Today I tested my first ever quadcopter, built as part of a recent workshop at the Vancouver Hackspace (VHS) . My initial test flight lasted a whopping 10 seconds and ended with a spectacular crash on the concrete parking lot in front of VHS, just minutes after I finished my build. The “landing” broke the original legs and one of the arms. Nothing that some glue and duct tape could not fix, fortunately.
For my second attempt, I swapped the legs with styrofoam ones and chose a softer landing surface. This and the extra flying practice helped a lot! I have to admit: my better half seems to be a better pilot as well…
I couple of trees tried to get in the way, but no quadcopters, dogs, humans, or large vegetation were harmed in the creation of this video.
The quad uses all standard components that can be found in hobby shops. Its “brain” is a MultiWii board, using the same processor as the Arduino Leonardo that can be programmed via the Arduino IDE. You can find more details here:
And here is my mod for the legs:
Ted also built a version of this quadcopter, so there will be more videos of crashes and mods in the near future.