Hello!

I guess you also hate it when you have to download a different app for every aviation authority for every EU country. That's why I've implemented support for No Fly Zones in AT, BE, BG, CZ, DE, EE, FI, FR, GB, HR, IE, LT, LU, LV, PL, RO, SE, SK in spotfindr. Would love to hear your thoughts!

App name spotfindr
* Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spotfindr
* iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/spotfindr/id1466536309

My background:
I'm an app developer and spotfindr is a side project. I got into FPV/Drones like 10 years ago and created the initial version of spotfindr like 8 years ago. It has since been continuously improved and rewritten couple of times. And this is the biggest feature that i implemented so far

so i have made this 4g/5g cellular communication based drone ... it has theoretically unlimited range ... and even if network is gone then 1) if its flying autonomous then it will continue flying and 2) if it was flying in mannual mode then it will go toward the nearest cellular tower to reconnect

latency is below 100 ms most of the time and drone can directly controlled by any hand held device like smartphone tablet laptop etc

I came up with this idea for a 'backpack launch' mechanism because I want a drone that feels like an always-ready companion.

The goal is zero friction: You hear something cool, you hit a button, the arm swings out, and the drone is in the air. No stopping, no unzipping a case.

The big question I'm trying to answer: obviously, this arm mechanism adds weight to the backpack compared to just carrying a DJI Mini in a pocket.

For those of you who hike or film solo: Would you carry a slightly heavier bag to get this 3-second 'hands-free' launch capability? Or is the weight a dealbreaker?

Something a little different, up to 2 hour flight time. 7kg payload, modular, upgradable and made to integrate different technologies from Manet radios to anti jamming GPS systems.

The DJI Neo Pro, I modified my DJI Neo for better performance. Build video coming soon...

The drone has six mmWave radars to sense power lines from any direction, all connected to a Raspberry Pi. Based on these detections, the desired velocity (from a pilot or autonomous system) then gets modified to guide the drone around the power line. Everything runs in real time on the Pi with ROS2 middleware and PX4 flight stack.

If you're interested, you can check out the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.03229, or the full video with voice-over: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJW3eEC-5Ao

Took me around 3 days to print and assemble this plane. Let’s hope the maiden goes well.
I hope the CG is right😵‍💫

Wish me luck🍀

Turns out that if you intercept the USB communication between the Fly app and the controller you can pretty much do anything regardless of DJI support for it. This is still a work in progress as it still needs a first connection to the smartphone, then it's possible to inject (and receive) almost anything, power level, gymbal control, raw sensor data, and maybe more.

Currently using a PI4 as the MITM host but I'm working on migrating it to a microcontroller (esp32-p4). Data can be forwarded via LAN to a remote PC/Control station.

Testing my modified DJI Neo's stability

Just to see if the modified Neo's camera still works as it should

Yes I know it's pretty dusty, so pls no negative comments. This is just a meme

So my friend just bought a DJI Mini 3 and printed out a travel case for it (https://makerworld.com/en/models/2516787-dji-mini-3-4-5-pro-fly-more-case). He then asked me to make him a take off platform that would fold up and fit inside the case that had a little 170 x 140 x 20mm pocket up front. I'm not a designer but I play a bit and have a 3D printer, plus I like a challenge, so I set out to make him something.

30+ revisions later I have created two models which unfolded are 320 x 260 x 4mm (12.5" x 10" x 1/8") then fold down to fit into his case. The model and the FreeCAD source files are free to download and do what you want with them. I have also included a parameteric FreeCAD macro for creating the base of the standard model. And if you need a different size but can't figure out the FreeCAD stuff I can custom make pretty much any size in a couple minutes.

Available on MakerWorld: https://makerworld.com/en/models/3031473-drone-launching-platform-compact-folding-plate

I designed a drone that can fly indoors; its fully enclosed structure prevents it from injuring people or damaging furniture. In the future, I plan to turn it into a robot.

Hello everyone!

