How To Make a Drone: For Beginners

             

          Making Drone is not a rocket science. Anyone can make Drone. If you are familiar with soldering and basic circuiting then that's a plus point. Before starting I would like to know the reasons you are thinking of  making a drone because if you are only thinking of flying these drones, you can get them very easily at low price from around Rs. 3000- Rs. 10,000.  And good ones at around Rs.20,000 . with all camera and FPV features and all the accessories. Like this, this and this.

But if you want to use them for Aerial Photography Or for taking aerial videos, professional Drones are usually very costly, like DJI Phantom ranging from Rs.1,00,000 - 2,50,000. Like this and this

Also this tutorial if for you, if you want to learn the art of making a drone and flying them all by yourself. At the end of the tutorial I will link some resources, make sure you read them before making your drone.

        So let me start with the components you need for making Drone: Very simple language, no technical terms

1.  Flight Control Board 

2.  Frame                                          

3.  Brushless Motors

4.  ESC (electronic speed controller)

5.  Propellers

6.  Battery

7.  Transmitter and Receiver

8.  FPV Camera (optional)
9. GPS (optional)

**kindly note that if you are making a quadcopter then you will be needing 4 motor and 4 ESC each. And if you are making a hexacopter or tricopter you will need 6 or 3 motors and ESC

            So these are the all the things you need to keep your drone in the air. Let me go through them one by one. First of all lets start with flight control:

1. Flight Control board: This is the brain of your drone and it is the reason your drone will be flying like a charm. You can always start with  basic flight control boards like KK Multi Rotor . and later go for better board like DJI Naza flight control board . You can make one by yourself with microcontrollers like Arduino but it will be a pain in your ass unless you are professional in it. also you will be requiring other components like gyroscope etc if you are making it with microcontrollers.

2. Frame: This is where all of your stuffs are going to fit into. So if you are a beginner you should probably buy a ready made one like this but you can also make on for yourself.

3. Brushless motors:  Brushless motor are powerful  motors. The kv rating specifies their speed and torque. Less kv means less rpm and more torque. But make it clear that if you choice a 1000 kv  motor and put a small propeller like 4 inch you won't be getting the required thrust and same for 2000kv motor. You shouldn't expect that 2000 kv motor with 10 inch propeller would give more thrust. it will just burn out the motor instead. So choice the motor and propeller correctly.

4.  ESC (electronic speed controller): ESC are the thing that turn the brushless motor. for every brushless you buy, you will also need an ESC to run the motor. Make sure that you buy higher ampere capacity ESC then the amount of current your motor will consume.





5. Propellers: Choice the propeller as per your motor. If you are having a motor which have more rpm, then go for the smaller  motor and if you are going to lift up heavier stuffs then you will be probably needing low kv motors with bigger propellers.  And while you are making your drone for the first time make sure to buy lots of extra propellers cause you are going to crush them very often.
look at all the broken propellers of mine during the testing of flight and also mastering maneuver.

These are all the propellers which got broken during the flight test

6. Battery: Battery is one of the most costly part of the drone( thought most of everything in drone are costly). Most of the battery used in the Drone are LiPo batteries. they are light weight, higher density and more discharge rate as compare to other batteries. Suppose your drone weights about a kg, then you would be requiring lots of juice to keep your drone in the air. So try to buy battey with more mAh and more discharge capacity. I suggest at least buy a battery with at least 3000 mAh or more. More the better, and more flight time. You know drone are those creatures which drinks up all the juice it took to store in hours in few minute.
**keep in mind that LiPo battery are very dangerous thing if not handled carefully. they may catch fire or burst/explode at worst case. LiPo batteries should be taken great care while charging while installing and even while using. They should not be overcharge while charging and also should not be discharged more then a certain value.

7. Transmitter(TX) and Receiver(RX): This is something that let you control your Drone. You need at least 4 channel to control your drone smoothly. The more channel the better. 6 channel TX-RX are a good thing to begin with. And don't go for cheap transmitter and receiver like this one . I am telling my experience, you will have hard time trying to calibrate these thing.



8.First Person View(FPV): These are something which adds up your budget. FPV are
usually wireless camera attached to the drone which let the controller see the first person view from the drone. you can use them if you want to do surveillance or take good photography and videos. You don't really need them as a beginner because the will add extra weight to your drone and will reduce the flight time. also they will cost you extra thousands of bucks. SO like I said, these are optional.

9. Global Positional System (GPS). These are some extra chips and some extra hardware that will interface with your drone to make your drone do some cool flying experience. Amongst all uses of the GPS, Return To Home(RTH) ia one of the use. It allows the Drone to come back to the place where it take off on a press of a button, so just in case if you lost sight of the drone you are flying, you can always hit the RTH button and the drone will come back and land nearby to the place where it initially took off.




Now these are almost everything you need to start making your own drone. But make sure to study about each components to get the idea of how they work. This way you can always troubleshoot them if you ever need to.

And read the following links to get idea of every componets:

1. BATTERY
2.PROPELLERS AND MOTORS
3. MULTI COPTER FLIGHT CONTROL BOARD: KK2