Make a TINY Arduino Drone with FPV Camera - Will It Fly?

in this video we're making a really small Arduino-based FPV drone you control through its own Arduino transmitter harnessing the power of DIY drone building for the in-depth learning experience and thrilling first-person view racing from the comfort of your home make your own DIY miniature camera drone from either popsicle sticks or 3D print with my own design that utilizes common Arduino compatible modules that you can purchase on a low budget but here's the big question that's buzzing in the air will it actually fly the first step in finding out is to make it so join me on this elaborate journey by taking a look at the parts we need which include a set of brushed coess motors with propellers parts to make a custom motor driver board modules for the flight controller and a receiver a 3 G fpv camera a lipo cell with connectors parts for holding things together including popsicle sticks if you choose to make the wooden frame or pla filament if you choose to 3D print your frame all parts and supplies are listed with product links in the description below this video to make the popsicle stick drone frame we'll print out the blueprint sheet for the wood and rubber cutouts a free resource file I came up with which you can download from the link below let's cut out all the wood piece stencils and begin gluing them onto some ice cream popsicle sticks with PVC glue stick now it's as straightforward as cutting out the pieces following the outlines with a hobby knife we'll also soak the most fragile Parts in super glue to prevent breakage while cutting the arms which will hold the motors pieces like frame posts can be cut from a match stick now that we've cut out all of the frame pieces we'll help reduce the weight of the overall frame by sanding down each piece till they're as thin as a credit card except for the forearms which need their original thickness for strength with that let's begin assembling the frame once assembled the frame should look like that of one from a larger 5-in fpv drone and since this drone will also have an fpv camera let's add this piece of wood to the front so It'll point slightly upward next let's poke a couple of holes for the power connector to protrude heading back to the blueprint sheet let's take some bicycle wheel tube Rubber and use the stencils to cut out the drone's bumper guard strips and glue those to the frame to strengthen the frame even more let's coat the most vulnerable areas with a look of superglue if you choose to save time and cut out the fiddly work by instead 3D printing your drone frame consider purchasing my 3D model of the frame through clicking the link into description below but in this video we'll stick to using the wooden frame out of the two options to keep it more DIY friendly next up let's work on making the drone's motor driver board if not ordered from the links below components to make it can be found in old electronics I found my resistors and diodes this way when dealing with sensitive components like these Field Effect transistors be sure to wear an electrostatic discharge wrist strap to prevent zapping them with the builtup static electricity from your body we should have four sets of each SMD or surface mount component on a perforated board we'll start with soldering the mosfets followed by the shot key flyback diodes and the 10 kiloohm pull down resistors we'll finish off by soldering a line for ground and the power line which will be soldered on later let's cut clip and sand the little board to reduce its weight and size it doesn't even weigh a single gram nice now let's hook up some signal wires and create that power line for each transistor that I mentioned of earlier to take things to another level we're powering the Drone with quality components from d robot we just received some contributing parts for the Drone such as a tiny passive buzzer a Sixaxis motion tracking sensor and a set of four brushed Corless motors which we're soon to install into our DIY frame and if you're a maker who loves robotics or building drones like I do DF robot.com is your One-Stop shop for those kind of electronic parts with their extraordinary selection of Motors sensors microcontrollers single board computers camera boards along with AI cameras and and so many more parts to get the most out of your projects what I find truly sets DF robot apart isn't just their high-end components it's their commitment to empowering makers like you and I with the most accessible and upto-date equipments to pursue our passion so if you're ready to take your projects to new heights click the link in the video description below to shop for your parts at DF robot.com let's continue the drones assembly by installing this set of 6mm Corless Motors into our frame secured with Superglue having the wooden top off will allow for better access to install the newly made motor driver which is glued in this crevis next we'll install these zip ties pointed down for both the drone's feet and for securing the motor wires now comes the wiring of the motors we'll connect them directly to the flyback doodes with like polarities according to the diagram which you can find linked below and not the way I show here due to using the wrong pairs of Motors please excuse me with a power supply we can run a quick test to see that each motor runs when pulling the transistors [Music] High next we'll focus on prepping the drone's modules for installation starting with the nrf24 radio transceiver we'll remove the soldered pin headers to reduce weight replace them with wires for power and communication and then glue the radio module into the rear of the frame against potential short circuits from the motor driver being exposed let's seal it off with some Capon tape now we're going to make the drone's flight controller using an Arduino Pro Mini microcontroller board the 3.3 volt version since it'll be running off just a lipo cell paired up with the mpu 6050 gyro accelerometer sensor to determine the drone's orientation we'll Mount and connect it to the Arduino using only a two pin header for the two wire communication and a couple of more wires for power as it works with 3.3 volts and 5 volts I do suggest you power it