5 ms·

Show HN: The Jankest Autonomous Drone Built and Programmed from Scratch

137 points by alexozer 8y ago

massivecali 8y ago
I've only seen the word written as jank, janky or jankiest. First for jankest. Where can I view photos of the various physical build attempts?
- gatherhunterer 8y ago
  “Most jank” is the correct superlative when using the noun as an adjective according to Wiktionary.
- evanweaver 8y ago
  At Twitter in the early days it was janky/jankiest. “Jankest” is also new to me. The opposite of janky was prostyle. There was no middle ground.
- alexozer 8y ago
  Yes, my use of jankest is possibly 100% contrived. Also, I recently added a comment with a photo album if you are interested!
  - massivecali 8y ago
    Great! Thanks!
hackerews 8y ago
Blog post on design process please! Would be fun to read about the various hardware iterations.
auto 8y ago
I love this. I've been a professional dev for almost a decade now, and over the last couple of years have started migrating toward a blend of hardware and software/firmware development, and I can't get enough of learning to build physical things from scratch. I don't often get to iterate in this way at my job, and rebuild the same thing over and over, so I tend to spend my free time with projects like this that start out shitty, and you get to take the time to comb over the details, making constant prototypes. I started a deep dive in electronic music and synthesizers in the last couple of months, and have been thoroughly enjoying playing the productions units I own (Korg Monologue, Elektron Digitakt, Roland JV1080), but have even more so enjoyed the sort of free form effort of building my own instrument: https://imgur.com/a/FZ6GFsI https://imgur.com/a/FZ6GFsI That started out as a nightmare breadboarded voltage controlled oscillator, to a nicely breadboarded vco, to a rebuild on perf board, and then obviously I needed a perfboard power supply. But, once I wanted a mixer, I needed +/- 12v, not just 5v, so that led to a better iteration of the power supply, etc. It's a rabbit hole, but an immensely educational and fairly inexpensive one. I figure I'm about 3 months and a couple of YouTube tutorials away from my first Kicad developed oshpark printed PCB, and I have a ton of ideas for next steps, and prototypes in flight (CES3340 based VCO, Arduino MIDI control and CV translation, Lowpass/bandmiss filters, so on and so forth). Back to the subject of the original post, this totally looks like Pennsylvania, and if it is and the engineer who built this is in the job market, and has any interest in working for a smaller, established (20 year) shop that lives in one of the automotive spaces doing a lot of cool custom hardware/software development, I'd happily accept a resume.
- cowbellemoo 8y ago
  Awesome vco build! Have you read the MAKE book about building the Noise Toaster? It's great! I ran into my own discouraging brick wall when trying to figure out how to fabricate metal control panels/enclosures and printing labels on them without expensive cutting equipment.
  - auto 8y ago
    Thanks man! I have not read the book yet, my synth education has basically been a ton of googling, the synthdiy and synthesizer subreddits, muff wiggler, and all the awesome old school websites like mfos, birth of a synth, ken smith's designs, etc. I always knew of electronic music production and had some friends who are super into the DAW way of doing things, but I had no clue the level the hobby/eurorack scene was at.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  Oooh you should learn how to route PCBs, you're going to love both the process and the result.
  - earleybird 8y ago
    Came across this little PCB mill just today: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX44z-SSL7LzcB4xxgUdHHA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX44z-SSL7LzcB4xxgUdHHA
    - auto 8y ago
      The homebrew 3D printing/milling scene is turning into such a cool, viable space these days. There's not enough time to build all this cool stuff!
    - joshvm 8y ago
