DIY Self-Charging Drone- with JLCPCB!

Hey everyone! I’ve been in my new supervillain lair for almost four months and it’s coming along nicely. I’ve got lasers, robots- augmented humans, that’s me of course, but you know what I don’t have? An autonomous drone swarm. That’s right, for all my fancy toys, when I want to launch a drone I have to carry it outside, put a fresh battery in, then when it lands plug it in again to recharge. Handling my own drones, with my own hands- like a peasant! This is obviously completely unacceptable. I mean really, who can live like that? So I’m going to set up my DJI Spark so I can take off, land, and take off again as many times as I want without human intervention.

00:58 - The DJI Spark is perfect for this application because it’s the only drone I have. Okay well it’s the only drone I have and it’s perfect for other reasons, it has an onboard USB charging port I can use. There are other self-charging solutions for drones but they are all really expensive. I want to make mine as cheaply as possible by only using PCBs and that way my sponsor, JLCPCB can do all the manufacturing without me needing to get custom tooling or anything like that. Because it’s made entirely out of PCBs there’s not going to be very much fabrication for me to do.

01:40 - Which is the point- in a potential commercial product you don’t want a lot of extra labor. In most of my upcoming videos where I work with JLCPCB I’m not really trying to show off my DIY skills, I’m trying to show just how easy it is to get started in hardware manufacturing if you focus on simple but practical solutions that you can make with just small runs of PCBs. For these, I come up with a product idea, figure out how I want to do it hand those specifications off and then test the final result. It’s a pretty cool process and I hope it inspires some of you to try your hand at real, practical small scale manufacturing, and not just DIY. But don’t worry. I’ll still show lots of DIY here also. So what I’ve had made is a grid of metal squares and two spring- loaded contacts that connect to a small PCB held in the back of the drone by its MicroUSB port.

02:44 - Those landing squares alternate in polarity- plus, and minus. Provided I land the drone within 30 degrees of straight forward, the two contacts should land on charging squares about 95% of the time. If they miss, I’ll just tap the throttle for a second and shift the drone a tiny bit. The circuit on the back of the drone will switch the plus and minus polarity depending on how the drone lands. 5V will then charge the drone. A little while later, ready to fly again- without me touching it or even having to be in the same place.

03:21 - Technically I could be anywhere in the world there is an internet connection. Ok, right now I just have to solder the controller board and the charging pad together, mount it on something, and then we can try it out. Ok, I am losing daylight so I am just going to put the PCBs on this old plywood and let’s test it with my old phone. Voilà, it worked. Now let’s test it with the drone. Trying to keep my location a complete secret is impractical, would prevent me from using my studio fully and getting a return on the substantial monthly investment it represents. So in upcoming videos, you will see the outside, and parts of the neighborhood.

04:29 - Those of you who are concerned- thank you. Yes, I am fully aware of the OPSEC concerns in giving away location information, yes I know there are many ways this can be done from the video, yes I have taken precautions and thought this through carefully, again- thank you. You can see the green light is blinking, it means when the pogo pins touch the charging pad it is working. So it is being charged right now and on the other side, you can take a closer look. That worked really well for a proof of concept! Of course for long term use, I would need to make some kind of retractable hanger to protect it from the weather- but other than that I think we have a winner.

07:26 - A bunch of these could be set up in a line, two kilometers apart and the drone controlled over the Internet or programmed with waypoints so it could just hop from charging pad to charging pad. Or with a retractable hanger, this could be kept on top of a van or RV for local reconnaissance the possibilities are endless. Next time, what would you like to see me use it for? What changes would you like to see made? Let me know in the comment section. That’s it for today, Please remember to check if Youtube has unsubscribed and unnotified you, if you can post links to this video it’s a huge, huge help. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you all next time. .