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Arduino Nano Quadcopter

By Montvydas in Circuits > Arduino 216.069 394 92 Featured

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3D Printed Micro Quadcopter

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By Montvydas
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(At the moment the project is being edited as the previous model had a couple of aws)

This is Arduino based and 3D printed nano quadcopter which ies on DC brushed motors. The
name nano comes from the fact that the project is based on Arduino nano, which I think is one
of the most successful dev boards ever made. This project isn't just another Hey - look what a
cool thing I made, it is instead aimed at analysing and understanding the design decisions which
need to be made when designing a quadcopter, thus it will be a bit lengthy. However if you
want to understand quadcopters from the bottom up - stay with me!

When I initially started working on the project (a shame to say - years ago...) I went along with
Bluetooth 2.0 module as this was popular back then, however years passed by and many more
Arduino modules got developed. Recently, I noticed that a couple more di erent nano modules
such as BLE-Nano and RF-Nano (nRF24L01) are cheaply available on Aliexpress so I decided to
revive this project and nally complete it. I will use BLE-Nano as the connections worked out
very well and I will also want to control it using my smartphone.

One more bit, I speci cally chose SMD parts available at JLCPCB Basic library and provided both
Schematics and the PCB les available at EasyEDA for both, Nano Quadcopter and later improved
nRF52840 Quadcopter. Some through-hole connectors and other quadcopter related essentials
will still have to be sourced separately, otherwise one can preorder an already assembled PCB or
order parts separately and solder them by hand.

P.S. The robot is dedicated for M.O.N.T.E. (Mobile Omnidirectional Neutralization and Termination
Eradicator) killer robot from The Big Bang Theory :D

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Step 1: Frame & Plastic

Material Choice
When designing the frame there are a couple of considerations to make. The frame must be:

● Light - obviously the lighter it is, the easier it will be to lift it up!
● Sturdy - quadcopter tend to fall a lot and if it doesn't break after every fall - is it a huge plus.
● Resistive to vibrations - otherwise it might be unstable as the motors do vibrate a lot. This also
helps to reduce accelerometer picked up noise.

In the past I saw quadcopters which frame was made from plastic, carbon bre, some sort of
metal, PCB or a combination of these. Because I wanted to learn about 3D printing too, I decided
to design my own frame and then print it using ABS plastic, however PLA should also be good. I
didn't do a PCB only based quadcopter as that would increase the overall price of the PCB
printing plus if one part broke... the whole quadcopter would have to be thrown away.

3D Design
Using 3D printer allowed me to design the quadcopter in any shape and form I wanted. The
weight of the frame that I designed was around 10 - 15 g however it will vary slightly depending
on the printer settings and the plastic used to print it. For the design I used a free web design
tool TinkerCAD, which is super easy to use and I encourage using it for beginners or for smaller
projects. For more professional designs you could also use AutoCAD (Paid) or Blender (Free), the
latter being open source and free to use is a huge advantage in my perspective, however the
learning curve is way more gradual when compared to TinkerCAD.

I added the design les here so that you could go and print it right away yourself. However if you
want to look into the design from all angles then visit Thingiverse. Likewise, you can visit
TinkerCAD to modify my previous design the way you like it.

For a single quadcopter you only need to print Quadcopter_bottom_3.stl. Other parts are
optional as they do not add any value and are there more for the looks. Also note that the
screws were printed very poorly and thus I could not t them through the designated holes. I
redesigned the bottom part so that you could stick in the top part and then could simply use
some plastic ties, wire or even electrical wire if you intended to use it - note though that each
part adds unnecessary weight.

quadcopter_bottom_3.stl View in 3D Download

Quadcopter_top_2.stl View in 3D Download

Quadcopter_screw_2.stl View in 3D Download

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Step 2: Electronics Components

While researching some things I noticed some very similar or otherwise very interesting
projects such as this one based on MultiWii project, Crazy ie 1.0 and Cracy ie 2.X or another
hobby project. These are given here as a reference if you wanted to nd other components
which could be used for your projects or if you get stuck somewhere. When deciding each part
for my quadcopter I will include its weight, if it is larger than 1g. Otherwise I will simply omit it as
it's very insigni cant.

Microcontroller & Connectability

When I started this project initially I used a clone of Arduino Nano, which doesn't include any
communication module, thus I wanted to use HC-06 Bluetooth 2.0 slave module. However these
days way better alternatives include such as:

● Bluno Nano, which has. built in CC2540 BLE chip. The cost is around £27.
● BLE-Nano, which is a Chinese clone of Bluno Nano. On Aliexpress it's available for ~£4
including delivery!
● RF-Nano, which is available for ~£4 on Aliexpress including delivery.
● Nano 33 BLE, which runs a lot faster than than the above processor nRF52840. The cost is
around £17.
● Nano 33 BLE Sense, which is very similar to the Arduino Nano 33 BLE but it additionally
includes some more sensors such as accelerometer and gyro, thus wouldn't need to add
externally. The cost is around £27.

I thought that Beetle BLE was another interesting choice, however they only have 2xPWM
output, thus controlling 4 motors isn't possible without extra circuitry, thus not worth the pain
in this project. I went along with BLE-Nano for their low price and connectability to a smart
phone using BLE. On top of that, these chips no longer have the CH340 chip which was typically
inside the clone boards and was used as both USB-to-Serial converter and 5V to 3.3V LDO
voltage regulator, which could supply up to 25mA of current without dropping the voltage. This
means there is no need to install the CH340 drivers and the used new LDO SP6205 can now
supply up 500mA. They also nally use micro-USB rather than the old fashioned Mini-USB (about
time!).The weight of each chip varies barely. Also note, that RF-Nano utilises pins 9, 10, 11, 12
and 13 for talking to the RF module, thus utilising these pins for PWM is not possible - you will
have to nd a workaround such as using an external PWM chip or using Software based PWM.

If you do not care about the money, I would recommend going with their the Nano 33 BLE or
the Nano 33 BLE Sense (you will have to modify my code a bit..), but I wanted this to be as cheap
as possible. Plus if I ever wanted I can simply replace the Nano to a di erent one without
needing to remodel the PCB - that's the beauty of using Nanos for Quadcopters!

I think if not choosing Nanos other great choices for microcontrollers (and I think in the future I
will redesign the schematics and PCBs to work with these) would include:

● Particle Xenon - based on nRF52840 with built-in BLE this is a great dev board which costs
around £11.Sadly it's being discontinued and I think you should buy a couple of them as
they're great.
● Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Express - this and Particle Xenon are rather interchangeable.
Although the connection pin number vary, they will behave pretty much the same.. The price
however closer to £22.
● ESP32 - This is another great chip and it has many modules, most popular ones being Lolin32
variants. It has built in BLE, Bluetooth and WiFi thus making this a great choice.
● ESP8266 - This chip does not support BLuetooth in any way, however it does support WiFi. It
probably can be described as a younger brother os ESP32...

The good thing about the above modules is that they are slightly wider and due to this our IMU
can be easily tted underneath thus saving a lot of space. Not only that but they already pack a
battery connector (would need to nd out the connector current rating though), battery
charger, voltage level detector and many more. On top of that they can alternatively be
programmed using Microcpython (ESP), Circuitpython (nRF52840) and others, thus I think they
might be a great choice for the future. Not only that but the BLE built inside most of these
support something called HID mode, which would allow to connect them straight to pretty
much all gaming controllers for phones or PS4 thus removing the need of the phone altogether.
I think they are great choices of chips.

