Hi, fairly new to drone making and I want to do it all myself. I need to create a safety measure for my quad copter as it has cost me a fair amount of money and i need to make a small self releasing parachute as well for a project of mine. I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on my design. All it consists of is a tube with compression spring release system, but instead of having it trigger activated, i was thinking of installing a small electromagnet on the top with a servo in place as well. This will allow me to fly my drone around and when it gets low on battery or runs out the parachute will automatically release saving the drone from breaking on the ground or hurting someone. Please let me know your thoughts, it is for a college project of mine as well as a personal addition to a quad copter.
Hehe......I was contemplating the same thing! I even looked on fleabay to see if such a thing existed......but it doesn't. Even a cheap plastic or nylon parachute could dramatically reduce fall rate. I do know that if you succesfully engineer a functioning parachute, you should easily be able to sell them. Great backup device to prevent damage to the expensive quads.
Not that difficult. The issue I see is how to get it to deploy when needed. If you control the deployment, its just a push of a button. Automatically is another story. Model rocketry has been safely returning ships back to earth for years.
There has been a lot of R&D and also DIY skills applied to this -and many have gotten them to work. BUT, there are still multiple problems.... 1. Weight 2. Making it truly work at the right times Many crashes and losses of control happen so quickly that there would be no time for deployment - unless it was somehow automatic (expensive and complex). Sometimes there is a problem with the radio link which causes a crash situation - so if the radio doesn't work, the parachute control won't either! Here is DJI's parachute: http://www.dji.com/product/dropsafe?www=v1 Hubsan Quads has an optional parachute system for their new machine: http://www.hubsan.com/productinfo_14.html and may DIY'ers have been fiddling for year. My thoughts are that airbags and perhaps spring-out glider wings will be a better solution eventually for steering a machine to a relatively safe crash.
