Summary

  • You can make your own drone using an SBC like Arduino Pro Mini, saving you money in the process.
  • This DIY drone by Max Imagination has four propellers, a controller, and a camera for FPV flying.
  • Max used popsicle sticks instead of 3D printing for the drone shell, showing creativity and affordability.

Drones are really cool, but they can be a pretty hefty purchase. Fortunately, it is entirely possible to build your own using an SBC and the right hardware. This is what one genius has achieved by giving their Arduino Pro Mini four propellers so it can fly. The best bit is, it even comes with its own tiny camera which you can see through with a VR headset.

👁 Back of the Milk V Duo S SBC, showing
My first hands-on experience of RISC-V is with the Milk-V Duo S, and I'm excited

The Milk-V Duo S is a RISC-V SBC that has an Arm CPU in tow, though you can't make use of it just yet.

The DIY Arduino Pro Mini, build with popsicle sticks

As spotted by Hackaday, this handy little drone is the invention of YouTube Max Imagination. This tiny drone isn't the only pocked-sized DIY project they've done; they've created a Hot Wheels RC car and a tiny line-following robot that doesn't use a microcontroller. In his latest project, Max tackles the challenges of making his own drone using an Arduino Pro Mini. If you've never heard of an Arduino before, it's one of the best Raspberry Pi alternatives out there, and you'll find them pop up in small-scale projects like this one.

Max's Arduino drone comes with a lot of advanced features for a homemade project. It comes with four propellers, a dedicated controller, and a small camera on the front. You can even hook up the camera to a VR headset and fly around in first-person.

You might expect a 3D-printed shell to keep everything together, and that's a totally viable way to go about this build. However, Max opted to instead use popsicle sticks, sanding some of them down to fit the build, while keeping others at their original width to add structural integrity. It's a wonderful little build that shows that you don't need expensive parts to make a cool project. And if you want to achieve something similar but have zero idea where to start, check out these simple Raspberry Pi projects for beginners.