Nick Poole
One of the last projects I did at SparkFun before I was laid off never made it to the storefront and I completely forgot about it until I found a prototype just now. The goal was to make some design tweaks to the ESP-drone project so that the end user didn't have to do any soldering to assemble it (provided the reflow soldered PCB)
Apr 6 at 7:33pmWeb
Show threadNick Poole1d ago
I designed the landing gear to be two pieces of PCB that you bend and then insert the tabs into slots in the body. The spring tension of the legs trying to straighten out pushes them out into retaining slots. The feet have a small cutout that the motor rests against.
Show threadNick Poole1d ago
The bumpers are held in place using the same rubber grommet that retains the motors and indexed to one of the landing gear tabs so they don't spin. The motors could be attached using screw terminals, but we also considered having motors made with jst connector leads. I added FAA compliant running lights to the outside of the arms (red-green-white-white)
Show threadNick Poole1d ago
Finally, the battery could be secured using a mounting tray that connected to the underside of the body using through-headers. The tray would eventually act as a breakout for the esp32 headers as well (and different tray "shields" could be designed) The friction of 16 PTH headers was enough to securely hold the battery in my testing, but notches in the body allowed a rubber band or o-ring to be easily attached and removed for extra security.
Show threadNick Poole1d ago
There are some minor bug wires on this one that need to be corrected, but it does fly. I'll try to find my fork and publish it if anyone is interested.
Show threadgábor ugray1d ago

@North This is an amazing project, thank you for sharing! I think I very much would like to grab the design and give building it a shot :)

What size LiPo did you plan on using? Would it use one of the tiny OrangeRx DSM receivers?

Show threadgábor ugray1d ago
@North And what control software would it run? Soo many questions :)
Show threadrag. Gustavino Bevilacqua1d ago

@North

Sounds promising!

Show threadJ. Peterson1d ago
@North Very nice! I can't say I'd ever get around to building one, but would like to peek at thesource.