Why it’s not that easy to build a Drone?
Even though you have followed every bit of the manual/documentation and assembled everything perfectly, there is a fair chance that your drone will not fly 🤷♂️.
This article gives a glance over the hurdles and obstacles that I faced during my initial days of building a full-size multi-rotor drone 🚁.
It’s my Second Year of B.Tech when we finally managed to get hands-on to the ideation hub of our department. There we came across a half-built Drone which is made by our seniors 5years ago. So I and my friend Rahul decided to make that drone flying so that we can compete in the Expo for the Annual Tech fest.
So we went on googling all the stuff regarding these drones and there was no exact clue on how to test its functionality. We tried all the methods possible, and there is no hope that this will someday fly. Until when came across Ardupilot Misson Planner Software which mentioned that it can wirelessly control the drone. So we connected the ground module to the laptop and turned it on. Then this happened…🙌
Even though it is completely a miss fire, we are glad that we got to confirm that it’s working😌. At that instance, we are so naive that we don’t even know how to remove propellers from the flight. We don’t even know how to disassemble.
The problem is there are very fewer people who are familiar with handling this equipment and there are not enough resources available online. Then with the help of an online forum and one of our seniors we got to disassemble everything and realized a few parts of it are missing. No sooner we headed towards Gujrathi Gulli, which is like a home for electronic parts in Hyderabad. From Led to microprocessor everything can be found here. Even though a bit costly, we somehow managed to find all the required parts.
At that instance, our goal is to make a 360° Enabled VR Drone. So we started assembling all the parts using the instructions from random youtube videos. Every part is well inserted into its place and all are calibrated perfectly. But in the end, the Drone didn’t even start 😢. No clue and no idea about what might be the issue. We tried posting in all the forums and there is no one who faced the same issue. A week passed 😫, Leave that idea of attaching 360° Camera aside, we are not even able to make the drone fly.
Then we realized it already late and we decided to change the flight controller. We decided to use the KK2.1 controller which is a simple one (kinda noob version) with very fewer features instead of a current high-end controller(APM 2.8). Again headed to Gujarathi Gulli to grab one.
A flight controller (FC) is a small circuit board of varying complexity. Its function is to direct the RPM of each motor in response to input. It’s basically the brain of the flight which receives the commands from remote and controls flight accordingly.
Then we removed already having APM2.8 flight controller and installed this KK2.1.5 flight controller and assembled everything. Luckily this time everything seemed working. But this flight controller is so naive that there is no auto feedback and balancing system. Which means our drone cannot fly to the air resistance. Thus controlling it is like making a bird with half-broken wings fly. 😅
As there is no time remaining we managed ourselves to get accustomed to the controls and tweaked the controller in such a way that it can fly steadily to some extent. Later we used sponges as landing gears to reduce the impact (desi hack 💡). And finally made it fly to smaller distances.
In this way, 🤦♂️ our idea of building a VR enabled Drone ended up building a low standard naive quadcopter that can fly only up to a certain extent. and we anyhow managed to exhibit to our professors during the Fest.
But this is not what we thought of, So we didn’t stop over there. I know that there is some mistake on our side but not in the equipment. The later days I constantly went through the documentation and researched a lot about how the internals of flight controllers. I analyzed every part about how they work and how they are interconnected with each other.
Within two months we realized that the fault was due to the Youtube Videos which we followed blindly.
Later, under the mentorship of one of our professors, we managed to build an Advanced Drone that can estimate yield and detect diseases in the crop Autonomously and got selected for AICTE-Vishwakarma Awards-2019 [phase1] 🥳.
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Happy Quarantine. Stay Home. Stay Safe.✌
