Drone Kits High School research class

[Frederick Feraco]

Hello

I was looking around at drone kits and would like some advise. I would love for my research class students to build a quadcopter or drone. I want them to build it and then optimize it based on flight. I need to put a order list together very soon. Can you recommend any kits that will have all materials needed to build? Also maybe a kit in which student could customize?

[Víctor MV]

Hello Frederick,

I'd suggest you take a look at the Erle-Copter drone kit for an educational and research quadcopter platform. We've provide comprehensive instructions, simulation capabilities (with Gazebo) and a community that supports and builds on top of this particular drone.

Regards,

[Bill Bonney]

As FYI Victor is a founder of Erle Robotics. 

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[Randy Mackay]

 

     The Erle Robotics copter came to my mind as well.  I think a Bebop2 (not Bebop1) is also a good choice.  It can be loaded up with ArduPilot and it’s cheap and readily available.  It’s not so good for hardware hacking (i.e. adding sensors is difficult) also its software can only be compiled from a linux/Ubuntu machine (i.e. not windows, not sure about mac).  It can only be controlled with a wifi joystick (i.e. can’t use standard RC transmitters) but it has built in cameras and has the potential to use an optical flow sensor for indoor flying.

 

     The Solo has also recently come down in price in the US at least so that might be worth a look.  It’s perhaps slightly easier to hack the hardware than on a bebop and it’s really built around ardupilot.  Loading the firmware is slightly easier than with the bebop2.  It’s significantly larger, heavier and thus slightly more dangerous than the bebop2 however.

 

-Randy

[Bill Bonney]

For High Skool Students and for fun I would suggest a micro drone platform http://www.makershed.com/products/3dfly-micro-drone-kit-with-battery-spektrum-compatible you get to 3D print the parts.

or https://www.bitcraze.io/crazyflie-2/ which is another (https://www.seeedstudio.com/item_detail.html?p_id=2103)

For something bigger where students can also get involved with the code and the making the APM 2.x HW works well, and is less complicated.

A step up is using Pixhawk HW with ArduCopter.

The above two options could use a quadcopter flame wheel kit see here for examples http://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-common-airframe-builds.html#common-common-airframe-builds

Then you get Erle and other Linux solutions. You have lot more layers involved. Are more powerful, and can be more complex.

The Solo is amore  advanced development hacker platform, it’s not as straight forward and it pretty new. Bebop is also experimental. These are going to be much more expensive to fix in crash.

To be honest, without much more detailed requirements, what best suits your needs is not so obvious. but hope the above helps with choosing a direction.

Hope that helps :)

Bill

Lost your multi-rotor - Try FIND MY DRONE™ and MAV PILOT on the App Store 

--------------------------------------------------------
bill bonney - mobile software developer - founder

communis technologies

bi...@communistech.com

www.communistech.com

[Randy Mackay]

 

    ..and just to continue with the escalation of info.. if you choose ardupilot, although it’s possibly too much info, here are the presentations that I’ve been giving for operation and software training.

                  https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3852647/SoftwareTraining/JapanDronesOperationTraining_May2016_ver1.1.pptx

                  https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3852647/SoftwareTraining/JapanDronesSoftwareTraining_Jun2016_ver1.pptx

    ..feel free to use any/all content but add a little comment somewhere that the original source of the docs is me.