Starting From Scratch

A

aaemarks

New Member
Hello! My name is Alistair, I'm from Australia, and I want a drone. I'm a filmmaker, and have never done any sort of engineering before in my life.

I was looking to purchase one that was already prepackaged and pretty, probably prebuilt. However, I was advised that the best way to go with the drones is to DIY. Enter MultRotorForums, and my brain exploding. My apologies if this thread is already in existence.

I shoot with a Canon C100, Canon 7D and GoPro video cameras. I'm not entirely sure whether I'd rather go for a DSLR/Cinema Camera rig, or a GoPro one. First and foremost, I'd love it if anyone could give me an indication of cost for either of these type of drones. Just a ball park figure, from buying average parts to buying the best parts.

Now, the trickier part. What the…how the…where the…help? With all this in mind, where do I begin with parts? What parts do I look at? And how the hell do I assemble it? Please note, most of my tone should be read with a Steven Wright-like dry quality. Even though it seems like I'm panicking. I'm not. I swear.

Any help anyone could lend to get this ball rolling would be much appreciated.

Al.
 

L

liquidlightning

Member
I would venture a guess that you could spend anywhere from $400 for a quad with cheap parts, on all the way to $1500+ if you go for all top quality parts, with all the bells and whistles. Using the Canon cams will necessitate a much larger vehicle than the GoPro, increasing costs a good bit.

There are plenty of build threads around, but the gist of it is that you need the following:

A frame. The thing you bolt the other things to.
A flight controller. The "brain" of the multirotor, it outputs a signal to motors, takes input from radio, outputs to gimbal, contains your sensors, and etc.
ESCs, or Electronic Speed Controllers. These control the speed of the brushless motors and take a signal from the flight controller and connect to the main power lines. You'll need one per motor.
Motors. Kind of obvious. They spin fast.
Propellers to put on the motors.
A radio receiver, to receive inpiut from your transmitter.
A radio transmitter, to send input to your receiver and control the craft.
If you want to build this for filming, you will probably want a gimbal to mount your camera to. Add a gimbal controller, and motors for the gimbal as well.
A battery.

I think those are all the major parts, you will also need little things like servo connectors, bullet plugs, wires, some solder, etc.

Go on youtube and look up one of the many multirotor assembly/build videos. They usually go into some detail about how all the pieces work together, and what to buy and why.
 


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