      I used to make PCBs at home, first using toner transfer and ferric chloride (never again, impossible to avoid staining everything in your lab), then with a UV lithography mask (photoresist and a laminator) and an exposure box used for making stencils. The UV stuff is actually pretty good, you can easily go down to 0.5mm pitch with some practice. Etching is still a pain, but I started using a clear etchant (sodium persulfate?) which at least didn't stain everything. I briefly experimented with laminated and cured solder masks, but that's also tricky. Never got round to silkscreening, though apparently you can do it with coloured foils. Drilling is a pain in the ass. The bits break easily and drilling accurately, even with a press, is hard. Milling makes this so much easier. Then you need to think about plated through holes, do you rivet? Do you just put some 30 gauge wire and solder? Nowadays I find I rarely need to rush boards and Oshpark is so cheap it's ridiculous. There are cheaper companies (I've yet to try Dirty PCB), but you get 3 boards, ENIG and really good tolerances for free. Even rush shipping ($20 international fedex) is cheaper than getting it done here in the UK. The only competitor I've found is Ragworm, and they're both more expensive and you only get one board with HASL. Unless you really want a board made now, I would say just get them made for you. The quality is so much better without spending tons of time. Of course sometimes you really do want a prototype instantly and if you want to make a weird shape - perhaps a really long rectangle that would cost a fortune to get made, it's worth having the kit in your house to do. On the milling side, I'd be tempted just to buy a Spokeo mill which can apparently do reasonably good PCB milling. Costs a lot, but at least it'll do other things as well. I've recently got access to a lab with some very expensive rapid protoptying kit (from LPKF), which I'm keen to try out. It can even do 3D PCBs laid onto plastic components.
shard 8y ago
For a minute I thought the drone algorithm was somehow running on Scratch, and I was curious as to how the author had managed to accomplish this feat...
- mrguyorama 8y ago
  You might find his style grating, but Michael Reeves did something related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZDE6I5B9-E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZDE6I5B9-E
walrus01 8y ago
If you want to build a really cheap drone that can actually do autonomous GPS-guided stuff, the Kakute F7 can be flashed with Arducopter (Arudpilot), and is $49 with a power distribution board. Mostly intended for small racing drones, but can be used for other purposes. https://www.getfpv.com/holybro-kakute-f7-aio-flight-controller.html https://www.getfpv.com/holybro-kakute-f7-aio-flight-controll... https://shop.holybro.com/c/kakute-f7_0486 https://shop.holybro.com/c/kakute-f7_0486 Or you can get the version that combines a four motor ESC in a stack with the version of the Kakute F7 that doesn't have a built in PDB (power distribution board), for under $120. https://shop.holybro.com/kakute-f7-amp-tekko32-f3-metal-4in1-esc-combo_p1129.html https://shop.holybro.com/kakute-f7-amp-tekko32-f3-metal-4in1... other parts needed to complete something: motors, propellers, frame, battery, video tx (for something like 5.8 GHz band goggles), RC receiver, wiring, ublox m8n GPS receiver. want a cheap frame? It'll be heavier than ordering a $45 carbon fiber frame from banggood or gearbest or aliexpress or such, but you can 3d print one at the cost of maybe half of a spool of $18 PLA filament: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:261145 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:261145 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206960 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206960
- StavrosK 8y ago
  This is all great advice. Ardupilot/Arducopter is heavy duty stuff, you can make a quadcopter/plane/whatever that will fly completely autonomously by giving it waypoints on a Google Maps interface. Highly recommended, I've built a plane like this and very much enjoyed the process. Total flight time was around thirty seconds because I managed to crash it twice, but live and learn.
- djpilot 8y ago
  What is the approximate price range to get everything needed?
  - walrus01 8y ago
    absolutely everything, there's some common ground station stuff (your handheld transmitter, and goggles or 7" LCD monitor + video receiver), that's an unavoidable upfront cost separate from the aircraft itself. Figure at minimum $300 to $400 for that. For a small quadcopter, $400-500 total parts cost, anything below that will involve a lot of quality compromises. Take a look at some of the RTF / ready to fly specifications sold by getfpv.com or helipal.com for examples.
bibyte 8y ago
