Not my thread, I know, but my justification for necroing is that I've posted in it before and would like to continue with some more relevent content, as one or two people here may find it of interest.
My elder sibling managed to give the AeroQuad (AKA the flying food container, in this case) its first proper flight about a month ago. I went along and took some photos and made some footage.
It now sports a wider, more sturdy set of landing skids, and a small 720p camera, which is the small black object located just beneath the blue clasp of the container facing you in the second pic.
Lift-off.
On the first flight, it was taken up to about maybe 50 or 60 feet at its highest altitude, but without a suitable reference I'm not absolutely certain. Here I think it was at around 20-30 feet.
Here it narrowly misses a swipe from a lightsabre.
We also got some footage from the on-board camera. It was somewhat shaky, kind of like an ongoing mirage effect, but otherwise it's OK to watch (if maybe a bit nauseating). Here's a still from when I think it was at around 50 feet or so during the first flight (the camera was accidentally attached upside-down, so I flipped the image). Balancing the individual rotor blades and adding some padding to the Velcro attachment might reduce some of the vibration.
We got about 3 flights out of it overall. I think they lasted for between about 2 to 4 minutes each but in theory it could probably manage about 10 minutes before a recharge.
The next thing we might try is to install the GPS receiver and see how well it handles "station-keeping" in the hover, and test out the barometer and ultrasound sensor for altitude holding. I've suggested that in order to make it easier to tell which way it's facing, the front two rotors could have some orange paint applied to them, and/or its shape could be made less symmetrical somehow. It already has port and starboard "nav lights" on the front two spars but in bright daylight they are not so easily seen, IMO.
