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Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

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Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#51

Post by stavros »

the__alchemist wrote: post #10

I'm curious how this compares to foam-frame designs. Being able to customize it is obviously a big advantage, as is the non-solid-infill of 3d-printed parts. I think for stiffness, 3d-printed frames don't work well for quadcopters compared to carbon fiber, but they sound like a nice alternative to foam for fixed-wing. I think the stiffness concern comes up in quads mainly when they do high-performance maneuvers that…

PLA is pretty bad compared to foam when it comes to planes, as it's very heavy and very brittle. Any semi-hard landing will break parts off, and heavy planes fly badly.

The big advantage is that you can just print the part again, which almost makes PLA worth it.

ABS would probably be better, as it's much more durable and lighter, but it's still much heavier than foam, and printing ABS isn't great.

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#52

Post by stavros »

normie3000 wrote: post #46

This is incredibly impressive. I'd love to hear more about what relevant skills & knowledge you started with, and how you worked out what you'd need to know to complete the project. How much customisation did you need to make to Ardupilot? Is your drone's control unique, or somehow standardised?

It doesn't look like it required any AP customization, AP will do VTOL out of the box.

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#54

Post by energywut »

I have ~200 acres of land I fly a drone survey mission to map. Today, that piloting is done by dronelink and a DJI drone. The challenge is that it's about 3 hours of flight time, give or take, to cover the space, and a given battery is good for about 35 minutes of flight time.

I have 4 batteries, which means I basically need to be refilling my batteries as quickly as I consume them in order to keep flying continuously (unfortunately, even with a quad-charger, I cannot fully sustain this.)

I would LOVE to have a fixed wing drone that could fly over the area and snap close-to-nadir photos as it did so, but the complexity of building and programming a hand built drone seems so much higher than deploying an off the shelf DJI drone. Additionally, the land is steep, with a 1,000+ foot elevation difference, and rugged, and the neighboring land is airspace I cannot fly within, so I couldn't use it to perform my turns.

Author, or others, any thoughts on whether it's worth pursuing a fixed wing aircraft to perform this mapping mission? Or is the best bang for my buck to just buy enough batteries to fly the mission continuously on an off the shelf quadcopter?

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#55

Post by hadlock »

normie3000 wrote: post #46

This is incredibly impressive. I'd love to hear more about what relevant skills & knowledge you started with, and how you worked out what you'd need to know to complete the project. How much customisation did you need to make to Ardupilot? Is your drone's control unique, or somehow standardised?

Ardupilot is very, very mature software. A lot of the drone video coming out of Ukraine, the HUD overlay is likely from Ardupilot. If you can think of it, Arduipilot supports it. Airplanes, helicopter, VTOL, speedboat, even sailboats.

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#56

Post by tsungxu »

energywut wrote: post #54

I have ~200 acres of land I fly a drone survey mission to map. Today, that piloting is done by dronelink and a DJI drone. The challenge is that it's about 3 hours of flight time, give or take, to cover the space, and a given battery is good for about 35 minutes of flight time. I have 4 batteries, which means I basically need to be refilling my batteries as quickly as I consume them in order to keep flying continuousl…

Great question! I don't think there's any sub $5k VTOL you can just buy COTS that can get close to 3 hours of range. Also, nothing is as plug and play as DJI. If you're motivated enough to do a little DIY and learn how to use Ardupilot or PX4 (easier), you can buy a kit like the Heewing T2 VTOL and assemble yourself. But I don't think that will do more than two hours flight time, even with a similarly high energy density battery pack to what I used.

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#57

Post by tsungxu »

ImageDeeply wrote: post #43

Very cool. Very impressive. I hope it inspires other to build things they're passionate about. "You can just do things. And learn things." No need to wait for permission, or classwork (much less a degree), or a guide/teacher.

Thanks and yes I'm glad you say that. Would love to see it. It's hard to convey how much faster and better your work will be if you are actually passionate about it.

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#58

Post by cyanydeez »

energywut wrote: post #54

I have ~200 acres of land I fly a drone survey mission to map. Today, that piloting is done by dronelink and a DJI drone. The challenge is that it's about 3 hours of flight time, give or take, to cover the space, and a given battery is good for about 35 minutes of flight time. I have 4 batteries, which means I basically need to be refilling my batteries as quickly as I consume them in order to keep flying continuousl…

I reviewed and purchased a smaller drone, from WHISPR. Through that, I looked at similar VTOL drones, which OP is demonstrating. In theory, they're cheap:

https://www.uavmodel.com/products/makeflyeasy-hero-2180mm-ua...

This one has a maximum climb rate of 3 degrees. Which means you'd need to plan a route that's continously climbing, and tacking back and forth to avoid going steeply. So you would probably combine flight planning using Mission Planning: https://ardupilot.org/planner/ and custom json tweaking following MavLink protocol: https://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/mavlink-routing-in-ardupilot....

The open source flight controllers and systems are https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-autopilots.html#ope... a good place to start. There's a few orgs building the full experience, but you'll of course pay for fully integrated, but still open source, hardware+software.

The scenario you describe is exactly what a VTOL or normal play is for; quad copters simply do not cover enough ground.

Also consider the camera. DJI typically ship with really low quality cameras, but https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1785754-REG/sony_ilx_... would get you a much higher pixel density so if you're more interested in the imaging, you can flight higher, near the licensed ceiling, completing more ground faster.

I've also found AI models know how to calculate pixel densities, so it's pretty easy to mock out a flight plan even if you dont have the actual drone available.

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#59

Post by cyanydeez »

cyanydeez wrote: post #58
energywut wrote: post #54

I have ~200 acres of land I fly a drone survey mission to map. Today, that piloting is done by dronelink and a DJI drone. The challenge is that it's about 3 hours of flight time, give or take, to cover the space, and a given battery is good for about 35 minutes of flight time. I have 4 batteries, which means I basically need to be refilling my batteries as quickly as I consume them in order to keep flying continuousl…

I reviewed and purchased a smaller drone, from WHISPR. Through that, I looked at similar VTOL drones, which OP is demonstrating. In theory, they're cheap: https://www.uavmodel.com/products/makeflyeasy-hero-2180mm-ua... This one has a maximum climb rate of 3 degrees. Which means you'd need to plan a route that's continously climbing, and tacking back and forth to avoid going steeply. So you would probably combine flig…

for processing, I setup opendronemap: https://www.opendronemap.org/

There really is a full open source hardware/software path, which is heartening.

Re: Show HN: I made a 3D printed VTOL drone

#60

Post by tsungxu »

normie3000 wrote: post #46

This is incredibly impressive. I'd love to hear more about what relevant skills & knowledge you started with, and how you worked out what you'd need to know to complete the project. How much customisation did you need to make to Ardupilot? Is your drone's control unique, or somehow standardised?

Thanks! I'm using the standard Ardupilot control systems for hover, transition and cruise flight. On the firmware side, it's just some parameters and tuning that is customized.

What I started with - Had built one VTOL before from foamboard, not 3D printed. - Familiar with Ardupilot from that project and assembling a multicopter and COTS VTOL. - So I had a little experience building a structurally sound airframe for VTOL loads, but 3D printing was a wrinkle. - How I worked it out is a hard question. But it was being focused with design, flight testing and troubleshooting. LLMs, Youtube, forums, etc for help when needed. - Building in public helped paradoxically. It actually saves me time to build in public because of the motivation boost that helps me move faster and to share progress sooner. Even though there's a higher lift to document and share.

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