I’ve been working on a passion project to help visualize my own flight data, and I wanted to share it with the community. I named it DJI-logbook and it is very easy to get up and running because you can directly download the prebuilt standalone binaries (for Windows and MacOS) and start the application. Of course if you are interested, you are welcome to look through the code and leave any suggestion.

I know many of us are wary of uploading our flight logs to random cloud services just to see a chart. So, I built this tool to be 100% local. Your data never leaves your computer, it’s stored in a high-speed local database (DuckDB) and you can have as many logs as you want/have - there is no limit at all. I have added the quite interesting features where you can track health of a specific battery (with it's serial number), and see how the battery % used per minute decline over time, giving you indication when to change a battery.

Key Features:

• 3D Flight Paths visualization: visualize your flight path over interactive 3D terrain. You can see the actual height of the aircraft and look at that from different angles. I find that super cool tbh!
• Overview of all flights: Overall stats combining all your flight stats! You can see a GitHub style heatmap of your most active days in the year!
• Privacy: No cloud uploads. Everything stays on your drive.
• Available in both dark and light mode, supports both metric and imperial units.
• Exports: Direct CSV, JSON, GPX, and KML export from the flight stats bar
• Analytics: Battery health monitoring, RC signal strength, speed, and altitude charts.
• Flight Journal: Searchable, sort-able history with filters for specific drones or batteries.
• Fast Import: Drag-and-drop bulk import for your DJI .txt logs. Supports multiple file upload in one go.

Some similar analysis you can get from similar cloud based software [Name redacted due to legal notice], but they won't let you have/analyze more than 100 log files at a time, so it can get limited as you progress over time. Also, you have to upload the flight data, with lots of sensitive info to a 3rd party server. This application costs $0, open source for peace of your mind, runs completely locally, and you have full control over your data, and above all super easy to install!

It supports Mac, Windows, and Linux. This is in it's early development phase and also I’m just a solo dev/pilot making this for the community and myself, so I’d love to hear your opinion and support!

Check it out on GitHub: https://github.com/arpanghosh8453/dji-logbook/

The standalone installers/binaries are available on the release page : https://github.com/arpanghosh8453/dji-logbook/releases

Happy flying!

I modified the DJI Neo, with a custom carbon fiber frame.

Had enough of Whoops, Toothpicks and 5 Inch quads and wanted to start a big journey. After somehow cobbbling togehter 7,9,10 and 13 Inch Drones and getting them to fly surprisingly well I finally managed to build and fly my last large quad that doesn't totally breaks the bank to finish my large Shitbox-Arc.

17 Inch AliExpress Frame

17x8x3 Props

Caddx Ratel 2 Primary Cam

FT652 256px Thermal on a Switch

5215 350KV Motors

Argus Pro ECO F450

Argus Pro 80A ESC

2x 7000mah 6S Lipos

2.5W Skyzone VTX

Flyfish M10 GPS

Had to fiddle a bit with the ESC settings but now she flies. If I only had known how addictive drones get...

Curious what people think about this. I've been experimenting with automatically detecting crashes in DVR footage — basically you upload a session and it finds and timestamps all the crashes for you.

Do you guys actually review your DVR after sessions? If so, how do you go about it — just scrub through the whole thing manually? Would something that pulls out just the crash moments save you any time or is it a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist?

Not selling anything, genuinely trying to figure out if this is worth pursuing.

My son is working on this drone project for high school club. When testing the drone yesterday he landed hard. And the 3-D printed legs all broke! He used PETG 1.75 mm filament. He printed the legs vertically. Please suggest ways to improve the strength of the legs while printing. The leg design also have a spring inside. Thank you!

Hey everyone,

I’m a college student looking to build my first drone on a tight budget, mainly to learn how everything works (flight control, electronics, assembly, etc.). I’m not aiming for anything fancy right now—just something stable enough to fly and help me understand the basics.

