Drones are cool, there’s no denying that. That’s why when I got the chance to fly my friend’s commercial drone, I knew I had to have one for myself.
However, the high cost of an off-the-shelf drone discouraged me from buying one, until I learned that I could make one for cheaper.
Design Overview
This drone was built with commercial, off-the-shelf parts. The carbon fiber frame provides a durable body that can withstand crashes, although I had to replace
the landing legs with foam blocks that could absorb impact better. The four EMAX 2205 motors were outfitted with standard 5’’ props that could produce a total
of 2kg of thrust. At the heart of the system was a Matek F405 microcontroller that communicated with the Crazypony ESCs via a serial communication protocol
known as DSHOT 1200. The FS-iA6 receiver received commands from my transmitter and communicated this to the flight computer via Pulse Position Modulation (PPM).
The entire system was powered off a 4S, 1300mAh LiPo battery that lasted roughly 10 minutes.
BetaFlight Software/Configurator
My drone runs an open-source flight software called BetaFlight which can be configured via its companion GUI. The configurator offers many cool visuals and
allows you to tune all aspects of the hardware via an interactive graphical interface.
Visualizing drone rotation in 3D space via onboard IMU
Configuring throttle and rotational inputs via transmitter
After 50 hours on a drone simulator and over 25 hours of pilot hours, watch some of my flights!
