Part list - DIY Arduino based drone
I will build a 250 size drone. The 250 represents the diagonal distance between two motors. A 250 size drone is quite small. I recommend you to start your drone world with small drones because those are easier to work with, give you less problems, are cheaper and less dangerous.
You can free download all the STL files of the 3D drone
here on my webpage.
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This drone body is a 250 size 3D printed one. You could buy one or maybe build your own one. Try make it very light and strong. I recommend you to use carbon material. Also the 250 size represents the diagonal distance between the motors so keep that in mind.
PLA price:3$
This are 18mm diameter brushless motors. We will need 4. This are for a 250 size drone. If your drone is bigger you would need bigger motors and ESCs as well. Two are clockwise and the others are counterclockwise.
LINK eBay
This are 12A ESC2. You could use higher current ones but this are quite cheap. Be carefoul with the size because if you are building a 250 size drone you will need some small ESCs. So look at it's size when you buy them because on the internet photos you can't tell the size.
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I will use 5030 3 blade propellers. This are double 30 degre probellers made of plastic. We need two clockwise and two counterclockwise.
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This is the inetrtial movement unit or IMU. It is a MPU6050 module that has an accelerometer and gyroscope. With this two sensres we will be able to steady control the drone. It uses a i2c comunication and we will connect it to an Arduino NANO.
LINK eBay
If you don't want to build the flight controller using the Arduino NANO and the MPU6050 module you coud directly use this multiwii V3.0 board witch is the same as the Arduino + MPU6050 combination.
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The radio receiver is also made with Arduino. The radio module is NRF24 and could send and receive up to 32 channels of 8 bits.
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We will need a 3 cell lipo bttery. Use a medium heavy battery depending on your drone size. Because this is a 250 size I'll use a not so heavy one.
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We will build our own Arduino based transmitter. We will also use a NRF24 radio module but this one will have an amplified antenna. This radio controller coud go up to 32 channels witch is crazy!!!
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