directly from the LiPo battery for a more consistent power supply against shorting we'll patch up the radio module's pins with hot glue before sliding in our flight controller stack which gets secured with a dable of superglue at the module's Crystal oscillator for support let's solder a temporary power connector with wires for the battery to connect to the flight controller now you see diverted wires going out to the right for driving the motors and wires at the left of the Drone for the radio module's connection however we'll begin wiring for power starting with wiring the nrf24 to get powered from the gyro module's 3.3 volt regulator as it has filtering capacitors which works in perfectly reducing the need of additional caps then we'll work on getting the motor driver some power and begin wiring the radio module's communication lines while keeping connections short now let's install this 5volt passive buzzer or speaker right under the front of the Drone so we can indicate its status and the switching of modes to program the Drone we'll need this module called the ftdi or USB to serial converter for which will'll make a bridging connector so it can connect to the Arduino Pro Mini in the Drone before we connect the drone and go through setting it up on the computer let's have a closer look at the transmitter which will allow us to control it I made this 3D printed Arduino transmitter based on the one scen in Emo's video using his transmitter enclosure 3D design with some of my own modifications and added Parts such as the toggle switches charging port and voltage divider for monitoring its voltage to know when the batter is going low you can find the modified enclosure design and wiring diagram of the transmitter I made as well as this build video by AO stuff Linked In the video description the transmitter code that's specifically for controlling our drone can also be found linked below and within it you'll see where to adjust pin definitions based on your Hardware so now we can connect the Drone to a computer through the ftdi converter and open the code folder which you can find linked below along with the multi wi software and then we'll open the drone's code file code credits go to electronoobs for the adapted multi-e drone code in here is where we make changes for hardware setup and fine-tuning if you followed my exact drone wiring you don't need to change anything in the code however you'll most likely need to swap around a pair or two of radio channel values if your transmitter's joystick values appear reverse and you may also need to swap the yaw direction if your drone appears to turn the wrong way when steering to upload let's first go to tools and make sure we have the Arduino Pro Mini selected along with its corresponding voltage rating and comport for a firm data connection we'll hold down the programming connector and hit upload when it reaches this point after compilation we'll need to hit the arduino's reset button and see that it begins uploading code to the board once done we'll go over to the multicopter configurator software called multie and open up the version of this software that corresponds to our computer's operating system once opened it should look like this let's open our drone's comport and hit start now we can see how the software interprets the drone's orientation with a transmitter turned on if all works with the connection each joystick movement should come up on the software and up here is where we select switch channels for toggling modes and initiating the Drone we'll take a high level box on aux one for arming the Drone drone and take the same box on Ox 2 for activating the Beeper alarm to know the drone's whereabouts through hearing after that let's click right and then read to save those changes now when you flick on the arm switch the Drone should allow for its Motors to spin up when you increase the throttle and the buzzer should be when you flick the corresponding switch all right now that our drone software and firmware are set up let's ensure the pwm outputs for the motors are in sync and to do so we'll be using this handy tool the goif fix 3 and one oscilloscope from sponsors of this video at bangood.com makers listen up say goodbye to shelling out big bucks for separate instruments when you can get this device which serves as an oscilloscope multimeter and function generator in a threein one package for precise measurements and testing in all your electronic projects this Powerhouse has saved me headaches with my project using its oscilloscope feature for pinpointing those crucial pwm frequencies from the Arduino to ensure smooth motor operation and the inbuilt multimeter for gauging those fluctuating voltages on the Arduino signal pins if you're kneed deep in electronics like me the goif fix 3 in-1 tool is an absolute must have for your toolkit ready to upgrade your project workflow check out the link in the video description below and snag a sweet 25% discount with the code 25 imagine let's continue by finishing the drone's wiring with the motor driver signal wires connecting to their corresponding Arduino pwm pins as showing on the diagram with a battery plugged in we should be seeing the motors work proportionately as we increase throttle let's also add on the propellers and see if it flies unfortunately it does not lift off and simply resets all tutorial aside stick with me as I troubleshoot my way to getting it off the ground I tried adding filtering capacitors at the Arduino and radio modules power inputs which seemed to prevent the Arduino from resetting but the Drone still could not lift off so I found the motors to be the culprit I happen to choose a set that was too weak and was missing two Motors of the opposite direction so I bought four new motors with the opposing Direction pairs the motors I wrongly chose from DF robot only produced six G of thrust each while the new ones gave 14 G of thrust which is more than twice the thrust of the others this means with all four the Drone would be getting a total of up to 60 G of thrust which is more promising I then clipped and melted out the motors and replaced them with the new ones while leaving connections accessible underneath to make polarity swapping easier but