How to Turn Any Drone Into a Delivery Drone📦
Introduction: How to Turn Any Drone Into a Delivery Drone📦
Hello Everyone!!!
In this Instructable I am going to show you how I converted my (Commercial) RC drone into a drone capable of delivering parcels that uses a pulley mechanism that is controlled by the transmitter. I was very excited to publish this Instructable because it was a chance to push my limits and venture into a project that I had only dreamt of doing. I hope you find this as exciting as I do!
Why would I want to build a delivery drone from an Arduino?
There has been a lot of hype around the development and usage of delivery drones but where are they? Delivery drones have been the talk of the future because of how efficient and convenient they are. Drones are able to deliver products quickly to virtually any location, they offer a safer delivery system and they offer a higher level of efficiency. At a time like now drones have even become an important tool in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic by helping create more resilient supply chains and serving as the perfect device to deliver items from the recommended six feet away.
There is obviously a lot of work needed to develop an efficient and safe network for a drone delivery system. There are also a lot of disadvantages that come with using drones as a delivery system. Some of these disadvantages are that drones are still relatively expensive and they require a lot of technical familiarity. These disadvantages might be important to consider if we want to build a massive army of delivery drones but for hobbyists like you and I, we just want to have one of our own delivery drones. That's what I'll be teaching you to build today, a delivery drone capable of picking up and dropping off packages while still in the air! Let's dive into the project.
Supplies
This is a list of all the main supplies needed for this project:
* Arduino Nano
* A Drone - I built my own FPV drone. Make sure the Flight Controller supports the PPM protocol and it supports Betaflight.
* Radio Transmitter and Receiver
* A Drone Battery
* DC Motor
* L293d Motor Driver
* PCB Board
* Arduino Uno IDE
* Betaflight Configurator
* An Old Shoelace
* 2 x 4 Lego Brick
* Lego Technic Axle Connector
* Lego Technic Axle (size 4)
This is a list of all of the tools needed for the project:
* Soldering Iron
* Soldering Wire
* Wire Strippers
* Electrical Wires (Male - Male and Female - Male)
* Multimeter (One that has a continuity tester on it)
* Precision Screwdriver Set
* Electrical Tape
* Double Sided Tape
Step 1: The Theory and the Idea
The Theory
This project uses a theory from a previous project I build where I controlled the drone solely from an Arduino Uno without the use of a conventional transmitter or receiver. 120
In place of the transmitter I controlled the drone from my phone using Bluetooth. This is the link to the project.
The theory behind the method in which the Arduino board sends signals to the drone is the same in this project and the current project you are reading, so read "Step 1: The Theory and the Idea" of this project before continuing with the rest of this Instructable. I consider the Bluetooth drone project the predecessor of this project because in the first project we were only sending PPM signals from the Arduino Uno to the drone without interpreting them, now we will interpret the PPM Signals and then send it to the drone.
The Idea
Great! Now that you understand the basics of PPM signals the rest should be quite easy to understand. The idea behind the project is to create a delivery drone that has a pully mechanism that can drop off and pick up packages while the drone is still in the air. The pulley system will be controlled by the same transmitter that is used to fly the drone using different switches and auxiliary channels. So how will we accomplish this?
As we saw in this project we used an Arduino Uno to replace the commercial receiver of the drone and send commands directly from the Arduino Uno. These commands directly translated to the ones my phone sent to the Arduino Uno via Bluetooth.
We now know that it's possible to send commands from the Arduino board to the drone but for this project we need to use both a transmitter and a receiver. It might be easier to refer to the diagram attached to understand the order in which the signal will be sent to the drone, but here is an explanation to help aid in understanding the order:
1. The transmitter will send the input from the pilot to the receiver.
2. The receiver will then convert the input from the transmitter into a PPM signal which it will send to the Arduino board.
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