[Oscar] has been busy lately building DIY mini quadcopters. We saw his controller design earlier in the month. Back then he was using it with his walking robot designs. Now [Oscar] has posted up some information on his quadcopter work. Even though [Oscar] is new to mini quads, he began by designing his own frame. He started his frame design by using a cut down version of the well-known 949 frame. [Oscar] chose polystyrene for his motor mounts, which turned out to be the downfall of the frame. Polystyrene proved to be much too flimsy to handle the vibrations of the motors and props. The vibrations were transmitted to the accelerometers, which resulted in a model that was very hard to control. You can see this in the first video after the break.
For his second attempt, [Oscar] started with a proven design from HobbyKing. HobbyKing’s fiberglass mini quadcopter frame is sturdy, but heavy, and expensive to replace (If the parts are even in stock). The frame did work though, so he used it as a starting point for his second DIY frame. The new frame is based upon fiberglass shafts. [Oscar] used hot glue to join the shafts to the motor mounts. Each joint was wrapped in string, which was then coated with hot glue. We’d suggest thin cyanoacrylate glue in the future for these types of joints. Only a few drops of CA soaks up into the string, creating an extremely light and strong joint. [Oscar’s] frame ended up at about half the weight of the HobbyKing frame, but was stiff enough for a successful flight test, as can be seen in the second video after the break.
Is this also an entry for the Trinket contest? :P
Anyway, nice work :)
This thing is awesome! It flies so well. I wonder how well it fares outside with a light breeze when all is done? Keep up the good work [Oscar]!
So, what’s its surveillance and armament capabilities?
(c:
Just kidding! Very well done. I like its compactness and lightweight. That’s got to help with battery life.
Someone needs to make a Hackaday shapped quadcopter!
I thought hmmm a di## shaped quadrocopter…. but then I realized someone has surely already made one
That weighs less than my green-cheek conure … but I bet the brains of the copter weigh more than my conure’s brain.
I was thinking, could you not like make a ‘bow’ effect and create equal tension to the far ends of this with some fishing yarn or something ?
this would make it super-sturdy since it would act as a “plate” in the horizontal axis
if you place the arms in the middle of the 2 bases you could also create a tension there meaning you’d have support beams – without the weight.