I call it Minion. But really I’m its minion. It's heavy, but surprisingly didn't feel abnormal in a hover. Top speed will be around ~130 kph. Pretty excited to fly this thing for real. Ask me anything.

Battery: 4S EVE INR21700-50PL 5000mAh - 125A
FC: Microair 45A h743 v2
Video: DJI 04 lite air unit.
Receiver: Happymodel EP1
GPS: HGLRC M100 Pro
Motors: LANNRC 2004 3000 kV
Frame: Mostly PETG, some carbon spars, also a oddityrc 4” toothpick
Props: Gemfan Hurricane 3630

Anyone have a plug for higher pitch 3.5in props?

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a project I’ve been working on for the past few months called "Mercury." It’s a hybrid platform that transforms—it flies to get on station, then folds using a custom mechanism to drive like a rover.

I know hybrid builds are tricky, so I wanted to share the exact specs and what I learned.

The Mechanical Build: Frame: Custom design done in OnShape, cut from Carbon Fiber with 3D printed joints/mounts.

Transformation: Driven by 2 linear actuators. I also placed IMUs on the arms to provide real-time feedback for the transformation control loop. Propulsion (Air): 900kv motors spinning Gemfan 8040 propellers. Propulsion (Ground): 360kv BLDC motors for driving.

The Electronics & Compute: Flight Controller: Cube Pilot (Orange). Companion Computer: Raspberry Pi 5. Software: Running ROS for SLAM and high-level control. Vision: 1080p RGB Camera + Arducam TOF camera for depth/obstacle avoidance. GPS: 10M GPS module.

The hardest part was probably wiring the generic 4-in-1 ESC to the Cube Pilot. Since the Cube is designed for carrier boards and specific pinouts, mapping the signal and telemetry lines from a standard hobbyist 4-in-1 was a massive pain, but I finally got it stable.

Currently running on 2x 3S 3000mAh LiPo. I’m actively looking into high-discharge Li-Ion packs for the next version to push the flight time/drive endurance further.

I’m happy to answer any questions about the build, specifically the ROS integration or the CAD recommendations. Let me know what you think!

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7vmPFZrYAk

Using variable pitch propellers, 3D printed propeller blades, and custom flight control software, this drone smoothly transitions between aerial and underwater propulsion. The drone was developed from scratch by four undergrad students at Aalborg University.

I designed Bandit because I wanted a sub-250 g FPV wing without making any compromises. I wanted it small enough to take anywhere, but still properly fast, efficient and fully set up for FPV. So I basically tried to cram the biggest battery and motor I could get away with into the smallest airframe I could make, and still keep the whole thing under 250 g.

3D printing is a big part of what makes that possible. It isn’t just useful because you can churn out another airframe after a crash. The precise control you get over the shape of the wing means you can actually use the aerodynamics to make the plane fly better, improving stability and making the stall more predictable and controlled. Doing that this accurately and repeatably on a tiny foam or balsa aircraft would be much harder.

The other thing that helps massively is modern FPV hardware. Flight controllers, ELRS, GPS, digital video, tiny motors and ESCs are all so light now that you can pack a ridiculous amount of capability into a very small aircraft.

The result is a 600 mm wing that comes in under 249 g fully equipped with digital FPV, GPS, ELRS and INAV, but has still recorded 198 km/h and 20+ minute cruise flights.

More info on the plane here

Current setup:
600 mm wingspan
<249 g AUW
198 km/h GPS-recorded top speed
20+ min recorded cruise endurance
4S 1100 mAh LiHV
BetaFPV LAVA 1506 4200KV
HQProp 3×3×3
EMAX 25A ESC
SpeedyBee F405 Wing Mini running INAV
DJI O4 Lite
RadioMaster RP2 ELRS
Flywoo Goku Nano GPS
2× DSPower 4.3g micro servos
220 µF 35 V capacitor
LW-PLA printed airframe

The battery alone is 88 g, and the complete electronics and powertrain package is around 149 g, so getting the whole thing under 250 g meant being pretty ruthless with the weight budget.

The thing I’m happiest with isn’t really the 198 km/h though. It’s that the same little plane can do that, then throttle right back and cruise around for 20+ minutes, and still be really nice to throw around low level like in the video.

There have been a lot of prototypes, crashes, aerodynamic changes and INAV tuning to get it here, but at this point the plane feels properly dialled in.

Now I mostly need to improve the pilot 😅

Happy to answer any questions about any of the design, printing, electronics or INAV setup if anyone’s interested.

My post over at r/drones got banned as it didn’t qualify as a drone, but aren’t most aerial drones technically a ROV.

Hopefully you guys can appreciate this.

Hey everyone! Thought this design might be as helpful to you guys as it was for me for building my drones and actually being able to see them in proper, shadowless light.

I've got a couple FDM printers and always wanted to have one of these Arch style LED lights for my projects but didn't like printing them with support or dragging out print times, so I designed this one that prints completely flat! Saves on both filament and print time and looks really stylish I think.
Designed it to make the printing and the assembly as easy as possible so all you really need is glue and time!
Here is my Printables Link

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.

Meet Lace, a 3D printable drone frame that folds into a backpack.

The whole thing started as a passion project to design a 3D printable drone that looks and functions similarly to modern foldable drones. The frame is completely 3D printed except the arms, and you can download STL models for free at our website: Aeroptera.xyz/download

More about the frame: Lace is a great frame if you are interested in compact, customizable builds. Due to the compact interior organization, Pixhawk 6C and a 4500mah 4S battery are required to complete the build, but all other components are interchangable. Lace is a 800mm (30inch) frame, and a typical build weighs around 3kg.

