How much fun is buying new gadget? Just go to shop, pick something that you definitely don’t need but want and buy it. But did you ever wonder how much fun do you get from making such thing? Like RC model? Like flying multirotor (common name is drone)? No? So “Stay Awhile and Listen”.
This started at Youtube
This think is like Wikipedia, you start at some randomly suggested video, start clicking and then you watch some crazy videos about things that you’d never search for. And that’s how i found about drones and stuff. I watched some videos taken by drones, about building drones, from drones racing and from drones crashing. The last ones is fun for obvious reasons :) And that was pretty much it. O’ve got fascinated and few days later forgot about the topic for some time.
There’s alywas someone who …
Few months ago on business meetings with client after new product release this topic came out. While one of “bio breaks” testers and BO Reporting guy (Kuba) ended up watching some videos about drones on Youtube. And then i found out that Kuba flies RC models (quadcopters and helicopters).
After few talks with hin on other “bio breaks” about how he started, kinds of models, parts, competitions, model assembling and stuff i thought “hey, this sounds like fun, let’s give a shot”. After few days i ended up spending money on things that i don’t need but want to have. I bought drone parts that requires soldering, assembling and configuring.
Assembling
After couple of days waiting for parts to arrive mostly from china i went to Kuba’s to assemble them. And it wasn’t that complicated. He pre-soldered most of things and after few hours quadcopter was ready to flight. We tuned flight controller and did test flights and that’s it. I had my first mini quadcopter (250mm)
I can tell that flying this thing is a lot of fun. Even for some inexperienced pilot like me to learn and feel the machine. After some time and few dozens of broken propellers i wanted more. I wanted to get better perspective, first person view (FPV).
Real fun just started
So i bought FPV camera, transmitter, receiver and goggles! And guess what. I had to disassemble quadcopter, fix wiring, resolder almost everything and assemble it again. It took me over 2 days and it works! I got place at local Makerspace where i could borrow tools. All i can say is that everything works as expected. It was damn rewarding to upgrade drone all by myself. What’s most important FPV is amazing even when you “fly” holding camera in one hand.
But it’s not finished. Few things is duct taped and needs proper fixing. So my next plan is to 3D print few (of course in Makerspace, because there i can “borrow” printers) parts like camera mount because i couldn’t found good one.
And there is this idea to print whole quadcopter. Not racing one (250mm) but bigger 450mm or some for other things than proximity flying.