Total weight ~5g

Motors
I got two sets of motors, one being from Micro Motor Warehouse (later called MMW motors) and
another was a replacement for Hubsan X4 (later called Hubsan motors) from Ebay. Both them
were 8.5mm x 20mm in size also known as con guration 8520. The MMW set was not cheap
(~£25), however the motors are supposed to be a lot faster and have more thrust than the
Hubsan ones. The weight of my quadcopter is a bit larger, thus I may need fast motors to lift up
the weight, however I will test both motors to see if Hubsan is su cient as their price is only
around ~£4 per set. If faster motors are required, there is an option from the same place as MMW
- these, however note that thrust is the same thus you won't really see much di erence. Another
way is getting from TinyWhoop shop, however the motors are smaller. When buying motor sets
the most important things (from most to less important) which you need to take a look are:

● Type - there are brushed DC and brushless AC motors. Nano quadcopters are usually based on
brushed DC motors as they're smaller and easier to control without the need of extra AC
controllers. However they have a lot less thrust and cannot be used for larger quadcopters.
● Can diameter - the 3D design was made for motors with 8.5mm diameter. The design would
have to be altered for a di erent diameter.
● Max Static Thrust or simply Thrust - de nes how much weight can the motors keep in the air
or basically - how heavy your quadcopter can be. Propeller type have to be de ned and often
thrust vs current curve (often called performance curve) is supplied e.g. for Hubsan you can
nd one online. To compare, the MMW motors have 40g while Hubson have 34g of thrust per
motor.
● Weight - the weight of a motor, which will be added to the total weight of the quadcopter.
Both MMW and Hubson motors weight around 5g per motor.
● Load current - de nes what current is being drawn by a motor when a speci ed voltage
applied using speci ed propellers. Note that without the propellers attached this current
would drop to really small values, thus when testing for brownout voltage (more of that later)
always put on the propellers. To compare, MMW motors draw 2.75A while Hubsan 1.85A of
current per motor.
● Recommended propeller size - years ago I didn't care about this but then I noticed that the
quadcopter doesn't get lifted anyhow and realised that the propellers I used were simply too
small! Both motors should aim for 55mm propellers.
● Lifetime rating - this de nes how long should the motors run without failing. MMW specify
this to be 5-6h, I am not sure about the Hubsan ones though. Thus always a good idea to buy
two sets of motors.
● Speed - fast speed will give you faster ights, however with increased currents, thus need
better batteries. Plus they're likely more di cult to control due to their speed... Thus I
wouldn't care about this one for as long as the motors are designed for quadcopters.
● The plug type - this is to simply know which female type connectors to buy to match these.
MMW motors use JST-PH 2.0 2-pin connectors and I would recommend you sticking to these.
More about them later.

Total weight for all motors ~20g

Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)

Essentially IMU is used to calculate the angle between the quadcopters each axis and the
ground. Normally IMU used inside quadcopters must have at least two elements - an
accelerometer and a gyroscope. Not going too much into the details on how IMUs are made it is
worth noting that:

● Accelerometer (later called accel) measures acceleration (duhh!). It has 3-axis sensor and thus
can measure the acceleration component in 3 perpendicular axises. Earths gravity is actually
an acceleration component pointing to the centre of the Earth and thus it can be measured
too. By applying some basic maths we can calculate where with respect to the current
quadcopters rotation the gravity vector is pointing to. However accels not only pick up the
gravity but any other acceleration too, such as quadcopter accelerating up, down, to the sides.
Not only that but the vibrations caused by the motors are essentially accelerations too! This
type of introduced motor noise is often reduced by damping the sensor e.g. adding
polystyrene in between the accel and the quadcopter itself. Overall, this sensor alone doesn't
cannot be trusted well enough.
● Gyroscope (later called gyro) measures rate of rotation (wait whut?). It has 3-axis sensor and
thus can measure the change or rate of rotation in 3 di erent axis. Mechanical gyros measure
the actual angle, however chip based solution instead rely on other techniques thus allowing
to minimise the sensors size and also add the third axis (along the surface of earth) which
otherwise couldn't be measured. The drawback is that to evaluate the angle one must
integrate the sensor value over time. This gives a very smooth output value, however if such
sensor is used alone, the angle value is going to drift over time. This happens in two ways:
● Sensor bias or simply o set - gyros are not made perfect, thus every gyro that comes out of
the manufacturing process will add some o set to their actual measurement value. This
o set can be eliminated by calibrating the gyros, which is done by placing them
motionless and then taking a sample of let's say 100 measurement and averaging them.
Later this o set value can be subtracted from the actual measurement thus improving the
result.
● Continuous vs discrete world dilemma - we live in continuous world, while the
microcontrollers do not. When sensor performs measurement it samples them at a
speci ed sampling rate e.g. 80Hz. If the some change occurs very rapidly in between the
two sample measurements the measurement will not pick that change up. This problem is
reduced by increasing the sampling rate, however over longer periods of times the drift will
still become apparent.

This is why IMUs come equipped not with one but two sensors - some clever algorithms are
being performed to merge the sensor values together to acquire a smooth and reliable angle
values over even very long periods of time.

Another important factor is placement of the IMU sensor within the quadcopter surface. This is
no simple maths but its analysis you can nd here. In short though, accelerometer sensor must
be place as close to the centre of mass as possible as otherwise due to centripetal acceleration
the rotation of the quadcopter will be measured as acceleration even though the quadcopter
will actually not be moving at all! Either this or additional maths would have to be used to
remove this component from the nal result. I will try to keep the accelerometer as close to the
mass of centre as possible, however I believe that in out case this will not add that much of extra
inaccuracies as the quadcopter by nature will try to keep it's rotation angle in alignment with
the Earths surface while not in motion - otherwise it would fall. Well, unless you're performing
some tricks I guess! Otherwise can always place it on the second layer of the PCB aka The Upside
Down!

For the project I used a very popular and cheap MPU6050 IMU, which includes a 3-axis
Gyroscope and a 3-axis Accelerometer. One might be interested. in using MPU9250, which
additionally includes a 3-axis magnetometer (measures the magnetic eld), however indoors
these do not very well due to existing magnetic interference from the electrical wiring and
construction, plus the running motors will induce extra magnetic eld, thus I wonder if it
worked. Anyway, within the circuit and PCB I added the MPU9250 board, which is backwards
compatible with the MPU6050, thus any of these IMUs could be used.

Total weight ~2g

Batteries
Choosing adequate batteries is very important as wrong batteries will not allow the motors to
draw enough current to light up the quadcopter and on top of that there will be huge voltage
drops, which will keep interfering with the electronics. There are a few important points to note
when buying them:

● Type - there are many battery types such as li-po, li-on and even these come in shades. Rather
recently Graphene based batteries became available, which can withstand higher currents
and have higher capacity density. Of course the downside is the price!
● Capacity (measured in mAh or Wh) - will determine how much energy is stored inside the
battery. The larger the capacity, the longer the quadcopter will run on a single charge. This will
be proportional to the size and weight of the battery and will also determine how much
current can be drawn from and into the battery.
● Max allowed discharge (burst) and average discharge (constant) rate (C) - the rst determines
peak currents e.g. when quadcopter starts accelerating, while the latter determines normal
operation current e.g. quadcopter is kept constant in the air. There is often a rule of thumb
that multiplication of capacity and the discharge rate will give the current that the batteries
can supply. To be on the safe side also need to add 20% of safety margin - we do not want the
batteries to explode do we? Thus for example, if you had a battery with 200 mAh and 20 C of
average/constant discharge, then 200mAh * 25C * 80% = 4A. Thus on average such a battery
can supply 4A without issues. However, this is just a rule of thumb, when very high currents
are involved, we want the discharge rate to be way higher, independently to the battery
capacity. For example, I Previously tried Turnigy nano-tech 650mAh 1S 15c (thus according to
our calculations 7.8A of current) with absolutely no luck. They only managed to fully power a
single motor, which meant that the discharge rate was simply too small.
● Weight (g) - larger capacity batteries weight more, thus need to nd some which provide
enough ying time but still provide good ying performance.

