I have built several drone so far, and they have one thing in common…..all were expensive, doesn’t matter the size. So for my first airPy equipped quadcopter I decided to use some material I already had bought to build a racing mini drone (180 mm motor-to-motor).
Following the list of the components:
Of course I already had my radio controller, the Frsky Taranis 9XD.
Step 1: ESC and Motors
Due to the small size of the frame the best way to arrange esc and motors is to solder directly the two together by removing cutting the motor wires and de-soldering the esc ones. Following some pictures of the process.
Step 2: Power distribution soldering
Once all the 4 motors are soldered to the related esc, the next step is to solder each esc to the power distribution board, and then screwing everything to the frame. I was particularly happy with this power distribution board since it has a 5v built-in converter very handy to power up the flight controller. At the end of this step the quadcopter start looking awesome:
Step 3: airPy flight controller and RC Receiver
It is time now to screw the board to the frame and connect the 5v power wire, the 4 esc servo connectors and the SBUS receiver.
Step 4: Testing
Believe me, a drone, even the smallest one, can be very harmful. This time i decided to tackle the testing phase in the safest way: i build a test bed. It took a couple of days but I’m quite satisfied with the result. By anchoring the quadcopter to the rolling bar it is possible to safely test the basic behavior and also tune the PIDs.
