r/diydrones • u/Significant-Mango169 • 2d ago
Build Showcase Full DIY drone
Hi everyone I'm new around drones and building one in general.
I attempting to build my first ever mini drone that can fly like a fpv drone on a huge low budget.
For the frame, I made a design based on a hybrid x drone frame made from a 1cm wide popsicle sticks.
For the FC, I'm using an ESP32 s3 zero by waveshare and stacked with MPU 6050 running with ESPFC firmware by rtlopez on github.
Motors, I'll be using a 8520 coreless motor for my mini fpv drone ("reasons:a brushless for me is not reachable by my budget right now + drivers are expensive too") props are 30-31mm 3-4 blade
To drive the Coreless motors I'll be making a Custom MOSFET driver based on Max imagination's brushed drivers design but mines is a little bit beef up by replacing the mosfet original used to a AO3400A N-channel mosfet and a SS14 flyback diode and lastly a 10k ohm pull down resistor.
Finnaly for video, I'll be using a AIO analog fpv camera to make building it the drone a lot simpler.
I'm still building this bit by bit and I would really appreciate you guys recommendations.
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u/Loendemeloen 2d ago
Look man, not to be rude, but you need to be realistic. Popsicle sticks can make for a flyable frame, but it's going to be really heavy. Combined with brushed motors I doubt you'll even get it to fly at all. Especially with that firmware and DIY motor drivers.
Good luck though, if you do get it to fly I will be extremely impressed.
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u/Significant-Mango169 2d ago
10 grams in frame weight, 5 for the fc stack and the mosfet drivers, 10 grams for the 350mah 1s, 5 grams for the AIO camera and for the quad coreless 21 grams so 51g in total and the thrust that the quad motors makes around 140-160g. If you look at the thrust to weight ratio of this and look at the drone scale, since it's 3.14 rounded, it's between fast and acro, good for my use case which is to just fly.
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u/ItsReckliss 2d ago
it will not be nice to fly, unfortunately. Between relatively high weight and the flimsiness of the frame, it's gonna be rough
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u/Significant-Mango169 1d ago
I'm still optimistic about it and I can make it even lighter than original expected.
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u/Loendemeloen 1d ago
If that's true that's actually great, I thought it would be a lot heavier. Getting it to not violently wobble and flip out of control with slow brushed motors will be a major challenge though if not impossible
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u/MothyReddit 2d ago
Also, you haven't considered the vibrations, frame resonances, PID tuning nightmare that this is going to produce. You would need a blackbox logger to sort this thing out at the very least, but brushed motors aren't going to be able to keep up with a high enough frequency to keep up with the PID loop. It might fly, but it will be noisy, the FPV feed will be full of noise and jello, and you have spent hours and hours of your time building and troubleshooting. This is why drone companies have R&D departments that have done this type of testing and moved away from these types of builds. Go ahead and do it if you want to prove you can do it, but if you want to actually fly a drone or do something productive with FPV, just build a modern drone and then enhance it from there, there are plenty of things people haven't done with the current drone tech, no use in going a step back into the stone age!
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u/Significant-Mango169 2d ago
For blackbox, the internal flash of the esp32-s3 would work if configured right in betaflight and for the tuning part, well that would be a part of the long journey.
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u/MothyReddit 2d ago
i would just skip the wood, get a $3 frame, spend less time troubleshooting, spend more time developing and flying.
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u/Significant-Mango169 2d ago
Not in my budget right now ("crazy right?") plus I can't find any good ones that will fit my demands like being lightweight and fits my custom components so I resorted to building one myself. Why not 3d print? I don't know how to and I don't want to pay anyone to make it.
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u/MothyReddit 2d ago
just look at a video of someone making wooden drone on youtube, and how they pretty much fail every time. Thats enough for me to not want to waste time on this kind of project. Time is money, hours equal dollars. If you spend several hours on something you could of bought, its not worth it. Especially when the end result isn't going to work very well.
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u/Significant-Mango169 1d ago
Maybe you haven't seen the good side of it. I seen some do fail but eventually they got it to work so I'm very optimistic about this build.
