My girlfriend and I decided to build our own drone, since both of us had chosen to do our Master Thesis about drones. As you can see, knowing how to build a drone and process the data from on-board sensors does not equate to knowing how to fly! To be fair, this was an early test flight, so by the time you read this we can (hopefully) pilot it better.
The custom frame is built using carbon fiber tubes and 3D-printed parts, while the electronics are a combination of store-bought and self-assembled Arduino compatible electronics. We also designed a custom PCB in Autodesk Eagle, and milled it at KTH. This custom PCB will allow us to add additional functionality over time, by accessing the additional input channels from the controller. We may for example add a Raspberry Pi Zero with a small camera, as well as a GPS module.
A close up view of the custom drone frame.
It took a few iterations to get a good balance between part rigidity and design minimalism, but the current setup is very modular and easy to fix after crashing. Unfortunately there seems to be some kind of hardware or software bug that occasionally causes the drone to suddenly drop dead, which has cracked the legs until that piece was improved for durability. We have not yet looked into solving this, which will have to be done before adding any extra features.
For it's size, the weight is very low - slightly over 1 kg!
