Fidget Spinner Slash Drone Is Both

So Hackaday loves fidget spinners and we don’t care who knows it. Apparently so does [Jeremy S Cook], who decided to mash up a spinner and a cheap quadcopter. To what end? Is that even a question? Spinners are the bearing-studded equivalent to the Rubik’s Cube craze of the ’80s and all we can do is embrace it.

[Jeremy] designed a quadcopter shape with a hole in the center matching a VCB 22 mm ceramic bearing he had on hand. He CNCed out the design from a sheet of Lexan resin. Then he detached the electronics amd motors from a quad.

He used a rotary tool to cut off the housing, removed the motors, then inserted them in the new frame, using hot glue to secure them. He installed the control board 90 degrees off of the frame, before realizing it would mess with the accelerometer and re-installed it flat. Meanwhile, the center of the frame sports the all-important bearing.

If you’re looking for more quad projects check out these cool projects: a Power-Glove-controlled drone, this PVC-pipe quadcopter frame, and reverse engineering quadcopter controls.

14 thoughts on “Fidget Spinner Slash Drone Is Both

  1. Good writeup sir,

    The 90* circuit issue with the accelerometer, Does the maker know what type of chip contains the accelerometer (BGA,QFP,…) and if it can easily be soldered 90* relative to the board with an axis 0* upward from the IC lid?

  2. “Spinners are the bearing-studded equivalent to the Rubik’s Cube craze of the ’80s ”
    There! The next article should be about Rubik’s Cubes with bearings, or Rubik Fidjit Spin’rs!
    Incorporate a Pet Rock and you’ve got the 1970’s included. Or a Pet Rock made of Clacker balls to cover both the 1960’s and 1970’s. Whoa, I forgot the Frisbee…

  3. “FIDGET SPINNER SLASH DRONE IS BOTH”

    I had the hardest time parsing this until I realized that “slash” was the “/” conjunction spelled out! Is that common now? I’m not fond of the slash conjunction, I think it’s just lazy, but now that it’s being spelled out as a word, I guess we’re stuck with it.

    Yeah, I’m an old fart. Get off my lawn…

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