
ArduBee – A micro drone for open source development - dieantwoord
https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/ardubee-a-ready-to-fly-micro-drone-for-education-and-swarming/54362
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chrisdalke
Looks cool, it's great to have another good open source ready-to-fly option.

I have some concerns about larger PCB quadcopter designs because I can imagine
that fatigue due to flexing on the PCB over long-term use could cause issues
with the PCB delaminating or solder joints failing. On the ArduBee
particularly, you can see a lot of surface-mount components mounted on the
arms. I'd love to read more about any lifetime testing they've done on the
PCB.

Of course there's always the risk of just crashing your drone and breaking it,
but that's no different than other drone designs!

~~~
StavrosK
Why would the PCB flex? A quadcopter doesn't have that much of a twisting
force being applied to it, no?

~~~
roland35
Fr4 material is basically fiberglass, and at 1.6mm thick it doesn't take much
to bend it if it isn't supported. I think the weight of the motors could be an
issue.

~~~
StavrosK
When resting, possibly. In flight, the weight of the battery would probably be
the bigger concern, though I think you can get 2mm PCBs.

~~~
luminousbees
Thanks! this could be a great idea,the 2mm PCB could be an interesting option!
We are devoted to 1.6mm PCB since the 5" version that weighs 220g and we
haven't had any broken or issue on the PCB piece. The battery is well
attached, fixed in 6 well distributed points on the PCB and aligned perfectly
in the center of the 4 motors.

~~~
StavrosK
That's great then, if it works for you that's all that matters. I'm glad you
guys are doing this.

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asciimike
Super cool!

Back in 2014 as a senior project in college we built a quadcopter for the
BeagleBone: [https://github.com/Rose-Hulman-ROBO4xx/1314-BeagleBone-
Quadc...](https://github.com/Rose-Hulman-ROBO4xx/1314-BeagleBone-Quadcopter)

We considered building the entire thing as a PCB, but it was pretty expensive
to build one that size, plus we had concerns about its ability to take abuse
(we broke a lot of quadcopters, even with our hastily jury rigged test stand.

Our main constraint was price: I think we set a total of $100 (including the
BeagbeBone) for all the components, which included the IMU, a cheap VGA
camera, motors, battery, etc. Super proud of the laser cut frame as well,
though I bet if we had better access to 3D printers back then we could have
printed a frame fairly easily.

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vanderZwan
This looks really cool, but tbh when I saw the name _micro_ drone I expected
something crazyflie-sized[0] more than this.

Which is not a complaint, by the way! The crazyflie is so small that it
becomes quite the limitation in a few ways. Really curious how the slightly
larger size of the ArduBee compares in practice - probably has a bit more
stability and power.

[0]
[https://www.bitcraze.io/products/crazyflie-2-1/](https://www.bitcraze.io/products/crazyflie-2-1/)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law)

~~~
luminousbees
Thank you! Bitcraze is so small and lightweight, but the first version had 3
minutes of flight time. It have brush motors and it's not suited for outdoor.
We'll update you about the real flight time asap the new motors arrive.
Furthermore, ArduBee will be proposed as a plain board without motors and
propellers, to enable every sort of selection and combinations of brushless
motors and 3" props, offering full customization for many different approach,
you can use top motors or under the base, for max endurance, max payload, max
navigation performance or wind disturbance rejection.

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fxj
m5stack, the company which puts esp32 and esp8266 into nice boxes has recently
teased a m5stack atom drone (atomfly).

[https://twitter.com/M5Stack/status/1244209693045567488?s=20](https://twitter.com/M5Stack/status/1244209693045567488?s=20)

the m5stack atom is a little esp32 in a box.

[https://m5stack.com/products/atom-lite-esp32-development-
kit...](https://m5stack.com/products/atom-lite-esp32-development-
kit?variant=31699969507418)

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roland35
I am really excited about the ultrawideband implementation! The technology has
been around for a few years now but the interface is quite complex and is hard
to get up and running.