then the Arduino resetting issue returned with the newly installed Motors preventing me from throttling up I even tried adding capacitors at the motor Terminals and hoped that they would smooth out the voltage ripples but with no luck again so then I picked up on a form thread that mentioned adding current limiting resistors between the output pins and the transistor Gates would help but that only made the Drone behave worse then using the oscilloscope I found out the arduino's pins outputed a pwm frequency of 500 HZ to the motors which was way too low to drive them causing the extra electrical noise on the pins so I figured out where in the code to raise this frequency and managed to get out 2 khz at the most but even that didn't tone down the electrical noise allowing the Drone to keep resetting after weeks of going through Toil and frustration with the Drone I tried one more thing which was as simple as raising the gyro sensor farther from the source of electrical noise and that stopped the Arduino from resetting however the issues didn't stop there due to how the motor pairs were so out of tune with each other the Drone started to wobble side to side aggressively choosing to solve the core problem first I went ahead and got an old laptop to extract some copper sheet which really helped reduce the EMF effects on the drone's hardware back to the tutorial let's cut a near equivalent Siz sheet of copper to the dimensions of the Arduino Pro Mini cover it in clear tape solder a ground wire and lightly glue it to the underside of the Arduino while leaving the programming pins untouched and as you notice I resolder the mpu 6050 back on the pin headers so we'll finish off with the EMF blocking Shield by grounding the copper plate for stability reasons during the tests I glued on some hot glue sticks as the drone's landing gear which shows that it needs to sit on a perfectly flat surface to work getting rid of most of the wobble we finally got it flying but of course I replaced a temporary landing gear for the zip ties like the ones it had on earlier now we'll install the drone's fpv camera a 3 G 600 tvl resolution firstperson View Camera with a built-in transmitter let's clip off its connector and install the camera in the front of the Drone feeding directly from the battery's power parad with a set of 5.8 GHz fpv goggles we should see the drone's fpv feed displayed live next let's close up the Drone with its cover but first we need to secure the battery connector through the two holes made earlier and have the power wi soldered to the pins through the other side keep in mind the right wire polarity so to mount the battery instead of velcro straps we'll secure a piece of larger rubber band as a sort of a pocket to keep the battery on top of the Drone after that we can finally close things up for the propellers we're using these four bladed types that measure no more than 31 mm in diameter to avoid hitting onboard components and once mounted with attention to how the blades are oriented the motors with their propellers of appropriate directions should turn this way to push air downward for the battery we're using a 250 milliamp lipo cell which simply plugs in into the connector turning on the Drone and to balance it we can slide the battery either way depending on how it tends to Veer off and flate all up the Drone comes in at 30 G light enough to be considered a light wind flyer according to the Drone thrust scale chart so to get set up with a drone you simply power it on while laying flat turn on the transmitter followed by calibrating the drone's Gyra with these joystick movements and after waiting for a few seconds you can flip the arm switch to unlock the Drone and the sky is yours but before we go out and fly let's connect the Drone to our PC and quickly go through some very basic PID tuning in multi-e to smooth out those annoying pitch and roll oscillations what you do is you gradually lower the roll and Pitch values on the P column until those oscillations disappear and down here we can reduce the Drone sensitivity and reactiveness to inputs by lowering the rate and raising the Expo value smoother curve after those adjustments we have a much more stable and flyable [Music] quadcopter let's do a quick bedroom flight test before we head outside let's fly [Music] all right guys so now I'm in a more jungle like location here with the Drone so we'll do a bit of fpv flight around some trees and see if we can get some good footage here we go [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and if you're looking for a written version of this tutorial then you can check out my blog post about my drone on the elector Labs project platform where you learn about the project in a more summarized form with images and key takeaways to get your own mini fpv drone off the ground check the link below and visit my page on elector labs [Music] this just about wraps it up for this project if you enjoyed the video consider leaving a thumbs up and if you're keen on making this exact drone check out all the resource files linked below to use while following along to the tutorial guys we've also just hit over 100,000 YouTube subscribers together with the help of every single one of you who supported through liking sharing and commenting under each of my videos I appreciate you all and remember you can make anything you set your mind to while we're on the topic of making if you're more into the fpv stuff check out this video up here where I made this Powerhouse of a 5 in fpv freestyle drone that goes up to 120 kmph if you're ready to feel some power I'll see you over there see you [Music]

Channel: Max Imagination

Views: 649,384

Keywords: Arduino drone, FPV Drone, Arduino quadcopter, Arduino FPV Drone, DIY, Drone, FPV, Arduino, MultiWii, Build, Tutorial, Micro, Innovation, Creativity, Makers, Coding, Programming, Agile, High-speed, Indoor, Outdoor, Flight, Control, Customizable, Electronics, Engineering, Hobbyists, Craftsmanship, Thrilling, Adventure, Affordable, Versatile, Compact, Technology, Hands-on, How-to, make, drone., mini fpv drone, arduino-based, arduino pro mini, agile

Id: Sa6EslOHsI0

Length: 20min 26sec (1226 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 20 2024