How to go about building a dron for as cheep as possible?

Projects General Guidance
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I have been fascinatied about making a drone for a little while and just recently got an Arduino for my birthday and I was wondering if any one has tutorial or something that I could bass by idea off (with board design and scripts ex.) but and It is probely the same for every one want to make it as cheep as possible and input would be greatly apriciated.

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First step JustPassingBy is to have a clear definition of the goal you want to achieve, this will help guide you in the equipment you need and how to go about making it a reality. You say you want to make a drone but can you be more specific? What are you looking for it to do? Drive round your bedroom? Fly down the street? Sail across the ocean? Attack 'terrorists'?

Once you have a clear idea then you need to think about all the things it has to be able to do to achieve the goal. Let's say you want it to drive round your room, here is a couple of things off the top of my head it has to do:

  • Be able to move forwards.
  • Be able to turn.
  • Be able know when it needs to turn.
  • Be able to run without being connected to the PC*

So now you have some clear goals in mind you can break the whole thing down and look at individual issues:

  • How can I move forwards? - Wheels are an obvious choice so look into them and motors to drive them and gears for power.
  • How can I turn? - You'd probably find this when looking up wheels but turning just the left of the vehicle or right works well (even better with tank tracks!)
  • How can I tell if I should turn? - Is a tricky one but well placed switches are a cheap and effective way to go.
  • How can I run the Arduino without being connected? - Alternative power sources and optimising your code.

As you can see there is a lot to it but thankfully there is also a lot of people who are working on similar projects. From the little I've seen many like to start with a Remote Control car and use that as a basis for their project since it already has a good framework in place to build upon.

Hope this helps and good luck!

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Yes, you can build a drone with Arduino. Here is one, sans camera:
https://code.google.com/p/arducopter/

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