What is the white dot on the video ?
- alexozer 8y ago
  Interesting, I've never noticed that before. I would guess it's a lens artifact, since it seems to move depending on where the sun is in the frame.
alexozer 8y ago
Hi, I'm the creator! Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. Some of you wanted a photo album of the journey; I quickly collected one here [0]. Apologies for duplicates, no descriptions, and Google. The full album shows a lot more of the process, but I also linked some quick highlights / milestones at the end of this comment. Also, to those who were wondering, I am still in the market for a Summer 2019 internship. I really ought to have a blog post detailing more of this, but here's a little backstory anyway. My best friend from high school and I wanted to experiment with creating our own modular drones, and although we bought a bunch of parts, we ended up leaving for college before we could do anything. A couple years later I had some time on my hands, and I decided that I wanted to see whether or not I could actually build and program a drone myself. For the project, I tried to focus on writing high quality software while still managing to build something flyable with my nearly-nonexistent mechanical skills. Even though much of this project was physical (and electrical), I still largely consider this a software project, actually. Physically, my prototypes are something you might laugh at. Zip ties, styrofoam, and Gorilla tape were my go-to materials for the most part. I originally started by mounting (read: zip-tying and taping) components to PVC tubes and metal sheets; combined with the pretty large LiPo battery I bought, it should have been no wonder that four motors were no match for the weight of the thing. I later decided to screw together 6 strips of carbon fiber sheet (a "frame") and add two motors to help assure my drone can actually lift greater than two inches off the ground at a time. Reworking the flight controller to work with six motors instead of just two was a fun challenge; I decided to make the flight controller support an unlimited number of motors in a circle while I was at it. Figuring out the optimal wireless technology for the drone was a bit of a process as well. It was frustrating when I thought I had everything ready for a test flight, but then slowly realized that, perhaps, I wasn't going to be able to get away with using Bluetooth LE over non-trivial distances. Eventually I found a radio module with superb distance and transmission rate; and after some struggle, I got them working. You can see in the video that I could control the drone from quite far away! It took quite a few days of test "flights" to get the drone to fly as well as it did in the video (if you consider the oscillating nightmare in the video "flying well"). Even getting the drone to launch two feet in the air, instantly lose control and backflip, and crash back down on the ground felt like an AMAZING feat from my perspective; it demonstrated all my systems were at least online and functional. I slowly increased the hover time of each attempt by a couple seconds or so, adjusting my controller tuning and implementation as I went. The flight in the video was nowhere near as primitive as some of my early experiments, even. I'm sure I skimped on many details, don't hesitate to ask for more information on anything. [0]: Full album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/QhSZEyd4DA1r9S9G6 https://photos.app.goo.gl/QhSZEyd4DA1r9S9G6 First physical prototype: https://photos.app.goo.gl/k6km6Hyrkq4FuxkH9 https://photos.app.goo.gl/k6km6Hyrkq4FuxkH9 Second physical prototype: https://photos.app.goo.gl/sL1LjnAgeXrmGvgEA https://photos.app.goo.gl/sL1LjnAgeXrmGvgEA Third physical prototype: https://photos.app.goo.gl/bY33peH7RZbXPxyx9 https://photos.app.goo.gl/bY33peH7RZbXPxyx9 LED strip code testing: https://photos.app.goo.gl/wZJJJ4NrFENjpUkHA https://photos.app.goo.gl/wZJJJ4NrFENjpUkHA Custom remote control assembled: https://photos.app.goo.gl/z577cVbH59vjW3g56 https://photos.app.goo.gl/z577cVbH59vjW3g56 Final "boxy" physical prototype: https://photos.app.goo.gl/8ESsQidi5Tgsb1mm6 https://photos.app.goo.gl/8ESsQidi5Tgsb1mm6
Liveanimalcams 8y ago
I need to do a write up of my FPV hovercraft its also quite janky.
plutonorm 8y ago
Just need to dial in those PID controllers a little more!
rkagerer 8y ago
Is that two chunks of drywall as substrate on one of those drones?

