Make: Drones: Teach an Arduino to Fly Paperback – November 22, 2016

I really like this one but I have no experience or website to use

This is a very informative book for the aspiring drone enthusiast. I recommend this book for intermiediate level electronic hobbyist; Arduino, Particle and Adafruit platform users. You will need a good understanding of programming as well.This book goes in depth about the major considerations one needs to know to build a drone from the ground up..no gimicks. This book is heavy on the software in terms on how to program your drone. Github libraries and some personal programming section help the reader achieve a good understanding of how to go about programming a drone. Different types of drones projects are used as examples mainly pertaining to the three major classes of drones.The book includes different pcb schematics and lots of componets to tell you what your drone can carry; sensors, cameras, gps, gyroscope and more...Love the read.

I have built and flown many DIY drones with various types of flight controllers including a Pixhawk F450 frame quadcopter which is based on the Arduino hardware. The "Make: Drones: Teach an Arduino to Fly" is a nicely compiled book which covers a wide variety of subjects on drone components and building with the Arduino hardware. It also comes with color photos and steps for modifying some off-the-shelve drones such as the popular Hubsan X4 and Syma X5 by using Arduino based flight controllers. We can also access details of the projects covered in this book from the author's website including the Arduino code.Although the book covers a broad variety of drones related subjects and components, they are actually very brief. As a matter of fact, the author touches very lightly on some subjects with just one or two paragraphs which are definitely not enough for an in-depth understanding of the subject matters. The coverage of the flight controllers and flight control system are also not complete (eg the popular Betaflight was not mentioned). This is understandable as the drone technology is very fast moving. The book also does not provide a lot of coverage on the radio transmitter setup and the configuration platform such as the APM and Mission Planner which are the main ones for Arduino based drones. The good news is that there are lots of reference materials on the web which we can do more in-depth research as required to complete the project listed in the book. It would be good if the author could point to some of those sites for easy reference.Another observation is that the author chose to modify some popular drones such as the Hubsan X4 and Syma X5C. This would require quite a bit of modification and including cutting out the existing plastic molds and such. However, there are also alternatives for cleaner builds such as buying off-the shelve frames or printing popular 3D drones frames from Thingiverse. Or they could also consider using the Blade Inductrix frame which made the Tiny Whoop so popular these days.Overall, I like this book as this would give the readers some ideas on building their own Arduino based drones. However, I would expect the readers to do more researches and in-depth studying from the web in order to complete these projects successfully.

Very straight forward

DRONES: TEACH AN ARDUINO TO FLY is one of the best "Make" books ever! It contains complete instructions for building three different drones--small, medium, and large (large enough to require FAA registration). The drones are built from parts kits available online, supplemented with flight controllers (Hubsan X4Wii; Syma X5 with Arduino Teensy 3.2; S500 plus Pixhawk Lite controller and ArduCopter flight control software).The book explains in detail how drones fly, and includes an early chapter on testing a small drone to understand how changed batteries and propellers can affect performance. Later chapters deal with how changes in the flight controller affect performance, and with how a modular controller can further enhance performance.The book is profusely illustrated with circuit diagrams, important stages of actual drone construction showing wired connections, drone parts, key programming software screenshots, diagrams of aerodynamics principles, flowcharts, and more. The included code can be used in the builder's programs and documentation without the publisher's permission (unless the builder wants to reproduce significant amounts of the code for commercial purposes).

This book was different than I expected. I expected a simple step-by-step make of a drone, like in an issue of Make. This goes a little deeper. It has quite a bit of the theory surrounding the control system.I was a little disappointed that I didn't see a 3d printed drone build (that's what I was expecting). The author modifies a few lower priced drones and does a make from a kit. I own a Syma X5C but the mod requires destroying it, more or less, so I really don't want to try that. I would rather have had a 3d printed option. They also modify a Husban X4, which I don't own.The main project is from an s500 kit. The drone you build with that kit seems pretty impressive, and I might try it at some point.I do think if you are interested in drones, the book is useful because it does delve into controller programming and how a drone flies and receives signals, which I thought was interesting even without the build. The diagrams for the circuit boards and charts and graphs are excellent. The build seems pretty straightforward. I'll probably come back to the build, but I don't really feel like investing in the kit (which seems to be available on Ebay, but I can't find it anywhere else at the moment: that could change). The kit itself is around $40.I did a quick calculation of the cost it would take to build the drone following their instructions and I came up with $250-300 (again, quick calculation. I haven't built it myself. I don't have that kind of money right now to invest in a project). I'll probably come back to it because I would like to hook my GoPro up to a Drone.