I cannot remember exactly when it started, but I had been wanting to get into multirotor flying for the purpose of building an aerial photography/videography rig. About 5 months ago I finally took the plunge and started my first build (a tricopter).
Moving ahead several months now, I've successfully built my tricopter, but also built a quad copter, and I have a hexacopter that is sitting in some state of incompleteness. After playing around for a while, my goals in the hobby have totally changed. While at first I wanted to build for the purpose of having an aerial photo/video rig to film cool things, I've now realized how much I just enjoy the aspect of flying.
I decided a couple months ago that I wanted to design my own mini quad copter. This wasn't the original plan when I began down this path. My original intent was to find a kit that was small, easily transportable, with the ability to handle a GoPro camera. I came across a few options, the main one being the Blackout Mini Spider Hex. It did most of what I wanted, but the big deterent was that the kit was hard to get; no vendors seemed to be able to get them in stock. Then when you added in the cost of the electronics and motors, building a mini-hex seemed like a costly idea. I spent a good deal of time looking at different options, but it seemed most frames weren't designed for GoPro cameras, and that mounting a GoPro was a clumsy operation on most of the 250 size quad copters available.
I didn't have much luck finding a frame to fit my needs, but after months of reading the forums and seeing what people were doing on their own, it inspired me to have my own go at it. It seems that quad copters in general are fairly easy to design and as long as you follow some general rules its not hard to design your own airframe. There is a wealth of knowledge out there, and to be honest I am pretty sure I am not going to be able to give all the credit that is due to those who have gone before me from which I have gained a lot of valuable knowledge.
Let me first start by saying that the design I have settled on at this point is an amalgamation of stuff from other designs which I have chosen to incorporate in my design to address my own needs. I wouldn't feel right without first giving a large shoutout to untestedprototype.com for providing the DXF files for which I based my design on. If you check out this site, you will see the owner has posted a ton of his own designs and offered the DXF files for the frame plates of each design. That being said I have also drawn a lot of my design inspiration from the Lumenier QAV line of quadcopters and have chosen to incorporate elements of their products into my design.
So getting to my own design requirements, below is a list of objectives I hope to achieve with my quad design:
- 250-300mm Size rotor span
- GoPro Hero 3 mounting with integrated video output
- Vibration isolated clean and dirty plate design
- Capability to run 6in props
- Low profile design with mass close to roll center of multirotor
At the time of writing this post I have already completed a large portion of the design, and I am hoping to go back and document what I have done so far before I get too far ahead of myself. Just to show where I am at with the project here is a picture of the parts I have already created:
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