Let's calculate which batteries to choose and how long the batteries will last. In our case the
motors draw hundreds of times less current than the electronics, thus when calculating the
required discharge rate we only need to care about the motor currents. Total max load current =
2.75A * 4 = 11A. Good battery capacity should range from 150-350mAh and I chose a battery
somewhere in the middle - 260mAh (how? intuition..). To simplify calculations I will use 0.26Ah.
This means I need 11A / 0.26Ah = 42.3C of max discharge rate. From this follows that on a single
charge they should last at least for 0.26Ah * 60min / 11A = 1.4 min. Doesn't seem a lot at all does
it? I tested when I attached the quadcopter with the threads to the ground and it seems like the
numbers are reasonable, I really couldn't hold the quadcopter in the air even 2min, however this
assumes that the quadcopter is attached to the ground and thus not only has to win over the its
own weight but also resist the threads. Real world numbers should be reading at least 3min of
ight. I suggest buying batteries such as Turnigy nano-tech 300mah 1S 45~90C (9g) or even
Turnigy Graphene 600mAh 1S 65C (15g) which seem to be very promising as their discharge
rate really high, but I have't tested them. If you have extra cash, buy both Graphene and normal
batteries the normal ones as the graphene are lighter when compared to alternative batteries
with the same capacity and provide a lot higher discharge rates (at least on the paper). I didn't
try them myself but would be really interesting to see how they compare in reality as I think the
battery I got with 35C discharge rate is a bit smallish as well. When choosing the battery and
propellers also take a look at this video, where various battery and propeller tests are being
performed! I will get back to this video when choosing the propellers..

Total weight ~12g

Connectors
The most used connectors for quadcopter are called JST. They're confusing because there are
many types and everyone mixes them and sometimes advertises one as another, but the most
popular connectors overall seem to be:

● JST PH 2.0 2-Pin, which PCB female connector are through-hole, and JST PH 2.0 2-Pin SMT RA
(Right Angle), which are surface mounted (SMD). The rst also come in a 90 degrees rotate
form. These are the most popular ones by far IMO and I found them being used for both
batteries and motors. The MMW motors come equipped with JST-PH 2.0 2-pin male
connectors. Not only that but if you notice Wemos Lolin32, all particle boards and all battery
supported Adafruit boards come equipped with the SMD variant of this. We will use there for
motors and will also add one for battery. Both are available on Farnell, ebay or Aliexpress.
Make sure you buy the correct connectors as shown in the images as they're all called very
similarly and some providers even name them the same...
● JST Micro-T MX 2.0 2-Pin, which PCB female connector comes in SMD package only (Haven't
seen other). This is second most common battery connector, however I haven't seen them
being used for motors before. The good thing about them is that even though the solder
mask is slightly di erent, they can still be soldered on the same mask as JST PH 2-Pin SMT RA.
● JST connectors like these. They are annoying as no name is usually provided thus have to
always inspect the images. Good thing is that their spacing is 0.1 inch (2.54cm), which is the
same as that of breadboards, thus they're perfect when testing as can be plugged straight
into the power line! On top of that, two 0.1 inch spacing holes can be added to the PCB to
allow connecting these without buying any special connectors. They do slip out easier than
other connectors, thus they're better for testing as they can be pulled out in case something
goes wrong. The downside is that by accident you might plug the connector incorrectly the
other way around... Thus please don't drink before plugging it in as you might fry the chips
which were not protected by the special circuitry.
● BT 2.0 2-Pin - these are used on large quadcopter due to their lower resistance and thus ability
to carry larger currents. We do not need those.

Some batteries might even come with double connectors. For my quadcopter design I didn't
want to go nuts and use di erent connector for everything. For the motors I used JST PH2.0 2-
Pin through hole. Battery on the other hand could come with various connectors and that's
harder to maintain. I used to cut the existing connectors and solder the preferred ones, but
that's a bit annoying too. Therefore I will add two 0.1 inch holes to support JST connector, which
will be best for testing, and then JST PH 2.0 2-Pin - the same on as for motors as I already another
one of those connectors available. Of course it would be nice to be able to support all
connectors, thus I will add the connector parts in the Optional Schematic e if you decide to use
di erent batteries.

Note that connectors will have to support large currents of up to 10A, thus always good to check
if they're capable for that. Other considerations when designing the PCB will be making thicker
tracks for motors with no jumper wires/vias to not a ect the performance.

Propellers
The propellers are di erentiated by their:

● Length - which is measured as the radius multiplied by 2.

● Number of the leaves - this usually is 2, but others exist with 3 and more.
● Shape of the propeller -
● Angle of the twist - the steeper the angle, the more thrust the propeller can provide.

The recommended propellers for MMW were 55mm ones, such as for Hubsan quadcopter. I
struggled a lot with which correct propellers to get as the quadcopter didn't want to lift so I also
ordered Walkera LadyBird props, which are also 55mm. I checked this the previously mentioned
video to nd out that they actually give more thrust than the Hubsan and depending on the
battery it can be somewhere around 3g per propeller thus in total giving additionally 12g of
thrust! There are, however even better propellers such as KingKong ones, however I didn't want
to use larger propellers because they provide a lot more thrust, thus being able to lift the
quadcopter easier, however will draw more current, thus might overheat the motors, thus I
wasn't sure...

Total weight 1g

N-MOSFETs (JLCPCB Assembled)

We need 4xMOSFET transistors also known as switches. They will be used together with PWM to
supply the current to the motors in peaks. Choosing them might be tricky and there are a couple
of important points when when choosing one for out application:

● Maximum drain current it can supply (Id max), which in this case should be around 3A to
support the motor which can draw around 2.75A.
● The Vgs threshold voltage, which has to be low, maybe somewhere around 1V as li-po
batteries voltage might drop to 3.4V at some point. If too large threshold is chosen Arduino
won't be able to turn the MOSFETs on enough to supply the required amount of current. It is
always best to also check the drain current (Id) dependency on the threshold voltage (Vgs
threshold) as each transistor will have a di erent response.
● Drain to sink resistance when MOSFET is fully turned on (Rds (on)). This is provided under
certain gate to sink bias Vgs. Normally expect this to be around 0.032Ohm, however the
smaller the better. If you choose some MOSFET with Rds (on) equal to 0.3Ohm or so, due to
motors running at 3A the voltage drop over the MOSFET will be 0.9V, thus motors will not get
su cient voltage drop over them.

Note that MOSFETs always include a freewheel (also called yback) diode in the package, it is
needed there to work and if some schematic will not be including them, they probably still exist
but are simply not shown. Also these diodes protect the MOSFET from the surge currents
coming from the motor coil, which will protect the MOSFET from frying, so double plus.

On the initial board that I made I ordered SQ2310ES from Farnell as it has Vgs threshold voltage
of 0.6V and could supply 6A! This might be a little over the board but hey - if I wanted I could
power any possible brushed motor with them without any concerns! I also made a table with
other good MOSFETs and their important characteristics. Some of these were picked from the
similar quadcopters and some came from the same family of chips or I stumbled upon them on
Aliexpress or JLCPCB. All these are 3-pin SOT-23 packaged, thus compatible with the later
provided PCB:

● Name // Max Ids (A) // Vgs thr (min-max) (V) // Rds(on) (Vgs = 3V, T = 25C) (mOhm)
● SI2302DS // 2.2 - 2.8 // 0.65 - ??? // 80
● SI2300DS // 2.5 - 3.0 // 0.6 - 1.5 // 60
● PMV31XN // 3.75 - 5.9 // ??? - 1.8 // 35
● CJ2302 // 2.1 // 0.65-1.2 // 40
● CJ2304 // 3.3 // 1-2.2 // 400???
● AO3400A // 5.9 // 0.65 - 1.45 // 22
● IRLML2502 // 3.4 - 4.2 // 0.6 - 1.2 // 35
● SI2314 // 5 // 0.6 - 1.1 // 50
● SI2312CDS // 4 - 5 // 0.45 - 1 // 28
● SQ2310ES // 3.5 - 6 // 0.4 - 1 // 32
● IRLML0030TRPbF // 4.3-5.3 // 1.3-2.3 // 150

Note that all of them had Vgs threshold very small and can supply enough current to power
Hubsan motors. However to run the faster motors I would only recommend the ones that can
provide currents of over 3A and has smallest Rds(on) as then less voltage drop will be over the
MOSFET itself rather than the motor. JLCPCB basic library had AO3400A available thus I went
with it. At the time of writing most popular MOSFETs on Aliexpress out of the suggested ones
were SI2300DS, SI2314, IRLML2502 and AO3400A.

