Could This Be the World’s Smallest FPV Drone?

Science fiction and spy thrillers often feature tiny little drones the size of house flies. That isn’t quite possible with today’s technology — at least not for untethered flight — but we are getting closer as miniaturization continues to progress in the drone industry. How far can a hobbyist push that without the benefit of clandestine shadow funding? Hoarder Sam wanted to find out and built what might be the world’s smallest FPV drone.

Sam’s project relies on a counterintuitive fact: quadcopter drones don’t have to have the props arranged in a square shape. That is the norm, because it simplifies everything and there usually isn’t a reason to use an alternative arrangement. It also tends to off the best combination of stability and performance. But other configurations are also possible and can be much more compact.

In this case, Sam chose a stacked inline arrangement, kind of like a pair of Chinook helicopters welded together by their landing gear. That is extremely compact by volume, as it packages everything in a roughly cuboid shape.

Instead of starting with a pile of separate components, Sam achieved that by modifying a BETAFPV Air65 micro “whoop” drone. That has a mainboard that combines the flight controller, ESCs (electronic speed controllers), radio receiver, and power management in one small and lightweight unit. The only other components are the motors, the FPV camera (with transmitter), and the frame.

By designing a completely new frame, Sam was able to rearrange the orientation of the components into a more compact package. He modeled that in Solidworks and then 3D-printed it. He was careful to avoid overhangs and bridges, so the new frame is printable without any finicky supports. That makes it easy for anyone to replicate the build and Sam has uploaded the files to Maker World.

Sam’s first tests were without the FPV camera, just to make sure the drone would fly. Some tweaks with the BETAFPV software to the flight controller’s firmware settings were necessary to accommodate the completely new flight dynamics. When that was successful, Sam moved on to the real testing with the FPV camera mounted.

The FPV video quality isn’t stellar and there is some obstruction from the propellers. The new prop arrangement also isn’t very efficient and reduces the total flight time. But the drone flies and transmits video, which is an impressive achievement for something so small.