A drone is a system of parts that have to work together under real flight conditions. This section covers airframes, motors, propellers, batteries, flight controllers, navigation hardware, cameras, sensors, payloads, and supporting equipment, focusing on what each component does, how the pieces interact, and what changes when the mission changes.
Topic
Drone Hardware: Airframes, Propulsion, Batteries, Sensors and Payloads
Latest topic news
QGroundControl adds proposed USB recognition for ZeroOne M9 and X9 boards
QGroundControl PR 15437 proposes recognizing the ZeroOne M9 and X9 by USB vendor/product identity and classifying them as Pixhawk devices during connection.
Read newsArduPilot reviews bidirectional DShot decode bounds on F1 IOMCUs
ArduPilot PR 35036 proposes fixing an out-of-bounds read in the F1 IOMCU bidirectional DShot telemetry decoder when the sampled buffer ends before a complete 21-bit packet.
Read newsArduPilot OSD proposal closes a backend-index gap that can crash startup
ArduPilot PR 34497 reports a crash if one OSD backend is disabled or fails to start while a second backend initializes. The proposal removes the hole left in the backend list.
Read newsSkydio says Controller 2 is reaching customers after its October introduction
Skydio CEO Adam Bry said on 8 November that Controller 2 is shipping. Skydio's documentation calls its October 12 software release General Access and describes a seven-inch display, selectable cellular connectivity and support dependent on compatible X10 or R10 drone software.
Read newsBetaflight evaluates an ADIS1657x precision IMU driver
Betaflight PR 15632 proposes SPI support for the Analog Devices ADIS16575, ADIS16576 and ADIS16577 inertial sensors, combining gyro, accelerometer and temperature measurements in a burst transaction.
Read newsTopic articles
A self-balancing propeller pole exposes the limits of control bandwidth
Four FPV-sized propellers can hold a long carbon-fibre pole upright for hours without lifting it off the ground. That sounds like a strange endurance record for a quadcopter. It is actually a cleaner demonstration of a different problem: the speed at which an actuator can correct an error matters more than the peak force it can produce .
Read articleESC passthrough is a controlled handoff, not a spare serial port
An ESC configurator runs on a computer, while the electronic speed controller sits behind the flight controller on an aircraft. The laptop has USB; the ESC generally has a motor signal connection that is being used for something else. Letting the configurator read settings or flash firmware therefore requires a temporary change in ownership of that connection.
Read articleSurviving a wall strike is not the same as recovering flight control
A quadcopter that survives a collision can still fall out of the air. The frame may remain intact while the aircraft tumbles, the propellers lose useful orientation and the state estimator stops trusting measurements that no longer resemble ordinary flight. Collision tolerance therefore has two distinct tests: whether the machine survives the impact, and whether it can regain controlled flight afterward.
Read articleBetaflight motor output limit vs throttle limit: running 6S on 4S motors and switching profiles by cell count
Betaflight has two settings that sound like they do the same job: throttle limit and motor output limit. They don't. Throttle limit only changes what your throttle stick asks for. Motor output limit caps what the flight controller can send to the ESCs, whatever the PID loop wants. If the goal is to protect motors and ESCs, for example when you put a 6S pack on a drone with 4S motors, only motor output limit does the job.
Read articleFPV camera angle: how much tilt to start with, how to measure it and when to change it
"What camera angle do you fly?" gets asked at every field, and the number on its own tells you very little. Camera angle is the upward tilt of the FPV camera relative to the frame's top plate. It doesn't change the tune, the rates or the top speed. What it changes is where the horizon sits in your goggles at a given speed, and that quietly decides how fast you end up flying.
Read article