If through-hole components used you could use these:

● Name // Max Ids (A) // Vgs thr (min-max) (V) // Rds(on) (Vgs = 3V, T = 25C) (mOhm)
● NDP6020 // 35 // 0.4 - 1 // 22
● IRF3706 // 54 - 77 // 0.6 - 2.0 // 10
● IRF3708 // 52 - 62 // 0.6 - 2.0 // 12
● IRLB3034 // 195 // 1 - 2.5 // ???
● IRLZ44 // 36 - 50 // 1 - 2 // ???
● IRL540N // 26 - 36 // 1 - 2 // ???

All these come in TO-220 package, thus it will be easy to solder them and they will withstand
large amounts of currents. I would recommend the ones that have the lowest Rds(on) as then
they will dissipate less power and the motors will be able to run at higher speeds.

P-MOSFET (JLCPCB Assembled)

Because the used batteries can deliver tremendous amounts of currents we do not want to risk
connecting the circuit the wrong way around, which does happen by accident, thus it's
important to design some kind of reverse battery protection system. This can actually be done
very easily using a single P-MOSFET transistor as discussed in here. There are two ways to
approach this though:

● Install such a P-MOSFET which can supply currents of over 12A. NDP6020P would t for the
purpose with its very good Vgs but if you notice it is a TO-220 package through-hole
component.
● Only protect the expensive electronics such as Nano, IMU and pixels. In this case we can use
pretty much any P-MOSFET available as it would only need to supply up to 300mA of current
at max.

For now I though we could at least protect the main electronics, which will make life a bit easier.
To achieve that we could separate the battery into two supplies, one unprotected, which will be
used to run the motors, and the other protected, which will be used to power the rest of the
electronics. N-MOSFETs and the used Zener diodes will probably die (Direct path for the
electricity to ow through the diode and the zener diode) if you connect the battery the other
way around but the other electronics and motors will live. I would also probably recommend
installing a battery connector, which permits connection one way only...

If we go along with this design, some of good choices of P-MOSFETs would include AO3401A,
SI2301CDS, SI2301DS, CJ2301 or IRLML6401 and many others as it needs to provide up to
300mA of current at max with optional components added. The AO3401A and SI2301DS were
available at JLCPCB basic library thus I picked randomly between the two. What you can also do
is check the N-MOSFETs list I suggested and nd their P-MOSFET alternatives (most N-Type will
be even numbered e.g. 2300 and P-Type alternative will be odd numbered, thus 2301) as all of
them will have low Vgs threshold.

Through-hole alternative could be NDP6020P

Resistors (JLCPCB Assembled)

Resistors regulate how much current can ow between two points in the circuit. The current
owing through them also gives a voltage drop proportional to the current owing through
them. There is a number of resistors we will need to use for this project for various reasons:

● 4x10kOhm pull-down resistors going from each MOSFETs gate to ground. To understand why
we need these you need to know a little bit of a theory. A MOSFET has 3 pins named Drain,
Source and Gate. N-type MOSFET is said to be switched on when high enough (at least higher
than the Vgs threshold voltage) voltage is applied to the Gate. When the MOSFET is switched
on, current ows from the Drain to Source and while there is some resistance in series
between the two, it will be low for as long as the applied Gate voltage is a lot large than the
Vgs threshold. Now the reason why the MOSFET gets switched on when the Gate voltage is
applied in fact because Gate is not connected to the other two channels in any way - it is
actually a capacitor! The other side of this capacitor is essentially an area between the Drain
and Source (yep, that's why MOSFET is being drawn like this with the gate disconnected and
large square area between drain and source). When Gate voltage is applied the other side of
the capacitor plate attracts negative electrons and when a large enough amount is attracted a
channel is created between drain and source allowing the current to ow. Getting back to the
pull-down resistors - without them we would have two problems 1) when turning the
transistors o due to gate being a capacitor it tends to store charge, thus if we turn the N-type
MOSFET on by connecting high Gate voltage and then disconnect the power - the MOSFET
will stay on for a very long time. Of course when we set Arduino pins to LOW, it will create a
path for the current to ow, however to achieve the best possible result is to add an additional
10kOhm resistor going to ground thus providing an extra path for discharging the gate
capacitor and consequently turning the transistor o . 2) Before Arduino sets each output pin
to LOW the gate will have a oating point, meaning the voltage is unknown. It may as well be
that the motors will turn on for just a brief moment! Thus providing a pull-down resistor will
guarantee that each MOSFET is turned o at the start. To read more about this and see some
interesting graphs see this article.
● 4x100Ohm resistors connecting from the output of Arduino PWM pin to the gate of each
MOSFET. If we did not include these resistors, the current rushed into the Gate of the MOSFET
when output pin state is HIGH would be very large and would thus turn the MOSFET
instantaneously on. This would create a very large inrush current due to the nature of the
motors inductor, which would drop the battery voltage signi cantly enough to even reset the
Arduino or the electronics. We need to lower this inrush current by lowering the current
owing into the MOSFET Gate, thus a very small 100Ohm resistor is added which will charge
the Gate capacitor.
● A combination of 33kOhm and 100kOhm will form a potential divider pair used to measure
the battery voltage. Li-Po batteries do not like dropping below 3.2V nor do they like being
charged over 4.2V. Every time they go over the limit there is a risk damaging them or even
causing re! Thus we need to know when to turn the quadcopter o before the voltage
reaches critical levels. For this to work though we will need to utilise the chip built-in internal
1.1V reference. For this to work correctly we need to make sure we do not apply more than
1.1V to the analog pin (as 1.1V will measure 1023 or simply put 100%), which is being used to
measure the battery voltage. I chose such resistor values so that when fully charged battery
to 4.2V is measured it would give 33k / (33k + 100k) * 4.2 = 1.04V. This is perfect, because the
internal reference actually varies from chip-to-chip and can be in the range 1 - 1.2V. The
chosen value would allow the quadcopter to work with any nano board no matter the
reference variations while also providing the highest available resolution of close to 10bit.
Also note that these resistor values are meant to be high in order to not waste the energy,
however in our application this isn't much of a concern knowing that motors draw thousands
of times more current.

Capacitors (JLCPCB Assembled)

Capacitors (later called caps) in quadcopters are used to lter out the unwanted high frequency
voltage spikes on the power supply, which would otherwise make Arduino and other chips
unhappy. The voltage spikes are mainly caused by the motors, which on top of causing noise
due to brushes also take in a lot of current (12A in total!). Thus if care is not taken, voltage would
uctuate signi cantly, sometimes in the order of hundreds of millivolts. This can a ect video
quality (if video transmission is used), communication between the base and the quadcopter
(noise in the transmission signal), the MCU (the chips could constantly get reset) and the IMU
readings (noise on the ADC inside the IMU for example).

