Resilient AI Drone Packs It All In Under 250 Grams

March 15, 2021 by Tom Nardi 14 Comments

When it was first announced that limits would be placed on recreational RC aircraft heavier than 250 grams, many assumed the new rules meant an end to home built quadcopters. But manufacturers rose to the challenge, and started developing incredibly small and lightweight versions of their hardware. Today, building and flying ultra-lightweight quadcopters with first person view (FPV) cameras has become a dedicated hobby onto itself.

But as impressive as those featherweight flyers might be, the CogniFly Project is really pushing what we thought was possible in this weight class. Designed as a platform for experimenting with artificially intelligent drones, this open source quadcopter is packing a Raspberry Pi Zero and Google’s AIY Vision Kit so it can perform computationally complex tasks such as image recognition while airborne. In case any of those experiments take an unexpected turn, it’s also been enclosed in a unique flexible frame that makes it exceptionally resilient to crash damage. As you can see in the video after the break, even after flying directly into a wall, the CogniFly can continue on its way as if nothing ever happened.

Continue reading “Resilient AI Drone Packs It All In Under 250 Grams” →

3D Printing A Better Quadcopter Frame

January 15, 2018 by Tom Nardi 22 Comments

Before you smash the “Post Comment” button with the fury of Zeus himself, we’re going to go ahead and say it: if you want to build a decent quadcopter, buy a commercial frame. They are usually one of the cheaper parts of the build, they’re very light for how strong they are, and replacement parts are easily available. While you could argue the cost of PLA/ABS filament is low enough now that printing it would be cheaper than buying, you aren’t going to be able to make a better quadcopter frame on a 3D printer than what’s available on the commercial market.

The frame features a surprisingly low part count.

Having said that, [Paweł Spychalski] has recently shown off his 3D printed FPV racing quadcopter frame with some surprising results. The frame ended up being surprisingly stiff, and while the weight is a bit high, it’s actually lighter than he expected. If you’re looking to build a quad with the absolute minimum of expense his design might be something to look into.

Of course, [Paweł] is hardly the first person to think about printing a quad frame. But he did give his design some extra consideration to try and overcome some of the shortcomings he noticed in existing 3D printed designs. For one, rather than have four separate arms that mount to a central chassis, his design has arms that go all the way across with a thick support that goes between the motors. The central chassis is also reassuringly thick, adding to the overall stiffness of the frame.

The key here is that [Paweł] printed all the parts with 2 mm thick walls. While that naturally equates to longer print times and greater overall weight, it’s probably more than worth it to make sure the frame doesn’t snap in half the first time it touches the ground.

Beyond the printed parts, all you need to assemble this frame are about a dozen M3 nuts and bolts. Overall, between the hardware and the plastic you’re looking at a total cost of under $5 USD. In the video below [Paweł] puts the frame through its paces doing some acrobatic maneuvers, and it looks like 5 bucks well spent to us.

If you want to go all-in on 3D printed quadcopter parts, you can pair this frame with some printed propellers. Perhaps even a printed camera gimbal while you’re at it. Continue reading “3D Printing A Better Quadcopter Frame” →

$12 Quadcopter Frame From PVC Pipe

October 4, 2016 by Al Williams 24 Comments

Flying ready-made quadcopters is fun. Eventually, though, most hackers get the urge to build their own. One of the most challenging parts is building a robust airframe. [Thomas Jarrett] has an interesting approach: he uses schedule 21 PVC pipe to build a sturdy airframe that is inexpensive and can house the craft’s electronics to boot. You can see a video of the sizeable aircraft, below.

The 1″ pipe is lightweight but sturdy and big enough to hold some circuitry. The rest is secured with Lexan. [Thomas] used off the shelf avionics, but it is obvious you could use the frame with your own choice of flight systems easily.

Perhaps the trickiest part is flattening the PVC for the motor mounts over a stove. The landing gear are also PVC, and formed in boiling water. Just be careful since hot PVC can give off nasty fumes (we aren’t experts on that, but it makes sense that it would be; you can watch a video about safety when heating PVC pipe). The total cost, including some prototyping parts, was under $300.

We’ve talked about building up drones in the past. If you don’t like PVC, you could always try old motherboards.

Continue reading “$12 Quadcopter Frame From PVC Pipe” →

1-Hour Quadcopter Build

February 14, 2015 by Rich Bremer 9 Comments

[marhar] was pretty confident in his quadcopter building skills when he made a bet to build and fly a quadcopter in just one hour! This is a big task but he saved valuable time by using some unlikely parts that were hanging around his parts bin. And to make the task a little more difficult, this build wasn’t done in a nice shop, either. It was built outside on a patio floor with the only power tools available being a hand drill, miter saw and small drill press!

The frame is made from cheap, sturdy and available scrap wood. The center plates are 1/4″ plywood and the arms are 3/4″ square fir strips. Notice the landing gear, yes, those are mini wiffle balls zip-tied to the wooden arms. Although an unlikely candidate for landing gear, they are surprisingly effective.

The flight controller board is an Ardupilot. [marhar] did use a flight controller that he previously had in another quadcopter. He used it as-is, and it worked, but no programming or configuration time is included in the 1-hour limit. Even so, it doesn’t take away from the impressiveness of the build time. The motors, ESC’s and battery are just standard types used for most multirotors.

[marhar] doesn’t say what he won for completing the ‘copter but we hope it was something good, he deserves it. If you’d like to make something similar, [marhar] gives very detailed instructions and provides templates for the wood parts on his Instructables page. Check out the time-lapse build video after the break…

Continue reading “1-Hour Quadcopter Build” →

A Huge, Lightweight Wooden Quadrotor

May 27, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 15 Comments

quad_1

[Robert] once built a quadcopter frame by sawing laminate floor tile. It worked, we’re taking the lack of pictures of this build as evidence of how ugly it was. His latest design used a much better looking material – laser cut plywood – and the finished product is very strong and lightweight, even compared to commercial frames made with glass or carbon fiber and epoxy.

Although the design went smoothly thanks to some Solidworks skills, actually cutting the frame from 3mm birch ply resulted in a few issues. The cheap laser cutter used for cutting include some bottom of the line software called LaserWorksV5. There is a kerf compensation feature, called ‘sew compensation’ in the software’s native Chinglish. The software would always crash whenever it tried to calculate the compensation for circles. [Robert] spent two hours figuring this problem out, and in the end needed to break out a piece of sand paper to get a nice interlocking fit.

The completed frame bolts together without any glue at all, and the best part about it is the weight – only 167 grams. Compare that to a similarly sized glass fiber frame, and [Robert]’s shaved at least 200 grams off his finished build.