Drones

Firstly I'm surprised nobody here has built some 18650 powered flying monstrosity.
Anyways I started with RC gas powered helicopters and cars ages ago, those were fun but dealing with the fumes really gets to you after a few years and I've got those things collecting dust in the garage for a decade now. I got back into it 2 years ago with the DJI Phantom 3 Advanced, I played with the older models but was never sold. I happened across an awesome deal for a P3A and couldn't resist. Being that I run an electronics repair shop it also seemed like the perfect time to add drones to my repertoire and so it began. I've got a little fleet of drones a P3A,P3P, Mavic Pro and Spark.
My original P3A I upgraded to P3P, which just entails upgrading the camera and upgraded the motors on it.





Rebuilding damaged cameras for resale



The latest addition to the family, Sparky

I don't remember how far he got with it, but Jehu was looking into adding Batteries to the phantom

Toochi84 said:

I don't remember how far he got with it, but Jehu was looking into adding Batteries to the phantom

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Adding or replacing batteries with 18650s in production drones doesnt provide any worthwile benefit. For instance with the Phantom 3 if you add a 2nd stock battery you only get about 10 minutes extra flight time on top of 23-25. The same power capacity would weigh even more with 18650. I did the math for it before, too lazy to redo it now . For an 18650 powered drone with reasonable performance and duration, diy is the best way to go IMO. Start with a battery configuration and figure out the drone from there . I could envision an octocopter with the arms ringed in 18650s, could fit 18-24 cells per arm,rings of 6, 3-4 per arm

Gangsta smokes right thur

P3,4, Inspire 1 Remote Left, Spark Remote Right

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It's really hard to imagine how tiny the Spark is until it's in your hands. Still I'm not sure it's worth the price tag, let's see if it'll outlive Amazons 30 day return policy

i made a cheap one run on a 18650
18650 one>>>And on a prismatic lipo one out of a laptop battery pack
just for the hell of it

Mavic Pro burns my Cash

I have one of the cheap Syma X1s (like thishttps://www.amazon.com/SYMA-Channel-Copter-Spacecraft-shown/dp/B0096SJU3U/) and one of the also cheap, but newer Syma X5C (https://www.amazon.com/Explorers-2-4Ghz-6-Axis-Quadcopter-Without/dp/B01HGB61YO/). I am thinking about adding an 18650 holder to the older (and lighter) Syma X1 in the hopes of being able to easily swap batteries, but still have enough power to fly around outside of ground effect. Honestly it looks like the mod that One up the sleeve did was having a great deal of difficulty getting out of ground effect. The one he did looks a lot like a Syma X5 clone, the X5 essentially is the X1, with a better control board (newer has 6 axis gyro, old has 5 axis I think), and a large, heavy plastic shell.

It's been a long time, I want to buy such a drone, do you think it is still relevant?

Damn bro, you have Golden hands, lol. I had two drones and one of them was broken and not working. I tried to replace some parts from one to another, but I always failed. As a result, I broke my second drone, although it was quite cool. I'm so clumsy In the end, I just read about different firewood on https://buyersimpact.co.uk/ and I found myself a DJI Phantom 4, which I really liked. It's quite expensive, so I'll never touch its insides again. And if something happens to it, I'd rather have it repaired. I don't want to lose another one of my "fighters", haha