Interested in making my own drone- Where to start?

Hello,

I am a high school freshman interested in making my own drone. I've had an interested in airplanes since I was a kid. I want to pursue a career in aeronautics when I get older and thought building a drone would be an interesting project to do.

The drone just has to be very simple, I just want it to be able to fly on its own and take some pictures. Now, I was wondering if it is possible to build the entire drone from scratch. I mean build everything from the airframe, to program the autopilot my self. I will use an iPhone to take the photos, and I saw a video of someone using the Lego Mindstorms NXT as the autopilot (I was thinking of doing the same thing). 

 I have very little experience in programming and have never done any project like this before. Would it be possible for someone of my skill level to even do this? Are there any resources, or tutorials which could be of any use? What materials and tools will I need to buy? Keep in mind that I would like to spend as little money as possible. 

 

Thanks in advance

 

You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!

Join diydrones

Email me when people reply –

Replies

  • sure its possible to do, for your goal it might be easier to go with a quad copter design since they can be tested almost anywhere and anytime vs, an rc plane which needs to be flown with sufficient room and in the states i beleive at specific locations like flying clubs, what would you need?

    a frame ( the body of your uav) you could buy one or build one

    motors & escs ( escs control the speed to the motor) a quad copter needs 4pairs ( esc + motor, a plane needs 1 pair)

    servos , these control the flaps on the planes , aileron(roll), rudder (yaw), elevator (pitch), no servos needed for the quadcopter

    a tx/rx , receiver and transmitter ( remote control system)

    a battery to power you entire rc

    thats what you need for an RC plane or copter

    then you need the system that turns it into a uav, you could use the APM ( ardu pilot mega) + Oilpan ( a shield which fits ontop.

     

    the APM is like a brain the Oilpan gives it feedback through its sensors ,

    the oilpan has a bunch of sensors 3 axis accelorometer, and 2 gyros, one 2 axis and 1 single axis, pressure sensor for altitude , temp sensor,

     

    then you need a gps which is bought seperately and you could get optional sensors like a wind speed sensor, a magnetometer, and if you want to communicate live (real time) with the rc you'll need a pair of xbees for wireless telemetry

    make sure the freq on the xbee is diff from the tr/rx system you have,

     

    the code is open source for this system and available online

    you can browse the diydrones store for most of these parts and sparkfun.com

     

    you then tweak the code to your needs

     

    oh and get a tx/rx with 6+ channels if you want to take pictures and all,

     

    hope that gives you a basic idea of hardware, i dont know software, thats why i like this cause the codes available and under development

  • https://docs.google.com/document/d/1is-pzgdAhgsm32nuiDXclQsG_5mJYR6...
    DiyDrones - General FAQ
    DiyDrones - General FAQ THIS IS THE START OF A WORK IN PROGRESS!!! I’m new, where should I start. Read this first. Top five N00b questions and foll…
This reply was deleted.

Activity