Hello blog visitors! My name is Arjun Mody, and this first post will be the start of a blog dedicated to making D.I.Y drones easier and simple. I started on my first drone with no knowledge whatsoever, and this led to many mistakes and burning motors. I tried to use resources on YouTube and other websites, but couldn't find a resource that was purely for beginners and beginners only. Of course, there are many fantastic websites like FliteTest (yes, it is spelled that way), Make Magazine, and Diydrones.com. While most of these websites include lots of helpful information, they don't simplify it to a beginner's mindset. That's where this blog comes in. Going back to my first drone, all the parts combined were under $200 from Hobbyking.com, which is by far the best place to by drone components. The frame was a small 250 size housing made for a racing quad. This was the first mistake I made. Never build a racing quad your first time. This type of quadcopter is designed for speed and agility, not for a beginner. I knew absolutely nothing about the electronics. It was very hard to choose all the correct components that made of the power distribution system, the flight controller, the electronic speed controllers, and the motors. Basically, I just chose components from trustworthy brands and kind of guessed on what things I needed. I'm not going to go into the specific components, but the problem I had in the end, after three, long weeks of building, was that my battery was way to small, my motors were two fast, and because of this, the other components like the speed controllers and flight controller couldn't handle this. I had lots of smoking motors and speed controllers by the end of it. This drone was a massive failure, except for the time it flew four feet high for 20 seconds. I built that drone in the spring of 2015 and have since learned many new things. This summer, I decided to try once again at the seemingly daunting task of building my own drone. I was brainwashed by all the ads for the new DJI Phantom and the Parrot Bebop, but I realized that I'm the type of person who doesn't settle for anything. In this case it was saving up $1,000 dollars for a professional, proven to work consumer drone, or putting in the hard work and building my own for under $200. This dilemma is similar to the one of custom building your own computer versus spending more money on fancy new one that would work 99%. I actually have built my own computer, so I truly understand what it is like to make this decision. The pros of custom building are upgradeability and price, and the cons are mainly that it most of the time, it won't "just work" the first time and that you actually have to spend time building it. This might not be convenient for some people, but after you finish building and it works successfully, you will feel like you can do anything. That's also why I decided to build my drone after I successfully built my computer. I hope whoever is currently reading this also strives for the "invincible" "I can do anything" feeling, because it is the feeling that leads people to unknown passions and in the end, success in life.
