Some background…
A long time dream for me has been building a drone connected purely via internet over the mobile network, for both a real time videostream and the control link. The NAVIO was the missing piece in building this and I got very excited when I first read about it. It enabled a compact and all integrated solution at a reasonable weight and cost. The fact that APM runs on RPi was a big bonus too.
Build 1
The first build was a proof of concept. It all worked, but due to the CPU load, the quality of the stream was not very good. I also felt the layout of components on the quad could be better.
Link to thread…
Build 2
I decided to scratch build the “ultimate drone”. A big drone with super long flight time, HD camera,17 inch props etc, . In the end this quad did work, and had a very long flight time (more than 60 minutes), but it was very slow and not good at much else than hovering. In addition, I had a lot of problems with esc timings with the motors on 4S and I could never get a reliable stream from the Logitech c920 camera over 4G. Lastly, the arms were a little to springy and would resonate at certain rpms. (!!)
Link to thread…
Build 3
For build 3 I made a new design based on parts from build 2. I decided to try the RPi camera again and build a much faster and smaller quad at the sacrifice of some flight time ( it hovered for about 45 minutes ) (13 inch props) . The result was a big improvement, it flies extremely well and has a lot of power. I can highly recommend these motors on 6S, they are very light and powerful. With the addition of NAVIO 2 and RPI 3 the quality of the stream over 4G improved dramatically too. All in all, this quad pretty much fulfilled my initial dream!
Link to thread…