Hi All! I've been busy building this new experimental screened-in drone.

It's built out of many DIY style components. 3D printed motor mounts, rain gutter screen "finger protector rings", some spare foam, rubber damping balls, random bits of carbon fiber cut up, epoxy, hot glue and a micro apm.

My mail goal of this project was to have a fun park flyer that would be safer than open blades. I also tried to make it light and flexible. Flexible as in it can bounce off the ground and still keep going. I bounced it off the walls and floors in my home for a quick test and it works quite well.

All in all  i'm quite impressed. It is DIY so everything isn't perfect, but it gets the job done. I'm posting some more pics below. Some have the GPS installed and others don't. I didn't need it for my indoor tests when I took some of the pics.

DIY Butterfly Drone designed by DWDrones

Hi all, just wanted to share a new drone design. It's a lightweight drone made out of foam boards and 3D printed motor mounts.

I've been working on this design for several months and it is now ready for sharing.

If you want the files to produce your own just head here:

Butterfly Drone

I augmented this design with rain gutter screens to protect the items in my house. It is also powered by an old computer PSU. Now I can fly for hours ;-)

Here is a short video:

Some more pics:

Bottom view

Top View with cover off

Juno Drone frame designed by DWDrones.

Hi DIYDRONES! I saw the Juno battery on here many months ago and decided to buy it. It's stated as having a 12 volts, 300 peak amps and 6000mAh capacity. I had hopes to use it for some of my drone projects but the shape didn't quite fit my current drone frames. I decided to make a drone around the battery instead! It's being printed right now. I will followup with post production pics!

Daniel Lukonis

DWDrones.com

Primary Design Goals:

Created to work with a JUNOJUMPR (Black) by JunoPower.

Designed to be 3D printer friendly.

All electronics can fit comfortably inside the body. ESCs (green), Flight Controller (purple), GPS (orange).

 

Top View

 

Front View

The 3D Printing plans have printer helpers that can be snipped off post production.

Hi all! I've been trying to come up with a way to cut foam sheets for some of my drone projects. I had to balance temperature and speed. I may have thought of something that was discovered years ago but I still find it postworthy. I just setup my hotwire cutter on and angle. It gave me a nice smooth cut without jittermarks. The speed is set by the angle of the board. I set the temperature by adjusting the width of the leads. For a power source i'm using an old lipo battery charger. Here are some results of just test foam.

I recently received 2 products I'm excited to try out:

$30 FPV goggle from Hobbyking __Link

-and-

$100 Car starting battery/ground station power __Link

I wanted to start FPV with my tricopter but was not enthusiastic about spending the cash to do so. But hello...what is this? A cheap but nicely done FPV goggle? Yes I'll take that. I already had the camera and transmitters I bought with my APM from 3DR, but had no way to view it. Until now. The assembly was easy, just a little Elmer's glue here and there, and BAM... a cool little setup. I'll try to follow up with actual usage when I fly.

Need power for your ground station? Your car is dead because you left the radio on in your car as you jam to some tunes while flying? Have no fear! Juno is here! Lol, I actually saw this product announcement a while ago on DIYDRONES and pre-ordered it. Now that it's here I'm really impressed. It charges through an included car charger or usb. The output is either usb or 12V power port. It comes with some handy car charging clamps. I'm going to include it in my ground station so I don't need separate batteries, I'll just power it all from this guy.

PS I get no monies from either company, just wanted to share some cool products I'll use.

For this build I tried to fit together fun, fun and more fun! I decided on a Titan Tricopter frame for its incredible crash resistance. The arms fold and legs shoot off to absorb the energy from a crash. It reminds me of a Formula 1 car, the only thing left is the cage that protects the vital parts.

I'm more of a slow flyer and wanted longer flights, however I still wanted the responsiveness of a Tri. For this I decided to put on larger blades and lower KV motors on the front, and a normal size prop and motor on the back.

I just ordered a pixhawk to continue line of 3DR brains (PX4, APM). It fits nicely in the body of the frame with just some foam holding it in place.

2 x 15x5" CF blades

1 x 10x4.5" Plastic blade

3 x 20amp AFRO esc (1 esc for rear servo)

1 x 30amp AFRO esc

2 x 360kv pancake motors

1 x 750kv motor

2200mAH Lipo

Pixhawk with external GPS/Comp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mme79-4G9o&index=4&list=PLqda967xa8gOfKd-G9YA_Qu_magN6c-4j

How much more battery life do you get by adding solar panels to your quad?

The setup: (I used a lot of Ian's design for the frame)

APM 2.6

2200 MAH LiPo Battery

15x5.5" Carbon Blades

20 Amp Afro ESC (love the hair)

RCTimer 5010 - 360Kv motors

12mm x 600mm Carbon tubes

2000 Microfarad capacitor

3 Amp Diode

20 Powerfilm RC flexible solar panels

I tried to keep everything as light as possible. The frame is carbon, the solar cells rest on Dollar Tree foam boards.

Each wing has 5 solar panels (7.2 volt / 100 Miliamp) arranged in parallel (7.2 volt / 500 Miliamp total)

I hooked 2 pair of wings in series (14.4 volt) then connected each pair in parallel (1000 Miliamp).

I placed a Diode to the end of the circuit to prevent the battery from feeding the solar array.

I connected the solar array in parallel to the battery so it could assist with the amps needed, then charge the battery a bit while sitting on the ground while I made adjustments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjhCrllZ7Tg

I will continue to work on these experiments but from my initial research there is too much surface area on the solar array. Gains made in extra amps were diminished by the extra power required to keep the drone in place against the wind.

-however-

I landed the drone several times for tweaks and checkups. The solar cells really came into play then. It would charge the battery about 0.5 volts each time it landed (it sat in the sun about 15min).

~Daniel~

Digital Wings Drones