Fail your way to success

First flight is in the books, folks! Here’s how it went:

Or, to summarize:

Not too well! Which is kind of what I expected, to be honest. I figured something would fail. In software engineering, we have a sense that, if you run your code after making a complicated change, and it “just works”, then something must be wrong. Easy success is too good to be true. You learn to expect failure along the way.

So what happened here?

Well, it seems like one of the rotors isn’t turning as fast as the others. I’m not certain where the issue is—it could be in the ESC, but it’s more likely that it’s a problem with the motor. I may have to replace it, though if I do that, I’ll just replace all of them. (The kit I bought was sketch.)

Nevertheless: this is a big deal! The drone is complete. Have a gander.

Dunnn duh-duh-daaaaah!

There it is! My first drone, complete (sans propellers) and I made it from scratch a crappy kit.

Does it look good? Not really! And that’s OK. I crashed it immediately, and that’s OK! Definite progress.

My next step is to try to tweak the PID controller—that is, the self-correcting feedback loop which helps smooth out the changes in a moving system (PID stands for proportional–integral–derivative). In this case, it makes sure that, as the motors spin faster and faster, the vehicle doesn’t suddenly shoot off into the sky as soon as its thrust beats gravity. I think. I’d explain more, buuuut I haven’t worked with this concept since robotics in college! I hope to have more knowledge on the subject for next time.

Toodles!

Glossary

ESC

• Electronic speed control