DIY Drone Thread

I always look for a kit when it something I haven't got a clue on how to do.

Best source of info on DiY drone : rcgroups.com.
I built myself some with help from that forum.

http://fpv-flightclub.com/build-lumenier-qav210/

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Bullet connectors or solder to the ESC?

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>>1070552
Solder directly.
Good ESCs wont fry on you.
Bullets just add another point of failure and are a pain in the ass to solder.

>>1070452
r/multicopter has a large amount of good information, and will keep you up to date with the technology. They also have lists of information and stores that sell quadcopter parts.

Buying a kit from a chinese store is an okay start. But all the components are going to be shit (Fake CF frame, ESCs that will explode in your face, dead flight controllers, etc)

Pic related, my quadcopter (shendrones mizuko, sprF3, little bee ESC)

>>1070559
>neat.jpg
Aren't you worried about smashing your tx antenna on something though?

>>1070565
It's secured to the TX which is on the other side of a CF plate, and the design of the camera pod means that it's likely just to bend out of shape and have to be straighened again.

>>1070569
Yeah, but... those lobes need to be at a specific angle to work; one of them gets tweaked on a branch or something, suddenly you're flying blind.

>>1070572
As long as one lobe is still connected it will still work. It might lost most of it's transmission power but it wont lose signal completely.
They're quite tough, a branch that would be able to snag the antenna and damage it is probably strong enough that the props would shatter if they hit it.

>>1070513
rcgroups.com can get really boring, the way their threads are composed. I'd also try helifreak.com, much easier to read.

>>1070559
Take your time choosing your connectors - see the link above, main forum.

Consider Arducopter or other open alternatives for your controller.

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As >>1070559 said r/multicopter for lots of info

I did buy most parts from china since the alternatives in europe are really expensive, didn't have any problems yet

I really recommend a cheap ~15dollar mini drone like the cx-10 or similar to play with, its fun and you can learn to fly a bit before/while building your own

And check the rules in your country when flying outside, pic related for me, I live in one of the big circles :(

I got a problem with BLHelisuite, i got 4 20A turnigy multistar with BEC, but somehow they don't show up when using the passtrough mode with cleanflight with a naze32 rev6... Help?

>>1072444
So they show up with cleanflight but not BLheli?

My dad wants to see about getting a drone to survey around our hunting camp (No idea what exactly he wants, probably flying above the treetops and surveying clearings and shit periodically)
I don't even know what to look for or what direction to take, any anons have suggestions?
>1000 acre area, ground is pretty flat and tallest trees are probably less than or around 100ft
>Probably want to take relatively detailed pictures of certain areas, I imagine setting it up to lower altitude in clearings would be doable
>I have no idea what I'm doing, decent robotic experience and a good aptitude for this shit

>>1071378
>cx-10
I second that. Amazing value for money if you want to try out flying drones without having to invest into something you might not like in the end.

So, out of curiosity what makes a multi-copter drone superior to say, a standard single blade helicopter design?

>>1072510
Do you want to build one or buy one? For surveying you're going to want something that looks like the DJI Phantom with a camera hanging underneath. If you want to fly it manually you'll just need a transmitter, if you want it to fly autonomously then you'll need an autopilot.

>>1072513
It replaces mechanical controls with electronic controls. It's not better or worse, just different.

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Started building these almost 5 years ago...
I have FPV racers and Photography UAV's.
All from scratch before they became plug and play. And you can tell I'm anal about clean, no spaghetti wire shit here.

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One more

>>1072502
BLHelisuite says there are ESC, but somehow can't read the info from them.
I successfully used the same computer-side setup with KingKong 12A ESC and a Naze32 rev5 before.

>>1072802
Huh, no clue. Yeah, I can read through my rev5 board the same way. Probably something to do with your rev6 board, 4 bad ESCs just strikes me as weird. Maybe reflash BLheli on all 4?

>>1072782
How hard are helis to fly compared to quads?

>>1072833
That's the next thing i was going to try, but it's a PITA since all the signal cable are already soldered to the controller.

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So, I've got a minimOSD micro I'm planning on installing tonight; I noticed the thing gets fucking hot when I was flashing it, though. Should I be worried about heat sinking the IC? Airflow should be good where I'm putting it.

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>>1072834
The older ones that only used a gyro are pretty difficult, takes alot of practice. Can get very expensive..also setting up the heli as well as the radio is a very steep learning curve. The newer stuff has flight controllers but still a handful to learn. Learning on a flight sim like Real Flight or Phoenix is a must unless you have tons of money to throw at parts and you like rebuilding

>>1072513
If you have more than 4 rotors it can land (and most likely fly for quite a while) with damaged blades/rotors.