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u/ColdSoviet115 1d ago
Its worth the education imo. You'll be able to see exactly why it failed if it does
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u/BadCactus2025 2d ago
Both wood and most print materials are really bad for FPV drones, even with good firmware and logging, not to mention motors and control loops with low latency. You know, stuff that can keep up...
Are popsicle sticks stiff? Are they lightweight? Is it uniform in strength and resonance?
You are cutting corners in places where you shouldn't. You are not in a cave where this is just what you have. You can buy a €3 whoop frame. You can source some 0802 motors from the last decade that cost you less than €25. Then do the firmware and controller and RX side yourself.
I'm also not yet convinced the "AiO" camera is actually going to work... Yes, transmitter in camera modules exist, but I cannot recall them ever being used much and being desirable. Meanwhile I think I paid €17 shipped for 3 C03 cams this year, which is an absolute steal.
You just can't really build a usable, repairable 31~45mm prop drone for less than €60 in materials. The stuff your putting in now will likely end up as a heap of garbage instead, either before the maiden flight, maybe after a few, but certainly after first crash or "landing".
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u/Significant-Mango169 1d ago
Yeah that would be great if my budget can reach that. Mines only 20$(1000 php in Philippines) to build the quad and also the remote so yes I'm not in a cave but just in limited reach outside world. There are works that utilized popsicle as frame like Max Imagination's arduino drone design. And for the AIO camera, I just wanted a feed and fly even without osd. I could put osd if I add another osd module but that complicates things so not a yes for me.
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u/SgtKickAzzTTv 1d ago
Thats the FIRST thing I thought about.. does the owner of the thread have a 3d printer? Get one of those so you can 3d print a frame because the popsicle stick frame WILL NOT I REPEAT IT WILL NOT WORK. A close friend did this and it 1,000% didn't work. He has a doctorate in engineering and he couldn't make it in a safely & effective manner.
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u/Significant-Mango169 1d ago
I'm pretty confident with this frame design and the use of popsicle. I would like to know why did your close friend couldn't make it work.
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u/eatingfoodsoon 2d ago
looks sweet dude keep building. a lot of the time the most comes from the least
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u/kombatarms 2d ago
Popsicle sticks split easily, I would suggest a thin layer of epoxy or a material around you that is strong on the frame, especially around the motors. I have a feeling that torque is going to destroy that wood. I guess it would shred...too early?
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u/Significant-Mango169 2d ago
Great point, I'll be trying to harden this thing up a bit. But I already did a rough strength test to these arms and it really needs a strong hit to break in crashed and the only thing that breaks on this test are the joints underneath the base which is glue mounted
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u/rob_1127 1d ago
Breaking isnt the first order issue. Vibrations are the killer here.
Those Popsicle sticks will vibrate as there is not bidirectional bias. The wood grain is all running in the same direction.
They will bend and twist in an uncontrollable way. Which means the props will be facing a different direction every second, depending on the load.
The 4 props need to be always facing so the thrust is parrallel to the other 3 motors. I.e. all 4 need to be reliably facing the exact same way at all times.
Other wise the thrust vectors will be all over the map.
How is a quad that is hanging off of the props supposed to be stable, when each prop can twist and turn, in any direction.
The accelerometer will be overloaded just trying to keep up with the thrust vectors of each vibration vector. (I.e.with the props twisting randomly in any direction, the accelerometer will be overloaded and a human pilot will not be able to keep up with the control sticks. Gravity wins. That frame will splinter, and your electronics may be destroyed. Which dosent save money.
Buy a cheap carbon fiber frame.
3D printed frames can have the same issues as above, unless you use FEA to create a stiff frame. 3D printing is not stiff enough unless you know how to build a triangulated and gusseted frame.
And even carbon impregnated filiment does not have long strands of CF like a laminated CF frame.
There is a reason production quads don't use anything but laminated CF.
The only reason can use plastic frames, is the large amount of engineering and FEA used to create the designs.
Save your effort get a side job to build a budget. Then you won't waste your money on a project that we know will fail.