Note that caps come in di erent types based on the dielectric material with most popular being
ceramic, electrolytic and tantalum ones. I strongly recommend watching this and this videos to
see what a signi cant change can be achieved with the right placement of the caps. There is also
this article which I recommend on checking out. From this post, we will need to sort out the
voltage spike issue in two ways:

1. Reduce the noise at the source of disturbance, thus the motors

2. Remove the voltage spikes from power supply close to the chips and other sensitive parts
e.g. reset pin (regarding the latter on Arduino, reset pin seems to have auto-reset mechanism
performed through another capacitor, thus to not mess with that I will avoid adding this
capacitor for now)
On top of that, we need to choose low ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance) caps for the design as
motors run on high PWM frequencies and capacitors will act as a very low value resistor for
these type of spikes and e ectively short them to ground. Note though that all capacitors have
built-in parasitics such as resistance and conductance in series with the capacitance. Therefore
in high frequencies even though the capacitance resistance (to be more precise - impedance) is
low, due to the other parasitic components the resistance can never never go below a certain
point and sometimes even starts rising with the increasing frequency - pretty crazy.

Some articles recommend using ceramic caps whenever possible as they don't have polarity
and have less parasitics, thus will have better e ciency and will also lter out the ripple better.
However they usually come in lower values thus sometimes a tantalum cap could be used in
parallel with a ceramic one. Electrolytic caps are used as a last resort. Also note that you cannot
just blindly go for one type of capacitors all the time - the right choice will depend on the
application e.g. in music industry di erent types of caps are preferred, ones which may have less
noise and ESR might not be such a huge concern.

Caps have to be placed physically as close to the target area as possible to be e ective. In this
project will need to add caps to these areas:

● 1 x 100nF ceramic cap between VCC of IMU and GND. Note though that in our case MPU6050
module already has these built in as shown in the documentation. However an additional cap
isn't going to hurt much.
● 1 x 22uF and 1 x 100nF ceramic caps in parallel between 5V of Arduino and GND. From the
BLE-Nano schematics we can see that 5V and 3.3V rails only have 0.1uF caps (located at the
output of the two di erent voltage regulators) and no large caps. We will not use 3.3V rail at
all, thus this one line is ne, however we would still need one caps between 5V and GND to
provide stable voltage.
● 100-300uF tantalum cap in between the battery pins. JLCPCB largest available cap is 100uF
Tantalum one, thus I will add that, however its price is rather large... On top of that I added
holes for another through-hole cap if needed in the future.
● 1 x 100nF ceramic cap between analog input measuring the battery voltage and GND to give
more stable battery readings.
● 4 x 22uF ceramic caps in between each positive motor pin and GND (or motor controllers for
brushless motors).
● 4 x 10nF ceramic caps in between motor connectors to remove the brush noise as explained
here. They're using 100nF caps, however larger caps will impose extra load and might
increase the noise, thus 10nF is safer. Note though that the cap is meant to go right in
between the motor pins, however this is not possible for the motors we got, thus placing right
next to the motor connectors will have to be su cient. From this link, you can see that
without this cap a motor can cause power supply ripple of over 3V, while adding one it
reduced to 0.5V!
● (for now no) 2 x 100nF ceramic cap between each Arduino RST (reset) pin and GND in case
these will not be included in the used MCU.

Note that all caps have to be installed as close as possible to the desired places. They cannot
simply be be all put somewhere in the corner as in many cases the chip might not be stable or
might not work at all.

Total weight 1g

Diodes (JLCPCB Assembled)

We will need to incorporate a freewheel ( yback) Schottky diodes in between the motor legs to
provide with the current path when switching the motors o , this is also called snubber diode
con guration. Check this video if you do not know the di erence between each diode type, but
main di erence from normal diodes is high switching frequency capability (which we will need
if we want to drive motors at high higher frequency) and lower power dissipation due to lower
voltage barrier.

Each of the motors have built-in coils, which induced electric eld spins the motor. However the
coils store energy, which opposes the current ow. When the current is switched o using the
transistors, the opposing current needs a path to ow, otherwise huge voltage spikes will occur
due to these high currents. You can read some more here. Normally a simple and for high
frequency applications a Schottky diode is placed to provide this path and all of the quadcopter
implementations I saw do speci cally that. However there seem to exist better implementations
in a form of the zener snubber, which would lower down the currents even quicker than a simple
snubber diode con guration. You can read about it here, but for now this needs to be
experimented on rst to see if it was to give any better performance.

Choosing the right diode is a bit tricky and there are many discussions like this online. It's best
note down these characteristics from the datasheet:

● Average forward current - in theory, the opposing current in the motor coil will be the same
size as the current owing in the motors (2.75A in our case) when the motor is on and when
the motor is switched o that current will try to nd a new path to ow - through the diode.
Therefore the diode should be able to withstand 2.75A, however the averaged current will be
lower as the current will quickly degrade. However this number will increase with increasing
driving frequency as the current will have less time to degrade, therefore it's best when the
diode average forward current is high enough to support full motor needs. You can usually
always choose such a diode, which average current will be the same as of the motor, which
will prevent from any kinds of risks just to be on a safe side.
● Maximum repetitive peak reverse voltage - when the opposing current ows it will create a
spike in voltage as the resistance of the motor is very small. This peak will be several times
higher than the voltage used to drive the motor. In our case it's not a huge problem as most
of the diodes can handle the rating easily.

I would recommend using SS family Schottky diodes SS12-SS16 (riskier side), SS22-SS210
(adequate) or SS32-SS3200 (safe side), SS52-SS5200 (an overkill safe). Note that these more or
less follow the format of naming SSXY, where number X refers to the maximum average forward
current, and number Y multiplied by 10 is the maximum DC blocking voltage. Though if there
are more than 2 numbers this no longer applies.. From these SS14, SS210, SS34, SS54 were
available at JLCPCB, thus I just used SS34 as it was on the safe side without change in packaging
size or price. There are some others available e.g.1N5819 (riskier side), 1N5820-1N5822 (safe
side) which are available at both SMD and through-hole packaging.

Charger
You might already have a good chargers, however in case you don't you can always get
something like this. It uses JST type connectors, thus you will have to get the connectors
mentioned before. Alternatively you could get a TP4056 chip based module and solder the
connectors yourself. They even come with a USB-C connector nowadays! This might also come
in handy in later projects as the chip can become part of the whole PCB in that case. Note that
other popular chips are TP4054 and TP4057.

I really wanted to design an on-board charger using TP4057, so that the battery could be
changed through the Arduino USB, however sadly Nano design is not very friendly with that.. As
I mentioned before though Particle Xenon, Feather nRF52840 Express and ESP series modules
already include battery chargers, thus they could be a better choice for this. The rst two
additionally include battery level measurement circuit which saves a bit of space too.

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Step 3: Optional Components

Note that you do not have to solder the following components for the quadcopter to function
properly. These can be added though if you wanted to add some extra functionality such as
being able to turn the quadcopter o using a slider switch or adding some Neopixel LEDs. The
circuit schematic and the PCB was designed in such a way what would not prevent the
quadcopter from functioning if these components were not installed, thus you can always leave
the components unsoldered.

Neopixels (Optional Soldering)

I thought it would be cool to y this quadcopter during the night from time to time (or just make
it look cooler), thus I also added a couple of Neopixels. These are tiny RGB (Red/Green/Blue) LED
pixels with integrated PWM controller (thus can adjust the brightness) inside of them. The
beauty is that they only need one or two pins connected to Arduino, depending on the used
chip type, to control pretty much any shade and brightness of any number of pixels connected
in series. The other advantage is after setting the desired combination of colours Arduino does
not need to interact with them any longer, thus processing power can be used for something
e.g. controlling the quadcopter. I thought a nice way would be to have 4 Neopixels in total - two
at the bottom and two at the top, one on each direction. In the dark this would allow to always
know where the quadcopter is facing, which would ease the control.