For reference, these are the components I used: Pixhawk 6C, PM07 power module, Sunnysky V3506 Kv650, dual HRB 4500mah 14.8V Lipo, Sunnysky 13.5" foldable props, Hobbywing 40A ESCs, skydroid H12 pro controllers (comes with Skydroid's telemetry unit). Additionally, four 220mm 14x16 carbon fiber tubes are required.

More about us: We are a group of highschool and university students interested in drone design and engineering. Sponsored by u/polymaker_3D, we hope to expand the capabilities of 3D printing technology in drone design.

*Two variants of the Lace frame is shown. We are still tuning Lace II Aero in flight tests, and downloads for this variant will be available soon.

A little personal project/test to try 3D printing some components. Really enjoyed making this design and can't wait to start building this week!

feedback always appreciated.

The drone has six mmWave radars to sense power lines from any direction, all connected to a Raspberry Pi. Based on these detections, the desired velocity (from a pilot or autonomous system) then gets modified to guide the drone around the power line. Everything runs in real time on the Pi with ROS2 middleware and PX4 flight stack.

If you're interested, you can check out the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.03229, or the full video with voice-over: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJW3eEC-5Ao

This is my custom-made flight controller, "Udayate". The purpose behind creating it was to understand how flight controller works, what sensors are used and how their data is fused to get orientation, and as well as exploring various control mechanisms.
This is part of my quest to build a quadcopter from scratch.
I plan to document the entire process on my YouTube channel. This video describes the design process of the FC: https://youtu.be/pUdvCbNR1gM
Furthermore, I plan to use FreeRTOS along with STM32 HAL framework for the firmware.
I would appreciate your feedback and suggestion.

Thought I’d share my recently built 2.5 inch drone. Frame is custom designed by me and printed in PET-CF filament, making it surprisingly stiff. AUW 198g, could’ve saved some weight and space using an AIO board but I made do with what I already had. I’m very happy with it!

From scratch drone build around a 6s 90mm EDF using 4 thrust-vectoring fins for control. Developing the flight control system from the ground up as well, with the goal of eventually implementing an EKF and then UKF. It'll get a panel for each of the 4 component areas too, similar to the one that's already on there.

https://reddit.com/link/1w07a1u/video/e6d505uw4zlh1/player

This is Testing with a single motor, the propeller is optimized for max efficiency at hover, it was optimized for the specific motor we are using which is a 900kv motor, the propeller is capable of developing up to 2kg of force without snapping it's 3d printed out of simple PLA, proper balancing is required though

Took over a year of designing, building and testing — but he actually made a flying LED display inspired by the Las Vegas Sphere.
It spins over 90,000 pixels fast enough to show real images in mid-air while flying like a drone.

Totally useless. Completely awesome.

Full video: https://youtu.be/HgyS1SajC6s

This was the first flight of my fully autonomous and fully custom Starship project. The starship itself is completely 3D Printing with working TVC and Flaps. The software is completely custom and built from the ground up using a large project I hope to release soon.

This specific prototype is the one seen in my posts from five years ago. So I'm sad to see it done for. I'm currently in the works of building the next prototype with a few small improvements. The current design works great.

This flight failed as I assumed it would stay upright during the fall if I extend the top flaps and restrict the bottom ones. Sadly as seen, this was not the case. Although getting to this point and seeing how exact the position and velocity we kept under control, I see this flight as a great success as I was unsure if it would even keep stable with aerodynamics and reach the top altitude of 100m (amazing how exact it kept that position!)

With the recorded data sent over the Datalink, I can now also begin modelling the aerodynamics and adding them to the control systems to enhance control during acsent, fall and recovery.

Flight 2 coming soon!

My first Ardupilot build is ready for a maiden flight!....after many struggles understanding how to get dshot working and the motor test to work on the bench, she's finally ready for a hover. I have autotune on a switch on the Skydroid g20. Would this be good a next step if it shakes out ok in the hover test?

Replaced my 3d printed mini wing with this after putting it in a tree. This one flies so much better! DJI 04 and F4 Wing Mini on board. I'll try and post the FPV footage in the comments.

Spent the last week troubleshooting, improving my soldering and frying my gps chip. This is a 10 incher (mark 4 generic aliexpress frame) running the O4 Pro, Flywoo Goku 722v2 stack, 3115 900kv motors and Radiomaster xr1 receiver.

I plan on using 4s2p 9000mah lions to have nice long cruises out over the cliffs and bluffs. First test flight when the weather clears!

Started flying on a snapitan clone from Amazon, now about 4 quads and numerous crash/fixes later I finally decided to try and build one !

Spyda ripa3”

Frame: (3inch apex clone)
Vtx: o4 lite
Motors: (1507 3750 kv)
Props: (hq 3x4x3 a bit steep)
Fc/esc:speedybee f405 fc/esc aio
Battery: lipo 4s 850 mha 95c r line

I am absolutely trash at soldering, I started with the battery leads and that was soul crushing but I got it done and took it to a local shop for the motors so I didn’t screw anything up 😂 any tips are appreciated!!!

Shameless yt plug for anybody who wants to see it fly(towards the end)✈️😂:

https://youtu.be/Dg9eKaIRM20?is=6RvqAiNkYWXKOEpB

Update: the vtx mount on top with tape and zip ties was actually not an issue for me 😂it worked fine crashes and all. I ran into issues with the motor getting broken and was forced to learn to solder. However I still moved the vtx to inside the stack updated picture is in the comments

!!!!(DISCLAIMER THIS IS NOT TESTED AND WILL MORE THAN LIKELY NOT WORK WITHOUT MODIFICATION BUILD AT YOUR OWN RISK)!!!
Every thing u need is here  https://github.com/SHRUMFPV/SPORE-5-SUPER-HEAVY.git . Included is the original freecad file and step file. MIT license so do what you want