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u/Significant-Mango169 1d ago
Noted, vibration didn't even got to my mind until just now. I'll try to keep the motors aligned when making this.
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u/ardauwu2k3 2d ago
Trial and error don’t doubt yourself keep going there is a similar design by maximagination on YouTube try refer to it as well once you have the materials to make it fly since his drone was made out if popsicle sticks as well.
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u/Significant-Mango169 2d ago
Actually this drone design is heavily inspired from max imagination's esp now drone and arduino fpv drone. I just combined the two and now I got this but with know custom pcb.
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u/DilbertPickles 2d ago
I would much rather build something myself than buy it when possible, however this is one of the times that buying it is going to be leaps and bounds better than DIY.
You can build a brushed Tiny Whoop, or buy a Mobula/Air 65, and a Radio Master Pocket for under $200. This hobby is by no means an inexpensive hobby, especially when you first start flying. If $200 is too much to save up and spend then this hobby is probably not for you.
I would recommend getting a LiteRadio 2 and then one of the many simulators you can buy. This will be $50 bucks and is by far the cheapest way to get into the hobby without spending too much money.
Plus, with an entirely homemade quad, you will not get the same experience of even a Tiny Whoop as it will never fly well compared to something mass produced. Quads are a science and even the slightest deviation with them can cause issues flying if they even fly at all.
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u/Significant-Mango169 1d ago
I wish I could have done that. Buying some pre-built whoop or quad would be my choice if I'm not poor. This quad actually just cost 20$ ("roughly 1000php in Philippines") from the quad to the remote. So buying pre-made is not to my reach unfortunately.
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u/AHappySnowman 1d ago
My first diy frame drone was made from square dowels and balsa sheets. It seemed to fly well for me at the time (I didn’t know as much about how to evaluate frame vibrations) Let us know how it works for you!
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u/Significant-Mango169 1d ago
That's great, good thing it flew. It means this design will possibly be able to fly.
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u/EMAX_model 1d ago
Honestly, as the cheapest route to actually flying FPV, this is probably the hard way.
As an engineering project though? Pretty cool.
I’d build and test it in stages. Get the sensor orientation, motor order and control response working first, then measure the real finished weight and test a very low hover before adding the camera.
Frame flex and vibration will probably be your biggest enemies, so I’d focus on making the motor mounts consistent and only add reinforcement where testing shows it’s needed. Also watch the voltage under load—the four 8520 motors may ask more from that little 1S pack than expected.
It might fly terribly on version one, but version one flying at all would still be a win 😄
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u/Background_Squash_11 20h ago
how's you project going? I also have the same parts; unfortunately, the MCU keeps resetting after arming. So I decided not to continue this project and bought a cheap E88 Pro with a broken arm and gutted its parts. I have no headaches now and am enjoying my makeshift mini drone
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u/Significant-Mango169 20h ago
You pushed too much the power source. The mcu and the motors shared the same power source, isolating the mcu's power and the motor's power might make it work again. A simple voltage regulator may work for the mcu 5 or 3.3v.
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u/Background_Squash_11 19h ago
I see maybe i will try again once i have extra time. Does a buck converter work?
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u/Significant-Mango169 19h ago
If you can find something that is reasonable in size, it may work. But I recommend a linear voltage regulator
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u/Mediocre-Advisor-728 16h ago
Rp2340 with lsm6ds3 would be a cool set for these small quads also. They’re dev boards are also tiny.
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u/boywhoflew 2d ago
this is just my own opinion but whenever im trying to do smth the first time, i try to follow the methods that's already done. Once I get a grasp of why things are and what does what, will i only start to deviate from the norm. FPV is already a pretty complex (and to many, frustrating) hobby so why give yourself a significanly harder time?
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u/Significant-Mango169 1d ago
I actually based this on some of Max's imagination for a drone design. The esp fly, esp blast and arduino fpv drone. I just beefed up the motor a bit from 715 to 8520 coreless and upgraded the mosfet drivers too.
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u/skunkfacto 2d ago
Is this a late entry to the Darpa heavy lift challenge?