A DIY quadcopter drone

A DIY quadcopter drone

When I was a university student, drones were starting to get popular so I decided to make my own. I made two attempt at the idea: The first attempt involved designing the most of drone from scratch, its mechanical design as well as its electronics, including the remote controller. After that attempt proved less than satisfactory, I designed a new version of the drone, this time with off the shelf electronics.

V1: Fully DIY

This first version of the drone was built around a homemade chassis, made from carbon fiber plates and beams. Its electronics consisted of an Arduino nano, an MPU6050 IMU and NRF24L01 for wireless control.

Since the electronics was designed from scratch, I also had to design a remote for the drone. Here again, I used an Arduino nano and NRF24L01.

I also wanted to be able to fly the drone from a PC with a full size joystick so I designed a control software using Processing for it:

In the end, the quadcopter was not stable enough and its remote control system deemed too unreliable for safe operations to this version was scrapped.

V2: Off the shelf electronics

For the second version of the drone, I decided to revise my ambition and use off the shelf electronics. I settled for a KK2.0 board from Hobbyking as main flight controller replaced my DIY remote controller with a commercial one designed for hobby projects. On the other hand, the drone chassis remained similar to that of version one, with the carbon fiber beams replaced with aluminium ones for extra robustness.

Here is a picture of the drone in flight. It was a friend's birthday so I made it hold a "Happy birthay" message and the drone proved stable enough for the shot.