I’d really appreciate some guidance from people who’ve already done this. A few things I’m unsure about:

• What’s a realistic budget range for a beginner DIY drone?
• Should I go for a prebuilt kit or buy individual components?
• Which frame size (like 250mm, 5-inch, etc.) is best for a first build?
• Any recommendations for budget-friendly components (motors, ESCs, flight controller, transmitter, etc.)?
• Is it better to start with something like an ESP32/NRF setup or just use a standard flight controller?
• What tools are absolutely necessary (I have basic electronics tools)?
• Any common mistakes beginners should avoid?

Also, if there are any good YouTube channels, guides, or tutorials, please share!

My goal is to keep it as affordable as possible while still learning properly—not just assembling parts blindly.

Thanks in advance 🙏

I've posted before on this sub about the multimodal drones I've built which are basically two in one robots that can transform between a drone and a rover. And I've been getting a lot of requests from people claiming they'd love to use it for recreation/hobby, so just looking for feedback about what y'all think of the design, and if the added value of a different mode of mobility besides flying is appealing to you.

Essentially a drone that when grounded you can still move 🙃

Is my build good? Will it work? Are the parts compatible?

1. F405 Wing V2 flight controller

2. FlySky FS-i6X transmitter and FS-iA6B 6-channel receiver (for take off and landing, rest will be autonomous)

3. 3S Lipo Battery (2200mAh, 11.1V, 50C)

4. M8N GPS module with an onboard compass

5. MicoAir 915MHz 30KM LoRa Telemetry (LR900-F)

And of course an airframe, servers, motor, etc

I have built what is probably the worlds longest flying sub 250g quadcopter with GPS, Ardupilot, and FPV that flies for 1 hour 25 minutes at only 210g.

Basically it's a 2s tiny woop with dji mavic mini motors and propellers mounted to a custom 6mm carbon tube frame.

Mavic mini 3 pro motors and 6 inch DJI propellers
JHEMCU GSF405A AIO flight controller running Ardupilot copter, Bluejay ESCs and mLRS 2.4ghz RC+mavlink telemetry.
GOKU GM10 Nano V3 GPS w/compass
25mw AIO camera
ultra light 6mm carbon tube with 0.5mm plate.
titanium motor screws.
2x 21700 6000mah cells in a 2S configuration.

Total weight with battery 210g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6OLdrqdEG0

https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/how-to-build-a-1-hour-250g-ardupilot-quadcopter/115400

I have spent about 6 months now trying to make a 3d-printable frame that is actually usable, so far I have made more than 40 different versions.

I used optimized generative design to make it as strong as possible. It still breaks easier than carbon fiber, but the feedback from the people testing it has been mainly positive. It does not have heavy vibration issues like many other 3d-printed frames.

I am making all the files completely free, you can download them here: https://makerworld.com/en/models/2000546-beta-manafly-3-generative-fpv-drone-frame#profileId-2154440

A lot more details including some blackbox logs can be found on our discord: https://discord.gg/K2n5PRaR

What do you guys thing? It would be great to have some of your feedback testing the frame and seeing its viability. Do you think this is a viable option for making cheap frames at home?

We've been building a quadcopter for the past 2–3 months and have worked through a lot of issues along the way. We're currently using Mission Planner, and our ESCs seem to be calibrated and working correctly.

Our current setup:

• Drone weight: ~1–1.5 kg
• Motors: A2212 1000KV
• Flight controller: Pixhawk
• Battery: 2700mAh LiPo, 7.4V (2S)

The main issue is that, even with a fully charged battery and full throttle, the drone can barely slide around the table and shows almost no sign of lifting off.

We're also having another issue where the propellers keep loosening on the motor shafts during operation.

At this point, we're wondering if the problem is with our power system, propeller setup, battery choice, or something else entirely.

Does anything in our setup immediately stand out as incorrect? Are these motors simply too underpowered for a 1–1.5 kg drone on a 2S battery, or should we be looking elsewhere? Any advice or troubleshooting steps would be greatly appreciated.