137 points by alexozer 8y ago

I've only seen the word written as jank, janky or jankiest. First for jankest. Where can I view photos of the various physical build attempts?

gatherhunterer 8y ago
“Most jank” is the correct superlative when using the noun as an adjective according to Wiktionary.
evanweaver 8y ago
At Twitter in the early days it was janky/jankiest. “Jankest” is also new to me. The opposite of janky was prostyle. There was no middle ground.
alexozer 8y ago
Yes, my use of jankest is possibly 100% contrived. Also, I recently added a comment with a photo album if you are interested!
- massivecali 8y ago
  Great! Thanks!

hackerews 8y ago

Blog post on design process please! Would be fun to read about the various hardware iterations.

auto 8y ago

I love this. I've been a professional dev for almost a decade now, and over the last couple of years have started migrating toward a blend of hardware and software/firmware development, and I can't get enough of learning to build physical things from scratch. I don't often get to iterate in this way at my job, and rebuild the same thing over and over, so I tend to spend my free time with projects like this that start out shitty, and you get to take the time to comb over the details, making constant prototypes. I started a deep dive in electronic music and synthesizers in the last couple of months, and have been thoroughly enjoying playing the productions units I own (Korg Monologue, Elektron Digitakt, Roland JV1080), but have even more so enjoyed the sort of free form effort of building my own instrument: https://imgur.com/a/FZ6GFsI https://imgur.com/a/FZ6GFsI That started out as a nightmare breadboarded voltage controlled oscillator, to a nicely breadboarded vco, to a rebuild on perf board, and then obviously I needed a perfboard power supply. But, once I wanted a mixer, I needed +/- 12v, not just 5v, so that led to a better iteration of the power supply, etc. It's a rabbit hole, but an immensely educational and fairly inexpensive one. I figure I'm about 3 months and a couple of YouTube tutorials away from my first Kicad developed oshpark printed PCB, and I have a ton of ideas for next steps, and prototypes in flight (CES3340 based VCO, Arduino MIDI control and CV translation, Lowpass/bandmiss filters, so on and so forth). Back to the subject of the original post, this totally looks like Pennsylvania, and if it is and the engineer who built this is in the job market, and has any interest in working for a smaller, established (20 year) shop that lives in one of the automotive spaces doing a lot of cool custom hardware/software development, I'd happily accept a resume.

cowbellemoo 8y ago
Awesome vco build! Have you read the MAKE book about building the Noise Toaster? It's great! I ran into my own discouraging brick wall when trying to figure out how to fabricate metal control panels/enclosures and printing labels on them without expensive cutting equipment.
- auto 8y ago
  Thanks man! I have not read the book yet, my synth education has basically been a ton of googling, the synthdiy and synthesizer subreddits, muff wiggler, and all the awesome old school websites like mfos, birth of a synth, ken smith's designs, etc. I always knew of electronic music production and had some friends who are super into the DAW way of doing things, but I had no clue the level the hobby/eurorack scene was at.
StavrosK 8y ago
Oooh you should learn how to route PCBs, you're going to love both the process and the result.
- earleybird 8y ago
  Came across this little PCB mill just today: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX44z-SSL7LzcB4xxgUdHHA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX44z-SSL7LzcB4xxgUdHHA
  - auto 8y ago
    The homebrew 3D printing/milling scene is turning into such a cool, viable space these days. There's not enough time to build all this cool stuff!
  - joshvm 8y ago
    I used to make PCBs at home, first using toner transfer and ferric chloride (never again, impossible to avoid staining everything in your lab), then with a UV lithography mask (photoresist and a laminator) and an exposure box used for making stencils. The UV stuff is actually pretty good, you can easily go down to 0.5mm pitch with some practice. Etching is still a pain, but I started using a clear etchant (sodium persulfate?) which at least didn't stain everything. I briefly experimented with laminated and cured solder masks, but that's also tricky. Never got round to silkscreening, though apparently you can do it with coloured foils. Drilling is a pain in the ass. The bits break easily and drilling accurately, even with a press, is hard. Milling makes this so much easier. Then you need to think about plated through holes, do you rivet? Do you just put some 30 gauge wire and solder? Nowadays I find I rarely need to rush boards and Oshpark is so cheap it's ridiculous. There are cheaper companies (I've yet to try Dirty PCB), but you get 3 boards, ENIG and really good tolerances for free. Even rush shipping ($20 international fedex) is cheaper than getting it done here in the UK. The only competitor I've found is Ragworm, and they're both more expensive and you only get one board with HASL. Unless you really want a board made now, I would say just get them made for you. The quality is so much better without spending tons of time. Of course sometimes you really do want a prototype instantly and if you want to make a weird shape - perhaps a really long rectangle that would cost a fortune to get made, it's worth having the kit in your house to do. On the milling side, I'd be tempted just to buy a Spokeo mill which can apparently do reasonably good PCB milling. Costs a lot, but at least it'll do other things as well. I've recently got access to a lab with some very expensive rapid protoptying kit (from LPKF), which I'm keen to try out. It can even do 3D PCBs laid onto plastic components.

