DIY DJI Tello clone using Arduino( Part 4)| Full connection and flying test

 Hey guys, in my last post, I have shown you how to make the ESC for the coreless motor that we will be using in this project. If you have not yet seen that post, make sure to check that out HERE. Once we have already made the connection for the ESC, we shall proceed to make the full connection.

Before proceeding, I would like to tell you guys that I have damaged one of my coreless motors. I have already placed the order but it will take time before I can receive it.

Since I do not have any more of that motor (8520), I will not be able to proceed with this frame. To continue that project, we need all four motors to be the same. However, since I have the 720 coreless motor and the gear propeller system, I will continue this project with that motor. However, we cannot put those propellers in that small frame.

You can buy the gear motor system and the 720 coreless motors:

720 coreless motor- BUY HERE

Gear system- BUY HERE

propellers- BUY HERE

Therefore, I have designed another frame, which is 197 x 197 mm. I have designed it in Solidworks and 3d printed it on the newly made 3d printer that I will share the building experience on my youtube channel soon with you guys.

DOWNLOAD STL FOR NEW FRAME

With this frame, you just need to insert the gear system in the frame and it should take place. For the electrical connection, I will connect everything in a single board this time. instead of separated PCB that would be messy.

The completed connection of the drone circuit will be as follows:

I have already soldered everything on a single board which you can see below. I have used thin wires in order to reduce weight. For the Arduino board also, I have soldered only the pins that we have to use for this project to the board instead of soldering all of them. This will reduce the weight more.

I solder the huge capacitor  (2200 uF) between the positive and negative of the lipo battery which is also the Vin and Gnd of the Arduino. This will prevent the Arduino from resetting itself as there will be a voltage drop ( below 3.3V) when the motor start spinning due to a high current draw when starting a motor. The capacitor will smooth the voltage and the current during this stage and prevent the board from resetting. Check the circuit above for the capacitor connection.

Now, in the previous post, I told you guys that we will be using the 3.7V lipo battery together with a mini boost converter to increase the voltage to 5 v. Unfortunately, I have damaged the mini boost converter. Therefore. I will be using a 7.4V battery (2S) which I made by connecting two 3.7 lipo batteries in series. I have also connected the balancer wire to be able to charge it.

I now connect the battery to the circuit and make sure that everything is powering on. I also make sure that non of the motors are running when I put the battery. This means that we have added the pull-down resistors correctly.

I then connect the Arduino to my PC and upload the code which you will find in the next post HERE. After uploading the code, I open the Multiwii Win GUI which you can download HERE.

I move the drone and check that I am receiving the correct data from the sensor by looking at the graph and also the displays in the interface,

 

I also check if I am receiving the data from the transmitter. I have made a very messy transmitter for now. But you can build your own transmitter by following my last post HERE. You will find the code for the transmitter in my next post HERE.

 

Once I confirm that everything is working fine. I now do a flight Test. You can see the flight test video below on my youtube channel. The drone is not stable yet, because we have to do a PID tuning to make it stable. I will be doing this in my next post and then we shall have a stable drone.

This will be it for this post guys. Make sure to watch the video on my youtube channel. If you have not yet subscribed to my channel, please do so.