Many variants are available and rather largish table with their speci cations can be found here
and a video about which ones are best is here. For this project I would recommend WS2812B
(RGB) or SK6812 (RGB + White) and size of 5050 (5cm x 5cm) LEDs. Size 3535 (3.5cm x 3.5cm) is
also available, but is more di cult to solder (thus more easy to damage them while soldering)
and is more di cult to nd when buying. Note though that there are two types of this size, one
with pins on the outside (Mini-HS) and one with the pins on the bottom (Mini). I do not
recommend the latter if soldering by hand. The LEDs require one pin from Arduino to control all
of them. From the datasheet it would need one external 100nF decoupling cap for each of the
Neopixels. Remember from the Capacitors section that these are used to remove the power
supply ripple. In this case I believe they are here due to pixels using a rather signi cant amount
of current themselves - each pixel can draw up to 60mA of current when Red, Green and Blue
LEDs are turned on at maximum brightness. In addition to that, from the suggested guidelines
we also need to place a resistor of value 300 to 500 Ohm in between Arduino and the input of
the rst neopixel, it has to be placed close to the Neopixel. Finally, a large decoupling cap is
placed next to the power supply, but we already included one and discussed before.

On Aliexpress these neopixels can be purchased for example from here or here or many other
places.

Power Software Control (nRF52840 Only)

One problem with the pixels mentioned above is rather large quiescent (turned o ) current of
1mA. This is ne without power switch, however otherwise when the power is o , we need a
way of turning these o . This can be done through adding another P-MOSFET, which by default
would be o but could be turned on using code through one of Arduino pins. This is easily
achieved using pull-up con guration where gate is connected to source through lets say 10k
Ohm resistor and is also connected to the Arduino through let's say 100 Ohms resistor (reduce
surge-in currents). We could either use another P-MOSFET (one is used as reverse voltage
protection) or use a chip with dual one P-MOSFETs such as APM4953. I will still use two chips
instead as then there are more option to choose from. On top of that I will basically create two
separate power sources, one powering the motors and the nRF52840 dev board and another
programmable powering the rest of the sensors and the LEDs.

Altitude Sensor (Optional Soldering)

When only using IMU to control the quadcopter two tricky problems appear:

● Being able to hover at a constant altitude. Usually the control of the Z axis (vertical) is done by
increasing or decreasing the desired speed of all the motors, thus e ectively adding o set.
However due to the drained batteries throughout the ight even though the desired speed
might not change, the voltage on the battery will drop, which will drop the speed.
● Automatic taking o and landing without the user interaction. This is useful both controlling
the quadcopter as usual and when performing emergency landing in case of dying batteries.
After the quadcopter reaches the land this can also be used to turn the motors completely o .

Both of these problems can be easily sorted using a so called altitude sensor. This, depending on
the quadcopter size and type, will be of di erent type:

● Barometer - pressure changes with changing altitude and through certain formulas the
change in altitude can be easily calculated. However barometer are best used for drones
which are used outside due to not being super accurate. On top of that pressure changes in
time (weather), but this change is rather gradual, thus doesn't impose much issues unless
long ights are used.
● Ultrasound sensor - these are by far the most popular. in Arduino community, thus probably
everyone already knows them very well. They utilise ultrasound waves together with TOF
(Time-of-Flight) algorithm to e ectively measure how long did the sound travel from the
sensor to the object and after being re ected came back. I do not like these as they're bulky,
su er a lot from noise and thus have a lot of false positives, cannot measure longer distances
than around 1m accurately and on top of that, the measurement accuracy is dependent on
humidity in the air.
● Laser sensor - I believe this is by far the best sensor to use for indoor quadcopter. It is also
based on TOF algorithm, however instead of sound it uses light, which speed in the air is
rather constant. A very cheap sensor that I already had is VL53L0X, which modules on
Aliexpress can be bought for under £1 and they are also available on Adafruit. They're small,
light, measure the distance with great accuracy, do not su er from the side re exions and can
measure range for up to 1m. It also states that 2m range can be measured when
LONG_RANGE mode is enabled, but it works best in the dark. One disadvantage is that they
cannot tell the di erence between 0 and 5cm, thus when this distance was reached we could
program to land the quadcopter down. Another similar sensor is VL6180X, but it's used more
for short distances of 0 - 20cm and it also supports gesture detection. This sensor would be
more useful for landing/lifting operation. If we combined both would be amazing but even
having one of them would allow us. to add some nice functionality.

Of course I chose the latter variant. Both chips use I2C communication and thus we we do not
need to use more pins than already are being used as MPU6050 also uses I2C. I used the
VL53L0X as I already had one. Just one thing to note, we will need a decoupling capacitor to
keep the voltage more stable next to the sensor.

Power Switch (Not added to schematic by default)

Sometimes it is nice to have a way of turning the chip through some sort of a slider switch or a
button. The rst is easier to implement as usually it doesn't even require any extra components.
Note though that these switches do not have a very large contact rating current. For example
switch MSS3-Q-T/R only supports up to 25mA, while our circuit might consume more even
without turning on the motors!

To go around this problem we could design a very similar circuit as the one which this product is
based on here. Schematic is added as an image there. The only di erence is that we wouldn't
need the extra part of controlling the turn on using an external BJT, thus that part can be
removed. I redesigned the circuit slightly and added it to a separate project if someone wanted
this functionality replace the existing circuit.

Better Noise Filtering (Not added to schematic by default)

I thought of a couple of di erent ideas on how voltage ripple current could be ltered in case I
experienced a lot of noise even with the added caps:

LC Filter

an idea of also adding an LC lter as shown in the 3rd page of the Crazy ie 2.1 schematics (Note
down the sentence Filter the power supply 73kHz.) as this should remove the power supply
ripple even more, however, I've seen videos where it disproves this and some low ESR caps
seemed to work better than this, thus for now I left it on a separate project.

"Capacitance Multiplier"

This circuit is actually an active low-pass lter, however it's being implemented in a very neat
way. The circuit behaviour is very nicely explained in this video. It is a way of "increasing" the
capacitance of the existing cap by hundreds of times by adding a single resistor and a BJT,
Darlington Pair or a N-MOSFET. Of course the capacitance isn't increasing, we would simply be
decreasing the current owing into the capacitor. I haven't seen anyone using this circuit in
quadcopter design, thus I don't know how well it would behave but I think it's worth a thought
when needing to provide a very stable supply voltage for powering the IMU without adding any
huge caps. On top of that, the resistor could be replaced by an inductor (look above at LC lter)
and thus this might be a very neat circuit indeed!

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Step 4: Weight and Price Calculations

Price
Probably many of you would like to know the price of the thingy. Well, lets just calculate that
using some rough calculations as the price will depend on the supplier:
Expensive motors:

£4 (BLE-Nano) + £3 (MPU6050) + £20 (Motors) + £3 (Motor Battery) + £2 (Propellers) + £2

(MOSFETs) + £2 (The rest of electronics + plastic) + £1 (Connectors) + £3 (Charger) = £40

Cheap Hubsan X4 Motors:

£40 - £15 = £25

I would say this is a rather good price as the competing products cost several times more!

Expensive motors
For our quadcopter to y nicely there is a rule of thumb that 50 % of the max thrust of motors
should be equal to the weight of the quadcopter itself. Thus meaning that the quadcopter will
be in the constant height when giving 50% of its full power. The motors that I bought have 40g
per motor of thrust. In total that adds up to 160g. 50% of that is 80g. Now lets add up all of the
electronics + the frame:

15g (frame) + 8g (PCB) + 20g (motors) + 12g (battery) + 5g (microcontroller) + 2g (MPU) + 5g

(extra) = 67g

We managed to easily t within the 80g boundaries, thus the quadcopter should be able to y
happily.

Cheap motors
Provided thrust from motors is 34g per motor, thus 136g in total. 50% of that is 68g. Total
component weight will be more or less the same, maybe can add a smaller battery and that
should still be able to t within the 50% thrust boundary. It might not y as good as with faster
motors, but oh well, you are using at least 4 times cheaper motors!

