Drones go mainstream

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By Steve Hargreaves …

After a crash, two of the arms on my 3DR Hex shifted slightly.  Enough that the props overlapped.  I didn't notice it for a while, but on a subsequent flight, they prop tips touched.  The hex didn't crash but the noise it made certainly got my attention.

My solution was to add more sonar mounting brackets to beef up the arm placements.  It also gave me more places to mount stuff.  (Copter is upside-down in the photo).…

I seem to be removing my props often, and I worry that my hand holding the motor while I torque the collett on or off is not strong enough and I certainly don't want to use a steel tool like a Channel Lock.  So, I use a small plumbers strap wrench, pictured below.

This one is overkill because it is made for, well,…

Here's a source of 3mm standoffs, like the ones under my GPS module.  They are available at any computer store that sells PC parts.  Fry's and Microcenter come to mind.…

I accidentally discovered a perfectly fitting cover for my APM stack:

Yup - a cold-cuts box.

I am using a set of thumbscrews to hold my stack to the hexacopter frame , and the cold cuts plastic box fits over the thumbscrews perfectly.  The cover doesn't budge in a hard landing or while…

The first line in the flight manual should read: "You will crash".

The stock landing gear on my 3DR hexacopter are fine for experienced pilots, but while learning to fly, you will crash.  At the very least you will make hard landings.

I removed the surviving polycarbon landing gear and replaced them with much more forgiving parts.…

The micro USB connector on the APM boards is extremely fragile and easily damaged.

My solution was to insert a Micro USB to Mini USB adapter to the copter:

This way, I just use any Mini USB while on the ground or bench, and leave the adapter cable on the copter.

Here's an example:…

Here is how I made a parallel battery adapter.  Mostly because I didn't want to wait for an order from Hong Kong, but also because the commercially available parallel adapter uses #14 AWG wire, which is probably too small for my Hexacopter.





I tried to make one with wires, but I was never happy…

While building and balancing my hexacopter (and rebuilding it after learning crashes) I frequently move the radios. Note the white tabs under the radios.  These are 3M Command adhesive strips.  By using these removable strips I can simply pull the tab to remove the strip and relocate the radios as…