This is a good story, but really the airframes are the cheapest part of fixed wing drones. You can build them out of dollar store foam if you'd like, people have been doing it for years [1]. The expensive part are the electronics, in particular if you'd like the drone to do something useful. The motor, servos, speed controllers, flight controller, gps, receiver, antennas, payload can be 99% of the cost.

[1[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAd5Zbb-p6I

Absolutely. In fact, just gluing a $30 flight controller + servos/motor to a foam board can work [1].

I am curious about the "custom SMS" solution used to control the plane. Shame that wasn't expanded on.

[1[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhNWSxHbFjw

With a local operator with a radio - and granted, that's not super cheap - you can omit the FC and wire the radio receiver directly to the servos. Then you'd only need an ESC and a motor.

A cheap FlySky radio costs $30 or so. The receiver costs another $15. It's really not expensive at all.

That's true, but if you're operating on-site that far away you'd need an FPV receiver.

Granted I'm coming from a position of privilege, so when I price this in my head I think "$200 for a RadioMaster TX16S, $600 for a Skyline 04X".

You could totally use a much cheaper setup and have it work just fine. For video feed, you can get COTS solutions for ~$50. You could probably build it for $30.

Yeah, if you want the good stuff, you'll spend a lot of money, but a TX16S is way overkill for what they're doing. Plus, if you're going to spend $600 on goggles, might as well get digital ones :P

> Plus, if you're going to spend $600 on goggles, might as well get digital ones :P

That's bait :)

Oh man I got the DJI ones and now I can't fly my analog planes because I don't like having my image composed of three blobs.

Seeing this from the goggles is fantastic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn9th3C1XDI

I read that as instrumentation, not control.

It probably was, but it's pretty simple to add waypoints to a mission via SMS, just text it the coordinates (and altitude) you want it to go to.

You'd need to authenticate that or before long your will have your drones stolen or crashed.

Certainly, but it's easy to make it accept commands only from certain numbers or containing a password.

As a drone nerd, the very first thing I saw was that the wings they pictured were using a Pixhawk. That model is around $100 by itself, and you're not going to be finding them in trash.

Meanwhile, a complete wing from some manufacturers with an autopilot, is ~$150.

On further inspection, they're using a 3D-printed fuselage, and presumably 3D printed wing supports. In that case, the only thing that might be made from "scraps" is the cardboard skin.

Foam: $10

Flight controller: $15

GPS: $15

ESC: $20

Motor: $20

Receiver: $15

Two servos: $5

If you want video, that's another $30 for camera+vtx. That's it, $130 for the whole thing, with FPV video.

This is amazing. Not just the construction of drones from leftover materials, but using them to overcome the problems of limited infrastructure.

I could spend all day reading stuff like this!

This is really cool. I imagine this infrastructure could provide a two-way channel, for example the hospital could send critical / time sensitive supplies (like refrigerated drugs) back to the community, based on samples previously submitted.

I once had an idea for a very low cost servo for flight control (cents), I really should try that out to verify if it works, if it is reliable enough it would allow their cost to drop a bit.

What's the design like?

Email?

Sure thing, it's in my profile.

sent.

Thanks, replied!

This is the kind of work I'd like to do. Engineering that helps people, directly.