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Make Your Own Arduino Drone

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March 28, 2019 Written by Caleb
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Arduino boards have become the ultimate electronics to Truly
learning tools. First of all, they’re stupid cheap, which means Autonomous
the barrier of entry is not nancial. Secondly, the Arduino Drones

community is booming with cool Arduino projects, showing

Laser Range
the world what is possible with cheap electronics.
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The world of drones has not been spared from the takeover
Drones
of Arduino robot projects, as many creators have even made
Arduino drones. I myself have built an Arduino drone, and it
Open Source
is an awesome learning experience.
Drone Software
Projects

Make Your Own Arduino Drone

A lot of DIY drone kits out there come packaged with pre-
written ight control software and plug and play ight control
boards. While this is great if you’re not trying to learn, for
those really trying to understand how drones work, a pre-
packaged drone kit might not be your answer.

This guide on the basics of building a diy drone from scratch

may be helpful. While it isn’t focused on Arduino drones, it
does provide you with a great overview of the knowledge
required to make any type of drone, including Arduino based.

If you build an Arduino drone, you’ll need to know the

gauntlet of drone subjects ranging from hardware to drone
control theory.

If this sort of thing interests you, I have good news! Many

members of the Arduino community have already trail-blazed
the Arduino drone kit path. From this, we can learn how to
build an Arduino drone by standing on the shoulders of
giants.

In this post, I will share some of the most popular DIY

Arduino drone tutorials out there. I encourage you to use
these tutorials as a resource in your own Arduino drone
creations.

Build Your Own Arduino

Drone
Complete Course
There are two main stages of building an arduino
quadcopter: putting the hardware together and coding the
ight control software. Think of the hardware as the bones,
and the software as the brains.

One of the best resources available for assembling the

‘bones’ and coding the brains for an arduino-copter is Mr.
Joop Brooking.

In his “Build your own multicopter ight controller” tutorials,

he provides you with a list of parts for building the drone’s
structure. Towards the end of the course, he provides the
ight control code to run the DIY drone.

The course is very comprehensive, totaling multiple hours of

video content. I have used his content as a reference for my
own ying arduino project.

Here is the start to his course, which has been neatly

assembled into a playlist.

Project YMFC-3D - Build your own multicopter ight

controller (announcement).

Quick Overview
Joop Brooking’s course is rather comprehensive.
However, this could trigger you into following directions robot
style, instead of truly learning new knowledge that you could
apply without directions. While it is still a great resource, it is
something to be aware of.

Some of you may just be looking for a quick overview of

what all is required to build your own arduino quadcopter.
You may desire a guide, but want to ll in the build process
with your own creativity.

If you fall into this category, then the DIY Arduino Drone video
by the Indian LifeHacker is what you are looking for. It does
provide the full part list and arduino ight control code as in
Joop’s course, but the quick 7 minute overview puts more of
the creation burden on you, the builder.

How To Make A Flying Drone | DIY Arduino Drone | Indian

LifeHacker

Next Steps After

Building Your Arduino
Drone
One of the best parts of making a drone with an arduino
brain is that you open up the world of arduino projects to
your build.

What do I mean by this?

Let’s say you noticed an awesome project that uses mind

control devices to control electronics (no really, this is a
thing!).

Well since the project was implemented in Arduino, and your

drone is using Arduino, you could do some hacking and
merge mind control with an Arduino drone!

Think this example is a little too science ction-y?

Aha! Not so!

Check out this awesome Arduino project that actually uses a

mind control device to y a mini quad

Mind Controlled Drone - Tutorial

So while it may be true that there is more work involved in

creating an Arduino drone from scratch, you have more
access and control of the underlying rmware and
electronics.

This means that Arduino drones are ideal for prototyping

new ideas.

I’m excited to see what you make!

An Alternative Drone
Brain
Some of you may not really care about the coding of your
own ight algorithm. If this is the case, then you should
probably build a drone featuring an open source supported
ight controller.

If you fall into this category, checkout my list of the top ight
controllers that are supported by the best open source
software projects.

DIY Drone Arduino

Drone