🛸Falcon ONE – FPV Drone
🔍 Overview
Falcon ONE was a third-year school project where I, along with two teammates, designed and built a custom FPV drone from the ground up — entirely tailored to meet the needs of our client, Droning4Solar, a company focused on solar panel installations via aerial scanning.
Our primary challenge: standard drones obstructed the camera’s field of view due to fixed landing gear. The solution? Build a reliable, camera-friendly drone with custom collapsible landing gear and professional-grade components — while staying within a tight budget.
âś… This project led to earning my EU drone license, certifying me to fly FPV drones in the Open category (A1-A3).
🎯 Project Goals
- Design and manufacture a fully functional FPV drone
- Eliminate 360° camera obstructions via collapsible landing gear
- Maintain structural strength while keeping the drone under 1000g
- Stay within a €250 budget
- Produce clear documentation, instruction manual, and user feedback system
⚙️ Key Technical Components
- Flight Controller: SpeedyBee F405 V3 (with 50A ESC)
- Motors: iFlight XING2 2306 – 1755KV
- FPV System: Foxeer Razer Micro + SpeedyBee TX800 VTX
- Propellers: Gemfang 6-inch tri-blade
- Battery: Dogcom 1550mAh 6S
- Frame: Custom 3D printed carbon-infused PLA and GreenTec Pro Carbon
đź’ˇ My Role
- Designed key structural concepts and sketched multiple iterations
- Designed CAD design
- Wrote the assembly manual and put together technical documentation
- Participated in full build, testing, and crash diagnostics
- Researched legal drone regulations and passed certification for FPV operation
🔧 Prototyping & Testing
- Used FDM 3D printing with high-temp filaments
- Crashed and iterated through multiple test flights
- Identified and improved weak points in arm design and battery mounting
- Integrated Neopixel lighting and modular arm concepts
🧠What I Learned
- Balancing weight, strength, and modularity in real hardware
- How to work under realistic client constraints
- The importance of documentation and regulation knowledge
- First-hand experience in the full engineering cycle — from research to testing to improvement
🎓 Outcome
- Successfully built and flew the custom FPV drone
- Delivered a complete instruction manual and user guide
- Passed the EU drone license test (A1-A3 category)
- Learned from failure: 3 major crashes, countless improvements