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Step 5: Wiring the System Together

When designing the PCB care must be taken as this will directly a ect the performance of the
circuit. Each module and chip has to be connected to the correct input of nano.

Motors controlling PWM

Motor controlling MOSFETs will be controlled using PWM signal. There are available 6 pins with
hardware built-in PWM on nano pins 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11. We will only need 4 pins for the project,
however in fact - for easiest development there are only 4 "correct" pins to go for. You see, PWM
uses dedicated Timers to set the PWM frequency and nano has 3 such Timers, which use slightly
di erent default (however possible to modify) frequencies. I strongly recommend taking a look
at Timer PWM Cheatsheet as my next presumptions will be based on it. Right so Timer 0 (Default
976Hz) is used for pins 5 and 6, Timer 1 (Default 490Hz) for pins 9 and 10 and Timer 2 (Default
490Hz) for pins 3 and 11. To get best performance PWM frequencies for all motors have to be the
same as the thrust is frequency dependent as can be seen on this video. Because Timer 0 is also
used for functions delay and millis(), we wouldn't want to change its frequency as it would a ect
the two functions. We would have to adapt the code, possibly even change the used libraries,
which rely on these two functions. Thus this gives us two options:

1. Using pins 3, 5, 6 and 11, keeping the Timer 0 default frequency of 976Hz but then upscaling
Timer 2 to provide us with frequency of 980Hz.
2. Using pins 3, 9, 10 and 11 and either keeping the default frequency of 490Hz or upscaling
both Timer 1 and 2 to 3921Hz.
I don't know what's the best choice here, and from some of the sources it seems that the actual
value isn't really that important, however higher frequency will give smoother response and
less noise as discussed in the forums. Therefore I will choose the option two and will also
upscale the frequency to 3921Hz. Another good forum which discusses how timers a ect and
how can they be modi ed to produce di erent PWM frequency.

Note though that it is also possible to use software based PWM also known as Bit Banging (can
read more of this here), however it's more complicated managing the code as care must be
taken not to a ect timings - I would strongly discourage from this if possible. However also note
that if you want to use RF-Nano chip, from the schematics we can see that pins 9, 10, 11, 12 and
13 are already utilised for talking to nRF24L01 chip, thus the only possibility of using it in this
project is by either using an external PWM chip or using Bit Banging.

IMU
The used IMU MPU6050 communicates using I2C and to keep the libraries happy I decided to
stick with the default pins A4 (SDA) and A5 (SCL). I will connect the interrupt pin in case I will
need it in the future. Nano supports interrupts on pins 2 and 3 only as can be seen here.
Therefore I will use pin 2 for it as pin 3 is PWM and it could be used for something else e.g.
ashing an LED! I found another project which uses identical con gurations here.

Powering Arduino
From the BLE-Nano Schematics we can see that the best place to connect the batteries is
straight into the 5V pin. We cannot connect it to Vin as it's expecting voltages larger than 5V as
otherwise the voltage drop due to the voltage regulator would be horrible and we also cannot
connect it to 3.3V, because Arduino itself is being powered from the 5V line rather than the 3.3V
line, thus then Arduino wouldn't get powered at all.

Even though the chip powering Arduino Nano (ATmega328) can work o voltages in the range
1.8 - 5.5V, there are certain protections built-in to prevent it from running at too low voltages.
The lower acceptable voltage before the chip stops working is called brownout voltage. On
Arduino this is set to 2.7V. In our project the voltages might drop for short periods of times
(milliseconds) close to this point, which might cause the Nano to restart. To prevent this from
happening I might need to set the brownout voltage to be 1.8V and this can be done as
explained in this comment.

Battery Level Detector

As previously said we will build a potential divider to measure the battery voltage. The input
from the potential divider will go into analog pin A0 and in the software we will set INTERNAL
voltage reference.

Neopixels (Optional)
The input to the rst Neopixel will connect to Arduino pin number 5, however it could as well be
connected to any other unused pin.

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Step 6: Circuit Schematic

I am adding here the legacy "schematics" for the old setup I made years back, however if you
compare them to the new circuitry you will see where the errors were made (whoops). My latest
Nano Quadcopter design is available at EasyEDA so that you could either use it as it is or change
the design and/or the PCB in any way you like. I also added explanation to each modules for
easy understanding. Note that if you do not understand something you can always reference
the Electronics Components or Wiring the System Together steps as I made sure to provide
enough information to explain each part of the circuitry.

On top of Nano Quadcopter I also added the schematics for nRF52840 Quadcopter, which will
work with dev boards Particle Xenon or Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Express. It was easier to
design for these boards as it already includes a lot of modules such as enable pin for adding
power switch, battery level detector and a battery charging circuitry with a battery connector of
course. On top of that the modules are faster, almost all of the pins support PWM and can be
programmed using Circuitpython or Micropython!

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Step 7: PCB and Soldering

I recommend ordering the PCB from JLCPCB, which can be done straight o the EasyEDA. The
price is only $2 for 10 PCBs, which is really insigni cant. Right now I live in Spain and the delivery
here costs around $10, thus not a bad deal, even though I will probably only need one PCB... On
top of that you could also select an option for the SMD components to be pre-soldered for you
for a little bit of extra cost. I selected such components choices which were available at the
JLCPCB Assembled Basic SMT Type library, to keep this as an option. The only SMD part which
was from the extended library was the LED WS2812B, however not having one will not stop the
quadcopter from ying! You can also order them cheaply from the Aliexpress.

Component Size
The PCB that I designed now will use SMD components of size 806. These settings are good
enough to be able to solder the PCB by hand. However you're welcome to redesign the PCB to
your likings. I might even provide a PCB for through-hole components, however tting
everything becomes a lot more complicated.

Track Design
Because very large currents will be used to run motors, the tracks for running the motors have
to be designed with care:

● None of the power wires should have vias, this is in order to reduce the wire resistance and
thus voltage drop over the wire.
● The thickness of the wire has to be around 50 mil, however it will depend on which copper
layer thickness you choose. You can simply use online track width calculator to decide this.

It is a lot easier to solder all the components on an already prepared PCB. Sadly, getting an
access to a machine to make one is not always possible. We had one at the University, thus I
designed a PCB using Target 3001! Software. To open the *.T3001 le you will have to download
Target 3001 software, which is sadly, only Windows compatible. I might export the project to
Eagle later. Adding Target3001, .xps, .tif and .src (export to Eagle) for those who intend to make a
PCB at home.

Ground Separation
Note that it might be a good idea to separate the ground used by the motors and the other
sensors as the noise caused by the motors would then not a ect the sensors as discussed here.
This however isn't very easy to do using the easyEDA PCB editor as I tried and got clearance
errors. Thus for now I kept this just as an idea in my head for the future if the quadcopter fails to
y...

The printed and soldered result looks as in the provided image. I added red circles showing the
soldered transistors, yellow circles showing the JST connectors for the motors, green circle
marking the battery connectors, supplying power to the motor ONLY, and blue circle marking
the battery connectors, supplying the power to the rest of the electronics (Arduino, MPU6050,
etc.). As you can see, there is some xes made next to both of the power connectors. You don't
need to do that as the PCB was updated after making the rst working model. Basically, the
problem was that at rst the PCB only had a single power supply. During the testing it appeared
that the Bluetooth module kept constantly disconnecting from the phone as the battery voltage
was dropping to low levels (< 3V). Not only that but Arduino also had issues with that, which
were xed by lowering brownout voltage. You can do that easily yourself as it only required
modifying a single le in the Arduino IDE, however it is more of a hack as the higher the
frequency, the higher voltage is needed. In the end, something else might break in the future or
you might loose all available power, etc. Anyway, implementing two-battery system worked
nicely, especially that the battery, powering electronics weight only around 3g.