It's also way easier to build since you don't really have to do any mechanical design.

>>1072950
I find helis the most entertaining - especially big gassers.

Multicopters can get boring unless you do remote sensing/aerial videos or FPV/racing.

Also getting any aircraft working with a PX4/Pixhawk is extremely rewarding.

>>1072866
I remember that a while back there were incorrect instructions at ArduPilot wiki, regarding connecting 12V to the OSD.

This allegedly broke hundreds of OSDs.

Have noticed that OSD-circuits do heat even if connected properly - I do not know why though...

Attach a vape to it so you arent missing out on your other hobby while you fly it

>>1070552
Not OP here, but are ESCs completely necessary? I'm wanting to make a tiny drone and I was just going to use mosfets

>>1073608
fuck my name was "OP" cuz I am the OP of another thread

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>>1073608
by "tiny drone" do you mean something with motors like these or larger motors? These are DC motors, the larger typical quadcopter or airplane motors are Brushless DC motors which require an AC signal (3 wires)

>>1073723
yeah those

>>1072780

Thread is getting old, but MOAR.

I wanna see this from more angles, teach me sensei, after I am done rubbing one out to this.

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>>1074892
Ground / Tracking Station
900 MHz dual diversity RX
5.8 MHz RX
C-DVR
Eagle Tree Ground Station
Fat Shark VR Goggles

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>>1074892
FPV Racing Quad
5.8 MHz

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>>1074892

>>1074892
Not the newest or most expensive but comes from a time you had to build it / program it yourself. It was fun then, now theyre everywhere and with all the regulation shit the fuckheads caused....the stuffs collecting dust

>>1073422
Not afmiliar with that FC. My little racers I'm still using the CC3D and since Open Pilot went down I havent had much luck with Libre

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>>1073774
You do not need ESC's for those. Are you making your own flight controller? These can be soldered directly to a brushed flight controller.

>>1072780
>no spaghetti wire shit here.

FINALLY, THANK YOU

I hate sloppy wiring.

>>1074897
I feel so poor. What do you use this for?

>>1074934
>wat is this
Not him, but he's displaying the video feed from the tx of whatever he happens to be flying. The laptop makes me think he's black boxing telemetry data too.

>>1074934
I built these just for fun since I was getting burned out on helicopters and airplanes.

>>1074955
You are right...flight data can be monitored with the Eagle Tree system via their software, if you use a hot spot you can overlay the data with Google Maps. Also the flight controller black boxes the flight data as well

>>1074934
>I feel so poor. What do you use this for?
Dont be...most of this older stuff is cheap since all the plug and play shit came out.

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A few pics since I updated my ground station
Appreciate the feedback anon

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Anon you can build this shit on the cheap, the switch console is tupperware painted black for instance. All the switches, DVR, 5.8 RX and 900 RX etc...were EBay items from China. If you can solder, you can do it

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Example of Eagle Tree Software display

>>1075048
*in real time as the ground station tracks the UAV
like a radar

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Example of what you see via FPV with the Virtual Reality (VR) Fat Shark Goggles

>>1075040
Neat-O. What is the systme power consumption? What TX-power do you use for video (& telemetry)?

Planning to upgrade from analog video to digital?

Anyone in this thread doing aerial photography? Laser scanning? Remote sensing in general?

>>1075094
I use a 11.1 3S 3000 Mah on the ground station and I get a couple hours of continuous use. The transmitter on my large quad I use a 11.1 3S 600 Mah and it lasts about 1 hour continuous. The racing quads as well as the TX are powered from the flight pack. Telemetry is internal in the FC. Telemetry on the ground station is powered by the same battery as the station itself. In the first pictures above the roll around tool box has a large battery in it that I can also power the ground station with as well as charge my flight packs. Hope that makes sense.

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>>1075096
Thats what I use the larger quad above for using the GoPro Black 3+....Now that the FCC is involved I only fly in rural areas, away from people

>>1075101
So what are the rules now for drones? like you can't fly them anywhere outdoors?

>>1075351

Don't fly it within 3 miles of an airport, and stay away from the little old lady cleaning her shotgun on the front porch.

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Virginia-Woman-Shoots-Down-Drone-Near-Actor-Robert-Duvalls-Home-391423411.html

>>1075040
>>1075038
How much did this set up cost?

