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UAV Reverse Engineering

Cheap toy drones are not that crappy anymore these days. After influenced by tons of video advertisement on YouTube and reels on the internet, I've decided to try one myself. So, In this fun project, my attempt was to demystify the cheap drone tech that the sellers claims like GPS, Camera and flight time and how these drones actually achieves flight capabilities in such small form factor.

Reverse Engineering UAV Drone RC systems System Hack Fun Science

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Buying a good toy drone: Choosing between a balanced toy model became a big hurdle for me when visited the toy shop for the first time to buy a simple cheap toy drone that satisfies my project requirements. My consideration fact was mainly stuck with these few parameters:

  1. Has to fly with small BLDC motors.
  2. Small form factor.
  3. Remote/mobile app controlled.
  4. More than 1 battery(These are built to last short time that’s why)
  5. GPS(At least what they claim to have in the cheapos).
  6. Camera unit(For that FPV experience) So, I found one model which has all the mentioned features and fits my budget. It was 5.5K BDT small package. 😊 At first I was quite happy with the seller’s selling strategy. He was throwing the drone on concrete and going crazy. But I was fairly shocked how smooth the drone was flying. I’ve flown many DJI Drones in my life. They’re known for their good build quality, camera/video transmission and stability. So, seeing this cheap drone flying stable was kind of a bummer for me at the first sight.

Taking it apart: As always, I took it into my laboratory and bit by bit unscrewed and tared everything apart. I’ll share the tare down video here.

To be continued…