The coming week we are reviewing the new revision of the hardware before we press the order button. With the previous prototype we had a few violent incidents where one of the arms broke off. Fixing it wasn’t to hard. We used an aluminium tube we cut to the right size and glued over the arm and it holds up well. For this next revision we have changed the board outline around the arm joint to be smoother as this seams to be the weakest point. If everything goes according to plan the next prototype should be the last before we can order a larger batch.
During the last week we also did a little test making an small Android app and plugging the radio dongle in one of our Galaxy Nexus. It’s detected and can be used via the USB API. It’s nothing that we are planning on spending any time on right now but in the future…
Awesome! I can’t wait to get my hands on one.
Also nice to see that there’s potential for an android app.
Keep up the good work.
Demo video is great – waiting to see the production.
I wonder why the “motor arms” are part of the pcb at all. If you would make them just very short, but extend the motor holder (those out of plastic) would that not allow to produce more crazyflys per “pcbs square meter”. The oem doesn’t have to cut away so much from the orginal pcb any more – so this might be even a cheaper solution. Plus: in this case the weakest point would probably be the motor holder, which is easy replaceable.
You have a very valid point. We have been thinking of this but decided to keep the possibility to have a telescopic motor mount, and for this you need a longer arm to get any extension. We can still make a motor mount as you suggest in case of broken arms or some other purpose. The PCB would be cheaper but not that much as the shape can be placed “corner” wise and then there are not that much waste. Anyway, thanks for you input!
Very cool guys, I’m a multi-rotor fanatic/designer and have had my eye on this project since you posted publicly about it. I definitely want one for the collection. it looks like it works great !
Dave Cook