The actual ultrawideband devices (decawave) are available on digikey for
$10-20 each so if a good open source implementation exists, that would be very
exciting for hobby robotic makers.

~~~
luminousbees
I agree UWB system has good quality positioning, it's not affected by lights
or smoke and it's quite cheap. The localization is processed on each Flight
Control and it's integrated inside the Arudpilot firmware and passed to the
Ardupilot EKF.

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gdsdfe
so is this like the only programmable drone out there? or is this the only one
that is open source ? how much something like would cost? anyone have an idea
?

~~~
bri3d
No and not even close. Look up Betaflight (racing oriented) and iNav
(navigation oriented). Ardupilot is more integration/mission oriented, but
it's far from the only game in town.

A small <250g drone is in the $70-$100 price range, although you will also
need a $70+ radio transmitter or some heavy hacking to control it. Most of the
(hundreds) of supported control boards are not open hardware in the schematics
sense, but some are.

The all-in-one PCB integration strategy is cute, but I really don't think it's
a great approach from a crash-recovery point of view.

~~~
myself248
I've never built a drone yet but I've tried to do a lot of reading, and I
don't understand why everything assumes that you have an R/C transmitter in
your hand, and then at some point "throw the switch" and make it autonomous.

Isn't the entire point of these things that they fly themselves? That's why we
call them drones and not R/C helis, right?

Why can't I just click "go" on my GUI, and never purchase a TX? Or can I and
the distinction just isn't explained in a place that I've found it?

~~~
NikolaeVarius
I don't know where you got the idea that autonomy is why we call them drones.
FPV drones are all analog and they've been around a while.

They assume you have a transmitter, because a majority of non parrot drone
users are flying analog.

~~~
bigiain
Yeah. There was a time maybe 8-9 years back where at least a section of the
hobby tried to push back against the people using the term "drone" for any
quadcopter/multirotor, and trying to educate people that only things capable
of autonomous flight were "drones", while regular non-autonomous quadcopter
really are just RC helicopters.

We lost that fight a long time ago.

(And I'm not even sure we were "right" to be honest. The term "drone" got used
back in WW2 era for radio controlled aircraft used for target practice. There
sure as hell were not autonomous...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioplane_OQ-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioplane_OQ-2)
)

~~~
TeMPOraL
What drones _are_ autonomous? The most well-known ones, used by the US
military, aren't autonomous, AFAIK. A in UAV stands for Aerial, not
Autonomous.

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msadowski
Very cool idea! Looks like something that will allow prototyping automatic
indoor flight on a tight budget. The only thing I don't like about the design
is that if you break an ESC (or other component for that matter) then you most
likely need to replace the whole thing, which won't be cheap.

I wish this had a bit more processing power (or a raspberry pi add on) so that
it could run ROS but that would definitely hurt the flight time.

Couple of years ago there was a prototyping board Snaodragon Flight that came
with built-in cameras for optical flow:
[https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/ardubee-a-ready-to-fly-
micro...](https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/ardubee-a-ready-to-fly-micro-drone-
for-education-and-swarming/54362/13). I think some people here might find it
interesting.

~~~
luminousbees
Thanks! we are working hard on the best protection+landing, searching for the
lightest solution and it will be all around the propellers. We use since 2
years its bigger brother (220g) in a swarm system for choreographies with
medium acceleration/speed autonomous navigation, during all the intense flying
sessions we had quite some crashes but the harm on the board has been very
low.

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khancyr
The drone seems nice, I hope we can play with it soon ! I am glad they share
some development with open source !

~~~
luminousbees
Thank you so much khancyr! You are a well-known member in the ardupilot
community your support is highly appreciated and if you have ideas or
suggestions we would love to have your opinion before closing the new ArduBee
prototypes in development

With great excitement we follow the feeback here on HN and we are happy to
answer all your questions!

Besides posting here you're all also very much invited to submit your feedback
via this google form and contribute with your ideas to the final version of
ArduBee before starting the kickstarter:
[https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfSv-
mjhigMYmZsG03N...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfSv-
mjhigMYmZsG03N8fZ2-TsJQC9cG0GdrETQfmdx_tZYhg/viewform)

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forsakenharmony
Can you remove the unnecessary loading screen from your website?

