DIY Frame/iPhone Mount---First Build

JLawrence

Member
Hey guys, I am new to this forum and new to the multirotor community in general. Anyways, I thought I would share a frame design I came up with (nothing advanced by any means) that can hold my iPhone to take aerial video. I am sure there are plenty of these designs out there but I thought I would give it a go. I am using standard equipment (such as motors, ESC's, props, and flight controller) that I have seen work on commercial frames. I attached a couple of screenshots of the solidworks model. Anything that is not white was just put in there to get an idea of how things would look/fit.

I sent my .STL files to the rapid prototyping center we have at the university I attend to have the parts made. I recently got them back and they look great, and everything seems to fit/ line up well. I am still waiting on some hardware to start assembling it, so it is still a good way away from seeing if it will even fly.

The full design is very simple.. I used a square tube structure for the arms to be able to funnel wiring and encase the ESC's within them. Within the made body will be a power spider that will connect up to the battery from the back. Flight controller is mounted just above the battery and a receiver will be mounted just in front of that. The actual iPhone mount is simply a fixed mount that will be placed on the bottom as you can see in the picture. As of right now, I have just placed four arms below each of the motors to act as primitive landing arms.

Overall, this is my very first build of this nature so, yeah, things aren't going to be perfect or even correct for that matter, but it was my best shot. So, if anyone has any advice or feedback, that would be great.

I will post pictures of the prototyped parts if anyone is interested in seeing the full build..
Thanks
 

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JLawrence

Member
haha yes, it is insured but I won't put it in the mount until I know it flies reliably. Doesn't mean I wont crash it I guess though... lol
 


JLawrence

Member
TahoeTim....That is a awesome idea!!! Wow, I sadly never even thought about that. So many of my friends had asked me if i could see a live feed and I always was bummed that I could not tell them yes. Thank you haha.
 


JLawrence

Member
Here are some photos of the prototyped parts, back from the rapid prototyper.

I used nylon screws to just make sure everything lined up correctly.
 

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JCcreative

Member
Haha very cool. Whats the arm length on that thing. Looks short! Hopefully the flying iphone doesnt cause all kinds of interference and make itself crash!
 

JLawrence

Member
Haha, I guess ill just have to do it and see what happens. The arms themselves are 175mm, but the distance from motor to adjacent motor is 300mm. I wanted them to house the ESC's so I needed to make them hollow, but wanted to keep them fairly rigid so I shortened them. Hopefully works okay.
 


JLawrence

Member
So are all the parts 3d printed?

They are made via a rapid prototyping system called a Selective Laser Sintering. Its a much faster process and generally more accurate in terms of low tolerances and what not. We have one at our university that we luckily have access to.
 

JLawrence

Member
So I am coming close to finishing up this build. It came out to be a lot more work than I anticipated but hey, its all fun. Here are a few pictures of the build to this point. I don't have the iPhone mount and landing arms on at this point just due to the fact that I have never flow a quad and do not want either to break before I can even use them. I have also linked a very short video of it hovering a little. The top plate in the pictures does not have all the mounted screws in place but I have put them in before taking it out to fly. Video link----> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8A7DlNfA04 View attachment 17568View attachment 17569View attachment 17570View attachment 17571
 

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