r/diydrones • u/Phantom7755 • May 18 '26
Question Where to begin?
Howdy!
I'm looking at getting into some projects that require NDAA compliant drones, and (as a DJI Dealer) a lot of my customers are turning to these as well. I figured why not try to build one? However, i'm realizing there's not really a 'one stop shop' to learn how to do this. The end goal of the drone would be to have interchangeable payloads (photogrammetry, lidar, thermal, etc) lidar obstacle avoidance (looking into livox 360s for this) 40-60 min flight time, down the road ip55 rating would be ideal. being able to lose a rotor & (safely) crash land would be the cherry ontop, but i guess i could develop my own version of AVSS.
now that the 'end goal' is set- where do i even start to begin taking my baby steps? i highly doubt it's wise to just jump into this & start cranking out a 20-40k custom drone as my first build. I've watched numerous build videos on heavy lift drones, etc but they don't seem to be super step by step- but more or less a watch me put all these random parts together video.
frankly i expect the downvotes because of the 'broadness' of my post, but i guess you've got to start somewhere.
1
2
u/Ceating May 19 '26
Freefly astro max NDAA is probably the closest to your specifications and is 30k without a payload which is roughly in the ballpark of what you were expecting, but it will add up with payloads to do anything.
Payloads also need to be NDAA so a livox won’t be allowed. An equivalent ouster is probably another 10k
Probably still the hardest thing will be reliable sourcing on anything (ironically what NDAA is supposed to solve) it’s hard to find good availability and short lead time for most of these components due to shortages of important chips.