shard 8y ago

For a minute I thought the drone algorithm was somehow running on Scratch, and I was curious as to how the author had managed to accomplish this feat...

mrguyorama 8y ago
You might find his style grating, but Michael Reeves did something related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZDE6I5B9-E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZDE6I5B9-E

walrus01 8y ago

If you want to build a really cheap drone that can actually do autonomous GPS-guided stuff, the Kakute F7 can be flashed with Arducopter (Arudpilot), and is $49 with a power distribution board. Mostly intended for small racing drones, but can be used for other purposes. https://www.getfpv.com/holybro-kakute-f7-aio-flight-controller.html https://www.getfpv.com/holybro-kakute-f7-aio-flight-controll... https://shop.holybro.com/c/kakute-f7_0486 https://shop.holybro.com/c/kakute-f7_0486 Or you can get the version that combines a four motor ESC in a stack with the version of the Kakute F7 that doesn't have a built in PDB (power distribution board), for under $120. https://shop.holybro.com/kakute-f7-amp-tekko32-f3-metal-4in1-esc-combo_p1129.html https://shop.holybro.com/kakute-f7-amp-tekko32-f3-metal-4in1... other parts needed to complete something: motors, propellers, frame, battery, video tx (for something like 5.8 GHz band goggles), RC receiver, wiring, ublox m8n GPS receiver. want a cheap frame? It'll be heavier than ordering a $45 carbon fiber frame from banggood or gearbest or aliexpress or such, but you can 3d print one at the cost of maybe half of a spool of $18 PLA filament: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:261145 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:261145 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206960 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1206960

StavrosK 8y ago
This is all great advice. Ardupilot/Arducopter is heavy duty stuff, you can make a quadcopter/plane/whatever that will fly completely autonomously by giving it waypoints on a Google Maps interface. Highly recommended, I've built a plane like this and very much enjoyed the process. Total flight time was around thirty seconds because I managed to crash it twice, but live and learn.
djpilot 8y ago
What is the approximate price range to get everything needed?
- walrus01 8y ago
  absolutely everything, there's some common ground station stuff (your handheld transmitter, and goggles or 7" LCD monitor + video receiver), that's an unavoidable upfront cost separate from the aircraft itself. Figure at minimum $300 to $400 for that. For a small quadcopter, $400-500 total parts cost, anything below that will involve a lot of quality compromises. Take a look at some of the RTF / ready to fly specifications sold by getfpv.com or helipal.com for examples.

bibyte 8y ago

What is the white dot on the video ?

alexozer 8y ago
Interesting, I've never noticed that before. I would guess it's a lens artifact, since it seems to move depending on where the sun is in the frame.

