Designing My Own Drone From Scratch, Starting With the Flight Controller
I've built drones before. Like most people, I built them from off-the-shelf parts: a ready-made flight controller, a set of ESCs, a camera and a video transmitter, all bolted to a frame. It's a great way to get flying, and it taught me a lot.
This project is different. This time I'm designing it all myself. The drone will fly FPV (first-person view) and carry AI on board, and every board in it will be one I designed. I'm starting with the flight controller.
From building to designing
Building a drone from off-the-shelf parts is mostly about choosing the right parts and wiring them together. Designing one means working out what each of those parts does, and then making it.
My earlier builds showed me what a drone needs. They also showed me where I kept working around someone else's design. This project is about taking that next step.
Why design my own flight controller?
The flight controller is the drone's brain. It reads the sensors, works out how the drone is moving, and tells each motor how fast to spin many times a second to keep it stable.
It's the obvious place to start: every other part of the drone either feeds into it or takes orders from it. Designing my own means I know every part of it. When I come to add AI later, I'm not working around someone else's board. I can build it around what I need.
The plan
- Flight controller: designing my own. (Done)
- ESC: my own electronic speed controller board to drive the motors.
- FPV: the camera and video link for first-person-view flying.
- Ground station: a video receiver, screen and telemetry in one case, for flying FPV and keeping an eye on the drone.
- AI: adding on-board AI.
- First flight: putting it all together and getting it in the air.
Next up: the ESC
With the flight controller designed, the next board is the ESC. The ESC takes the flight controller's commands and turns them into the power that actually spins the motors. It has to be fast and efficient, and it has to cope with a lot of current, so it's a good challenge for the next board.
After that comes FPV, and then the ground station, which puts the video feed and the drone's telemetry in one case you can take into the field.
Follow the build
The Drone project page on the Workshop site is updated as each stage is finished. I'll post the bigger milestones here, right up to the first flight of a drone I designed from the ground up (and probably its first crash).
Building a drone yourself, or curious about a part of the build? Get in touch.