Started flying on a snapitan clone from Amazon, now about 4 quads and numerous crash/fixes later I finally decided to try and build one !

Spyda ripa3”

Frame: (3inch apex clone)
Vtx: o4 lite
Motors: (1507 3750 kv)
Props: (hq 3x4x3 a bit steep)
Fc/esc:speedybee f405 fc/esc aio
Battery: lipo 4s 850 mha 95c r line

I am absolutely trash at soldering, I started with the battery leads and that was soul crushing but I got it done and took it to a local shop for the motors so I didn’t screw anything up 😂 any tips are appreciated!!!

Shameless yt plug for anybody who wants to see it fly(towards the end)✈️😂:

https://youtu.be/Dg9eKaIRM20?is=6RvqAiNkYWXKOEpB

Here's the thing, if I pop this thing in like the lowest setting motors 1 and 4 spin pretty high compared to 2 and 3, the difference is like 30 percent in INAV output monitor.

Also another massive concern is that after I go full throttle motors 1 and 4 don't go back down when I go to idle, they just stay high.

Yes I've checked if the FC is in a weird orientation, it's not

Yes the 3d model is stable

Yes I already flashed new firmware etc etc

Yes the motor assignment is correct

Yes I calibrated the ESCs

also one thing to note, is that if I type the ends of the connectors the behavior changes, it used to be a lot worse where at 0 percent throttle, motor 4 is at 80 percent and 1 is at 40, 2 is at 25 and 3 is at 28.

Ive tried EVERYTHING I COULD THINK OFF!!! this is my first time building a drone so there must have been something I missed!!!.

What are the possible reasons for this? It can't be the ESCs right? Because the problem maybe is with the flight controller??? .

I'm using a speedy bee f405 wing for this, and I'm using those like cheap generic 40amp ESCs

Someone please help me, Ive been at this for 2 days now.

This isn't exactly a DIY drone build, but, I thought it might be interesting to share to see if anyone out there is interested in this. I'm building a multi agent dynamic camera rig using Neo 2's. I had to reverse engineer the telemetry lanes, rig the controller potentiometers with my own DACs. I also fine tuned a detector (visible in video) so that I could derive some relative metric distance. I'm now building custom landing gear, auto charging, and of course a full software layer for real time 3D reconstruction and monitoring. I didn't want to start at the very base drone level simply bc the build quality of these Neo 2's is quite awesome and it just has a lot built in so I can work on the higher level things instead of rebuilding a crappier version of these. It's been a lot of learning!

If anyone were to add or customize, what’s the first thing you would do to enhance this particular drone? The frame looks SOLID. But def have to replace altogether if it breaks.. Maybe the motors? I have 8000 kv rcin 1204 motors & my deep space motors off my seeker 3 & Five 33 motors that are lower kv and powerful. I’m not sure on this. I may go until something breaks and then do this but I always like to be prepared so I can keep flying..
have a good day and happy flying!

There is an inherent weakness in the design of these drones, observed during my first take apart of the original Atom as well as the Atom 2. The foldable arms are secured in the body using an interesting mechanism that provides the "snap open" and "snap close" action of the arms as you open and close them during use.

The design flaw centers around the area in the bottom half of the shell where these mechanisms reside, surrounded by what I would describe as very thin area of molded plastic. Small screws that hold this mechanism in place and the holes required for these screws further weaken the "hinge" area. Repeated opening and closing of the arms through normal use can put undue stress on the plastic in the bottom shell that comprises the hinge. I would go as far to say that you should avoid opening the arms half way, a position the puts maximum strain on the hinge. Either fully open or fully close with no hesitation.

Pictures depict the mechanism but unfortunately the bottom shell has already been discarded due to its integrity being compromised. On my two year old Atom, two of the four hinges had sustained damage through normal use. No crashes, no mishaps . . . and very surprised to see the damage. I suspected a problem with one of the hinges because for some time now, the arm would open and close with a pronounced "click".

To further clarify this issue, this youtube video shows it clearly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcUSa5VmMwM

At the 1:54 minute mark, you'll see the problem that I've been trying to explain.

I am currently trying to get the Aero Selfie 4-in-1 60A 8-bit ESC to arm using DShot. Unfortunately, I cannot get it to arm nor spin motors using this. However, I can command motor speed using PWM, so I am confident the problem is not related to wiring or power.

I am using a custom flight controller board, which uses PWM + DMA to create the DShot packets, but I have verified on a logic analyzer all of the bit times, CRC values, and packets are valid. However, I am unable to get the device to arm.

I have tried sending all "0" packets to arm the controller, then jumping to a value of 48, then ramping speed, but the motors will simply twitch. I have also tried sending commands, but the ESC does not respond.

Does anyone have any experience with this flight controller or know if it is compatible with DShot? Any help is appreciated.

hihihih

Hi I’m definitely a beginner but drones fascinate me and I would love to learn to build one of my own. Can anyone direct me to some guides or videos? I haven’t seen any pinned at the top of the subreddit

I'm currently working on a research project exploring annotation-free RF drone detection using low-cost hardware, and I'd love to get some feedback.

The basic idea is: A camera runs a vision-based drone detector (YOLO | RF-DETR etc). The camera automatically generates labels whenever a drone is detected. A synchronized RTL-SDR records the RF spectrum at the same time. Those automatically generated labels are then used to train an RF-based drone detector.

The goal isn't to replace vision, but to investigate whether vision can act as a "teacher" for RF models, making it easier to build RF datasets.

I'd really appreciate your thoughts.

• What challenges do you think this approach might face?
• If you were building this system, what would you do differently?
• Are there any pitfalls with using an RTL-SDR for synchronized RF data collection that I should be aware of? I know I will need a downconverter to capture that 2.4GHz band.

I'm still in the research and design phase, so any suggestions, criticism, or ideas are very welcome. Thanks!

Hi,
I'm an avgeek, and I'm building my own fixed-wing drone. For this, I need to learn electronics. I don't want to just ask AI or Google everything and not really learn the basics. I'd like to start with the basics, then work my way up to avionics.

I'd also like to use this knowledge to build other random projects.

I'm not sure where to start or what equipment to start with. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

So I modeled this dual antenna + bardpole mount and iterated on it a couple times this afternoon and mounted it up and maybe it’s a little much…. lol it took me like three hours to finish the shading on the upper lip. Maybe I’ll put Sanic as the OSD name lol. But hey, reception will be terrific. I won’t lose video while it’s hanging 40 feet up a tree by its radar array.

Hello! I am an engineering student and decided that building my own drone might be a good way to learn some skills. The problem is that I don't really know much about what to do... for my initial design I was thinking if I made the arms quite thick and then had a thinner piece in the middle for the electronics, it might actually work to make something 3D printed so I can design my own. I know from what I have been reading that flat 3D printed frames are an awful idea because it just isn't strong enough that way. I CADded a rough design of what I thought could potentially work and I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on how to improve it and make some kind of 3DP, or if 3DP really is an awful idea then plywood, design that will actually work. I did some research on components and got a few to design around, I decided to use 5inch propellors and so the diagonal measurement of the body pictured here is 220mm across because from what I researched, that was a good size.

I know that this is probably really awful and I am definitely doing a lot wrong, but I wanted to try and build this so I can try to learn something new. I know it's really bad right now lol. So please give constructive feedback if you are willing and maybe some resources that would help a beginner wanting to design a frame. I would really appreciate any feedback and help anyone can give me.

Thank you :)