as one skill tree, converging on two capstones: an eight-channel EEG brain-computer-interface front-end and an ESP-NOW wireless fleet hub.

The first board, L1.01, is free to build start to finish, no account required. It is the honest sample of the whole method. Every other build is a one-time purchase with lifetime access, no subscription.

How we keep it honest

What makes a completion real

You ship boards, not quizzes.: Progress is gated on a clean design-rule check and valid, fab-ready gerbers, the same bar a working hardware team passes. Not points, not streaks.
The full engineering arc, every project.: Eight stages on every board: requirements, bill of materials, schematic capture, electrical-rules check, layout, design-rule check, gerber export, and bring-up.
Designs are validated before you build.: Each board passes a recursive design-validation protocol of ten or more audit passes before any part is committed, so you are not soldering someone's first draft.
Parts are real and current.: Every board's bill of materials is priced against live DigiKey stock and re-checked nightly, and is one click to a cart you can order.
Claims are cited.: Empirical and comparative statements are sourced to primary references (datasheets, standards, papers), not asserted.
Certificates you can check.: Every finished project issues a sealed certificate that anyone can independently verify.

Who builds it

Joshua Tollette

Founder, One Thousand Drones LLC

The Academy is built by Joshua Tollette, founder of One Thousand Drones LLC, an Oklahoma hardware company and registered federal contractor. It is the talent and hardware pipeline beneath the company's Brain-to-Swarm program, so the boards you build are the same platform the company develops on, not toy exercises.

The company's identity is public and verifiable:

CAGE 1ZYS4
UEI WDQXD9L9UFH3

One Thousand Drones LLC
9905 S Pennsylvania Ave, Ste A
Oklahoma City, OK 73159, USA

Start free at L1.01 →See the courses Verify a certificate

What makes a completion real

You ship boards, not quizzes.

Progress is gated on a clean design-rule check and valid, fab-ready gerbers, the same bar a working hardware team passes. Not points, not streaks.

The full engineering arc, every project.

Eight stages on every board: requirements, bill of materials, schematic capture, electrical-rules check, layout, design-rule check, gerber export, and bring-up.

Designs are validated before you build.

Each board passes a recursive design-validation protocol of ten or more audit passes before any part is committed, so you are not soldering someone's first draft.

Parts are real and current.

Every board's bill of materials is priced against live DigiKey stock and re-checked nightly, and is one click to a cart you can order.

Claims are cited.

Empirical and comparative statements are sourced to primary references (datasheets, standards, papers), not asserted.

Certificates you can check.

Every finished project issues a sealed certificate that anyone can independently verify.