Chapter 11. The Handycopter UAV

We’ll take you all the way from building the airframe to adding autonomous flight capability with ArduPilot. Once you’ve got it working, you could program this drone, for instance, to automatically visit a series of landmarks or other waypoints and take pictures of them.

Time Required

A weekend

Cost
Airframe

$30–$60

Avionics

$500–$800

Materials

For the airframe:

  • Conduit clamps, 1 1/2” (4)

  • Square dowels, wood, 1/2"×36” (2)

  • Machine screws: flat-head M3×6mm (8); M3×20mm (12); M3×25mm ...

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