The concept I kept sketching but never fully chased: a drone quiet enough and stable enough to hover over an event — a wedding, a stage — without being intrusive. Quadcopters at that power class are loud. Three rotors, well-tuned, can be quieter. And if it folds, it’s easier to carry to the shoot.
What I built
The folding frame — designed in CAD, 3D-printed in pieces, joints that latched reliably without wobbling. The tricopter setup with its one-yawing-motor trick for rotation control. ArduPilot handling flight control, calibrated to the frame’s specific geometry. A Jetson Nano on board for future vision work (lifted from the RC car project).
What worked
Stable flight. Defined flight paths within a bounded radius. Return-to-home and waypoint-precise landing using GPS plus camera confirmation on a visual marker — the drone would take off, fly its programmed path, return, confirm the landing pad visually, and set down on it.
What didn’t happen
The silent-event-camera product I was mentally sketching never got built. The vibration damping for steady video wasn’t quite where it needed to be, and I got pulled into other projects before I finished the isolation redesign. The base platform flew well. A weekend-spanning-months build that ended as a demo rather than a product.