Drones

(2016-2017)

Stats and calculations

The beginning of the project always starts with a spread sheet. I made a spread sheet of the components with their component stats.

Stat collection and Tests

I could calculate the lift and weight of the drone from the part specifications.

MKI Drone

This is my very first functional drone. It is fitted with Racestar ESC's and 1000 kv Racestar motors. I bought these because it costed me $25 total. i was running its PID software off an arduino that was hooked up to a 6 axis gyro and a fly sky 6 channel receiver. It was running a 70c 6000 mAh battery

The arms are made of 6061 aluminum cut out of a Haas Mini-Mill. the rest of the body is 3d printed out of PLA filament.

Aluminum Arms

I design the arm and generated a tool path in Fusion 360 to cut the stock with a Haas Mini mill. This component features an iso-grid like structure for a light weight, yet durable construction.

Electronics

To keep the drone clean and compact, the electronics were stacked on 3d printed plates. The gyro and radio were on top of the arduino to isolate them from noise from the battery and ESC's below. The arduino was under the plate to protect it in case of a crash, this made fixing it fairly easy.

The Shape and Battery

The drone features a typical x-frame set up because it was stable, durable and easy to design. It survived a couple crashes from 50 ft. The battery is carried from underneath the main chassis. This kept it's center of gravity low, helping its stability but inhibiting its mobility and banking.

MKII FPV

There are a few new features to this drone, the first new feature is frame shape. I changed it to an H-X frame, this allows the flier to have a more twitchy roll, this also increase the efficiency of the roll's axis degrees per second. ( as if i was going to do rolls with this thing)

New Addition

I added a cheap FPV camera that is mounted to the battery pegs.

Upgraded Flight Controller

I upgraded the drone's flight controller with a beta fight controller. The arduino was fun and helped me understand what a PID controller does, but it was still unreliable. upgrading the flight controller allows me to control the the throttle/(degrees/second) curve accurately.

MKIII DJI

This will be the final iteration of this 1047 prop style drone. i have changed the shape of the arms, this time 3d printed, into a modified "dead cat" configuration . this was to compact the propellers as much as possible without them hitting each other (mainly to reduce weight).

Battery Holder/Protection

i moved the battery inside the frame of the drone mainly to pull the center of gravity down to fix the roll instability. The battery is now in a cage to protect it from being punctured by a rock which prevents the possibility of catching on fire.

Function

The new drone body is designed to be a camera oriented. It has a lot of power and can stay in the air for quite a while (20-30 minutes, with no additional weight). I was going to mount a few go pros for multiple angles.

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