Building and Flying any Hobby Flyer is what IF IT CAN FLY is all about and its time we build our own DIY drone. In this case, we are going to build up the S500 Drone which will incorporate off the shelf components and open source software. Functionally, the drone will be both a FUN Flyer, meaning we can push it up into the air and fly it around with a standard RC Transmitter and Fully Autonomous, meaning we can use GPS type setups and instruct the drone where to go and have it do this without the need to control it from the RC Transmitter. This build will most likely take several months as we have a lot to learn, specifically around the Autonomous Auto Pilot.
Process:
In configuring and building this S500 Drone, our process will be very straight forward and documented accordingly. Our Focus will follow these High Level Steps:
- building the S500 Multi Rotor Air Frame
- selecting and installing the motors and electronic speed controllers (ESC’s)
- identifying, installing and configuring all the electronics (AutoPilot, RC Receiver, GPS, Telemetry, Power, etc)
- understanding the ground game and selecting/configuring the appropriate hardware/software
- testing, testing and more testing of the S500 Drone
- wrap up and suggestions
As with all our projects, we’ll make available free of charge any sketches, custom configuration files, etc we end up creating. We will also share the links where we obtain the parts to make it easier for the reader to obtain for themselves.
Side Note: there is so much information out there for building, configuring and flying a PixHawk based drone. It will make your head spin. The plan here is to share that which is useful, help explain some of it, etc. Because we wanted to use our Spektrum Transmitters with the new SRXL2 Open Source Receivers, we created a separate page on how to interface it, configure, etc.
What the S500 Drone Build Documentation will look like:
for each of the above High Level Steps, we’ll create a separate article to document. Each article will be located just below here.
- READ ME First <will summarize all build notes, suggestions, links of useful info, bill of materials, etc>
- Installing the ESC’s on the Power Side
- setting up the electronics and some pre-checks before installing on the Chassis
- <in process> install the electronics and finish setup and calibration
Remember: #GETOUTANDFLYSOMETHING!
Social Media:
We share our images, video and experiences in all of the flying hobbies here.
