Introduction

My name is Jeremy Wiles, and for the past few months, I have been building and improving my own quadcopter drone. I did all the research and development on my own, as well as the design and assembly. I started with only an idea and a passion. Below is a brief picture summary showing the evolution of the quad copter drone since I started the project to what it is today. Though I've narrowed it down to only the key changes, there were many modifications and lots of issues that didn't make it into this blog for the sake of keeping it brief. If I weren't holding myself back, I'd have a novel. Anyways, Enjoy!              
                       

First up is a picture of me with the quadcopter in its current state. Keep reading to see how I got to here from just an idea

Project Start: (August) Here is the original quadcopter, in its simplest, cheapest and messiest form. I had spent a good chunk of time in July reading and learning about quadcopters, and by August I felt ready to take off on my own.

By October I had made some significant improvements. The biggest improvement was that it now had a gopro camera with live streaming video sent to a briefcase ground station I made. It was possible to fly the quad copter by only looking at the video feed, which is good for about a mile. Other improvements consisted of, landing gear, LEDs, 3d printed motor mounts, vibration damping and much more. It had also weathered several major crashes and one full rebuild at this point. 

With November and December came significant improvements; A carbon fiber frame, a camera gimbal (stabilization system), and a Pelican transportation case. The carbon fiber frame forced me to rebuild the quad and tidy the wires up, while the gimbal gave me smooth level footage regardless of the quadcopters tilt. The pelican case has also been immensely useful for transportation especially in the snow!

 Through January and February my focus has been on the "brain" of the quadcopter (AKA the flight controller). The flight controller I had up till now was a very basic board with no frills. After hours and hours of research, I decided on a new flight controller. The new flight controller has a GPS, Altimeter and a compass on top of the basic tilt sensors (gyroscopes and accelerometers). This allows the flight controller to have features such as return to home, in which the quadcopter comes back to where it took off. The board also has features such as preprogrammed flights, "follow me" mode and so much more. This has brought the usability and safety factor of my quadcopter way up, as some of these modes allow the quad to stay in place to take a few photos for example, or to save the quadcopter if Ive lost control and want it to return to home. The pictures dont show much here besides a new antenna for the GPS, but this was one of the most exciting modifications to the quadcopter.

My next addition is already in the mail. A dedicated camera that will be directly mounted to the quad copter so that I can use my briefcase ground station to fly the quad. The current camera is stabilized so you cant tell how the quad copter is tilted, which is certainly an important thing to know as the pilot. The camera should be mounted and working by the end of this week. Exciting! (Update: Camera is wired in and working, and had my first few flights with it. I did some aerial photography with the GoPro while I was flying with the flight cam (also did some crashing). Here is the new camera and some photos I took with the GoPro. Not a very interesting subject matter, but it was a test run, and the aerial photos came back great.