>>1075360
>discharging your firearm in the air in a residential area because you're annoyed

>>1075100
Are you using deep cycle batteries or what?

>>1072780
Is balancing the weight of the drone important?

>>1075423
Of course it is.

>>1075394
I have a couple grand in it and the quad

>>1075423
When you view the flight data via the black box you can see if a motor or two motors are working harder than the other to determine if you need to shift some weight around. You can do this with the flight battery

>>1075396
Lipo's

>>1075351
https://www.faa.gov/uas/

Uncle Scam dont like you having his technology
That combined with all the Phantom flying fags that are doing stupid shit...it's criminal if you get caught flying one thats un registered.

>>1075101
*FAA

>>1074898
very nice. Is this built or bought?

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>>1075449
Built

>>1072852
>>1072833
Both of my rev6 do passthrough fine with 20A LittleBees & 12A Afros.

Wondering if I should ask for a kit for Christmas. What's a good kit that's not super expensive but not too basic? I have tools, mechanically inclined and can solder.

>>1075464
depends on what you want to do
Photography or racing

>>1075464
Get a cheap 'toy' quad (Syma X5C, Hubsan X4, etc.) before you try to build something.

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Added FPV kit to my tricopter last week~ First time I tried to fly it like this I immediately discovered I'm too used to flying miniquads with upward camera tilt so had to change it from how it is in this picture!

For OP's question, I will also recommend /r/multicopter & mention Flite Test's videos - you can learn a huge amount about the different parts & the process of building a multirotor by watching one of their build videos, even if it's not for a particular multirotor that you plan to build. I tend to stay away from rcgroups, as the discussion there seems to very quickly get way too serious & into more detail than I care about.

>>1075096
I've recently started doing aerial photogaphy commercially here in the UK - a normal job is a load of planning/paperwork, followed by a couple batteries of relatively boring flying, then a load of postprocessing, all to produce at most a few minutes worth of footage.

>>1075503
Thanks
>>1075475
Photo, fpv flying

>>1077040
>Photo, fpv flying

These are two fairly different tasks, requiring fairly different styles of drone. A build that is good for photography isn't going to be fun for fpv flying, while a build that is fun for fpv flying isn't going to be any good for photography.

>>1077759
Gotcha. I'm more leaning towards fpv flying.

>>1070452
Lots of zip ties
Buy high quality motors and escs

any decent HD video FPV that is affordable?

>>1072444
Multistar ESCs use Atmel chips, so there's a good chance it came with the SimonK bootloader instead of the BLheli bootloader, in which case passthrough or 1-wire flashing won't work. You'll have to cut into the heatshrink and use a flashing tool in order to program the firmware or change the bootloader.
https://oscarliang.com/change-bootloader-esc-atmel/
That, or you can save yourself the headache and just buy new ESCs that already have the proper bootloader (and/or better yet, the proper firmware). Almost all SIlabs-supported ESCs will have the BLheli bootloader.

>>1072513
Mechanical simplicity and ruggedness (which is huge, don't get me wrong). And I suppose keeping rotors out of view of the camera. They're worse in pretty much every other conceivable way.
>>1072834
Usually more difficult only because helis rarely support an auto-level flight mode even if they have gyros aboard, whereas quadcopters almost universally do. But you can add the same artificial stability to a helicopter with just a $20 flight controller.
>>1074916
>You do not need ESC's for those.
Well... you technically do, but brushed FCs have brushed ESCs built into them.
>>1075423
Kind of. The I-term of the PIDs in the flight controller will adjust motor thrust to compensate, but you're still making some motors work harder than others. Control response may be affected, control saturation will be more likely and power consumption will be higher.
>>1072802
According to https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2565349 it appears that KingKongs are Atmel-powered but come with the BLheli bootloader since the 1-wire SIlabs linker works.
>>1075457
Afro is the same way as Kingkong; Atmel processor with BLheli bootloader. LittleBees have an SIlabs processor and thus use the BLheli bootloader by default.
>>1080011
Wifibroadcast is pretty much the only affordable HD video connection, and it's too laggy for racing or proximity. It's fine for AP work, though.

Frankly, I don't see the point of HD. Having used digital video streaming on several different platforms (Phantom, Bebop, AR.drone, and a homebrew wifi system), I must say even there I prefer to have a robust, low-bandwidth, low-lag, low-resolution stream than a laggy, compressed HD stream susceptible to video corruption and signal loss. Even at 240p it's still clear enough to fly and frame your shots.