When soldering on the motor connectors, make sure that they are soldered the correct way! On
each side one of the connector is facing one way and another another way. You have to ensure
that pin 1 is always connected the same side. I think it's best to rst place all of the connectors,
then recheck them 3 times and only then solder.

Note that I market the battery connector with a plus to make sure you do not connect it the
wrong way. I might add a battery protection actually... Need to take a look into it!

Future Considerations
In the future I might get rid o the 3D printed parts completely and will store all of the
components on he PCB itself. This will lower the weight dramatically, however it might increase
turbulence and vibrations, thus care will have to be taken to avoid these problems by lets say
setting the PCB thickness to the largest available. Not only that but will need to think of a way to
attach the motors so that they stay securely on the PCB.

quadcopter.TIF Download

quadcopter.xps Download

PCB_GND_MODIFIED.SCR Download

PCB_GND_MODIFIED.T3001 Download

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Step 8: Software
Long time ago I wrote a library and an example program using mbed for a quadcopter which
you can nd in here. At the time though I didn't fully understand how PID worked when applied
on Quadcopter theory. To develop the Software now I took a look at existing projects such as

Setup
Because I do not hate myself, I decided to program the Quadcopter using Visual Studio Code
editor with the installed PlatformIO plugin. To install the setup I simply followed this guide.

Reading Battery Voltage

To perform analog measurement by default Arduino uses its power supply as a voltage
reference. If we did not change this setup when reading the battery voltage it would always be
the same as our power supply will get lower with the discharging battery. To solve this we need
to use interval voltage reference. As discussed before on Atmega328 this is equal to ±1.1V. The
code for reading actual battery value and printing it into Serial port would become:

// Compensation factor, which is inverse of VBAT = (150k / (150k + 150k))

#define VBAT_DIVIDER_COMP ((33.0 + 100.0) / 33.0)
// Interval voltage reference of 1.1V in mV
#define BATTERY_VOLTAGE_REFERENCE_VALUE 1100
// 10-bit resolution gives 1023 steps
#define RESOLUTION_STEPS 1023
// Combine together from a formula
#define REAL_BATTERY_MV_PER_LSB (VBAT_DIVIDER_COMP * BATTERY_VOLTAGE_REFERENCE_VALUE / RESOLUTION_STEPS)

#define BATTERY_PIN A0

void setup () {
// Set internal 1.1V voltage reference
analogReference(INTERNAL);
Serial.begin(115200);
}
void loop () {
Serial.println(analogRead(BATTERY_PIN) * REAL_BATTERY_MV_PER_LSB);
}

MPU6050
MPU6050 library is available by Je Rowberg 2012. The provided example code
MPU6050_DMP6 is used as the main code for the project.

Stabilising Motors
In the control systems a PID controller is a very popular way to stabilise the system. In here we
will want to stabilise the pitch and roll of MPU6050. I used library PID_v1 for this purpose. In the
code given below I will setup both motors and PID controller. I will then add a function to
stabilise the motors depending on the required speed.

#define FL_MOTOR 3
#define FR_MOTOR 9
#define BR_MOTOR 10
#define BL_MOTOR 11
//---------------------------------PID------------------------------------
//Define Variables we'll be connecting to
double rollSetpoint, rollInput, rollOutput;
double pitchSetpoint, pitchInput, pitchOutput;

//Define the aggressive and conservative Tuning Parameters<br>double consKp = 1, consKi = 0.05, consKd = 0.2
PID pitchPID(&rollInput, &rollOutput, &rollSetpoint, consKp, consKi, consKd, DIRECT);
PID rollPID(&pitchInput, &pitchOutput, &pitchSetpoint, consKp, consKi, consKd, DIRECT);

void setup() {
//------------------------------PID----------------------------------
pitchInput = 0.0;
rollInput = 0.0;
pitchSetpoint = 0.0;
rollSetpoint = 0.0;
//turn the PID on
pitchPID.SetMode(AUTOMATIC);
rollPID.SetMode(AUTOMATIC);
pitchPID.SetOutputLimits(-20, 20);
rollPID.SetOutputLimits(-20, 20);
//

BLE Connectivity
BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) is a completely di erent communication protocol from the old
Bluetooth 2.0. Instead of drawing a lot of power to maintain the connectivity to a host device it
instead sends bursts of pulses. Each burst might reach levels of 20-40mA, however they will be
very short and will be send only a couple of times per second. On average the energy
consumption gets close to sub-mA level!

Communication from the quadcopter to the phone will be done through the BLE-Nano built-in
BLE module. The nano connects to the BLE chip using the built in Serial on pins TX and RX. Of
course this slightly makes it more di cult if you want to talk to the PC instead, however I will
rarely need a connection to the PC anyway. An example on how to receive an integer through
BLE UART service and echo it back is given below:

void setup() {
mySerial.begin(115200);
}
void loop () {
if (mySerial.available()) {
int reading = mySerial.parseInt();

//flushing anything that wasn't read

while (mySerial.available()) {
mySerial.read();
}

// Echo the integer back

Serial.println(reading);
}
}

Adding Bits Together

As for the whole code, I am always working on it, so I decided not to add it ALL here. You can nd
the latest version of code in GitHub. I will notify in this Instructable when the code is nished. At
the moment I need to setup correct PID constants etc...

Neopixels (Optional)
A couple of libraries are available:

● Adafruit
● WS2812B
● FastLED - it was designed to control di erent types of RGB LED strip, thus if in the future
di erent one was used this library would allow changing everything very easily. The
downside is increased memory use.

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Luiz Villa made it!

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92 Comments

henriqueSoares04 2 months ago

Reply / Upvote
hi it was been a long time i hope you still use this can you give me a full list of items please

/1 Piezzo 4 years ago on Step 8

Reply / Upvote
Hey,please give a complete list of all the components for the build,by the way can I use a different sized
frame for the build
1 reply F

llee_1991 Question 1 year ago on Introduction

Answer / Upvote
Can the Bluetooth chip be omitted and the quadcopter be made semi autonomous?

CosimaD 1 year ago

Reply / Upvote
Hi,
I've been trying to follow your instructables. So I ordered your PCBs with the easyEDA link... however it
seems like your PCB routing on easyEDA is missing GND - have you not got a ground plane? Or is
there a setting to order the PCB with a ground plane from JLPCB?

madhur4068 Question 1 year ago

Answer / Upvote
Which application is used to fly this quadcopter?

saumyag.gupta Question 2 years ago

Answer / Upvote
Can we use arduino nano 33 BLE without using the MPU6050 IMU as the nano 33 ble already has a 9
axis IMU embedded? You have mentioned that the BLE sense has an embedded IMUbut on the arduino
site it says that even the BLE has an embedded IMU.
3 answers F

/1 Kaushal r Question 4 years ago

Answer / Upvote
Can anyone please tell me a direct relationship between the rpm of the motor , propeller size, and the
thrust generated by the combination of the two. Is there a formula or something?

1 answer F

Harsh22 Question 3 years ago on Introduction

Answer / Upvote
I had a question regarding the project, I am using coreless motors that require current of 150mA. What
would be the appropriate transistirs that I can use with Arduino nano.
1 answer F

JunryM 3 years ago

Reply / Upvote
Sir what app did you used and if there was still no app how did you used the bluetooth terminal to
control the drone

1 reply F

kinshell32 Question 3 years ago

Answer / Upvote
two question the 70t03h smd works for this project ?, do you have any other drone video flying without
the wires?

Amrithmmh 3 years ago

Reply / Upvote
take a look at espcopter
https://github.com/PepeTheFroggie/EspCopter/blob/master/README.md

barran98 Question 3 years ago on Step 8

Answer / Upvote
how can i right left control. did you use any esc ?

CosmosD1 Question 3 years ago on Step 2

Answer / Upvote
Where to use 10k and 56K , please define

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