alexozer 8y ago

Hi, I'm the creator! Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. Some of you wanted a photo album of the journey; I quickly collected one here [0]. Apologies for duplicates, no descriptions, and Google. The full album shows a lot more of the process, but I also linked some quick highlights / milestones at the end of this comment. Also, to those who were wondering, I am still in the market for a Summer 2019 internship. I really ought to have a blog post detailing more of this, but here's a little backstory anyway. My best friend from high school and I wanted to experiment with creating our own modular drones, and although we bought a bunch of parts, we ended up leaving for college before we could do anything. A couple years later I had some time on my hands, and I decided that I wanted to see whether or not I could actually build and program a drone myself. For the project, I tried to focus on writing high quality software while still managing to build something flyable with my nearly-nonexistent mechanical skills. Even though much of this project was physical (and electrical), I still largely consider this a software project, actually. Physically, my prototypes are something you might laugh at. Zip ties, styrofoam, and Gorilla tape were my go-to materials for the most part. I originally started by mounting (read: zip-tying and taping) components to PVC tubes and metal sheets; combined with the pretty large LiPo battery I bought, it should have been no wonder that four motors were no match for the weight of the thing. I later decided to screw together 6 strips of carbon fiber sheet (a "frame") and add two motors to help assure my drone can actually lift greater than two inches off the ground at a time. Reworking the flight controller to work with six motors instead of just two was a fun challenge; I decided to make the flight controller support an unlimited number of motors in a circle while I was at it. Figuring out the optimal wireless technology for the drone was a bit of a process as well. It was frustrating when I thought I had everything ready for a test flight, but then slowly realized that, perhaps, I wasn't going to be able to get away with using Bluetooth LE over non-trivial distances. Eventually I found a radio module with superb distance and transmission rate; and after some struggle, I got them working. You can see in the video that I could control the drone from quite far away! It took quite a few days of test "flights" to get the drone to fly as well as it did in the video (if you consider the oscillating nightmare in the video "flying well"). Even getting the drone to launch two feet in the air, instantly lose control and backflip, and crash back down on the ground felt like an AMAZING feat from my perspective; it demonstrated all my systems were at least online and functional. I slowly increased the hover time of each attempt by a couple seconds or so, adjusting my controller tuning and implementation as I went. The flight in the video was nowhere near as primitive as some of my early experiments, even. I'm sure I skimped on many details, don't hesitate to ask for more information on anything. [0]: Full album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/QhSZEyd4DA1r9S9G6 https://photos.app.goo.gl/QhSZEyd4DA1r9S9G6 First physical prototype: https://photos.app.goo.gl/k6km6Hyrkq4FuxkH9 https://photos.app.goo.gl/k6km6Hyrkq4FuxkH9 Second physical prototype: https://photos.app.goo.gl/sL1LjnAgeXrmGvgEA https://photos.app.goo.gl/sL1LjnAgeXrmGvgEA Third physical prototype: https://photos.app.goo.gl/bY33peH7RZbXPxyx9 https://photos.app.goo.gl/bY33peH7RZbXPxyx9 LED strip code testing: https://photos.app.goo.gl/wZJJJ4NrFENjpUkHA https://photos.app.goo.gl/wZJJJ4NrFENjpUkHA Custom remote control assembled: https://photos.app.goo.gl/z577cVbH59vjW3g56 https://photos.app.goo.gl/z577cVbH59vjW3g56 Final "boxy" physical prototype: https://photos.app.goo.gl/8ESsQidi5Tgsb1mm6 https://photos.app.goo.gl/8ESsQidi5Tgsb1mm6

Liveanimalcams 8y ago

I need to do a write up of my FPV hovercraft its also quite janky.

plutonorm 8y ago

Just need to dial in those PID controllers a little more!

rkagerer 8y ago

Is that two chunks of drywall as substrate on one of those drones?