The FPV kit came with a board camera, but after just a few minutes it stopped working so I’ll have to figure that out later. Luckily, I have Turnigy Action Cam (or as I call it, a FauxPro) and I hooked that up with a live video out cable I have for it.

The screen is a 7″ LCD that is sold as a screen that would go in CSR headrests or something like that. I got it from Amazon.com for like $24 or something so it was fairly cheap.

I plan on making either a ground station or mounting the LCD to my transmitter for when I fly. Not sure which yet. I can’t use goggles because I wear prescription glasses with a crazy prescription so FatSharks are out of the question for me.

The screen/receiver bundle and transmitter are each powered by 3S lipos.

In hindsight, I wish I had taken more photos of the build process…

Basically, I glued some Velcro to the underside of my mattress and then sewed some Velcro bands onto my sheet. Now when I put the sheet on my bed I can secure it tightly using the Velcro straps. I’m loving this setup as the sheet never gets loose over time.

I designed the bench top to be 24″x60″ and because I made it tall enough to be at elbow height when I’m standing up. For storage there are two shelves below the bench top and 3 large drawers (The drawers are an ongoing process. Some pics have no shelves, some shows one. I currently have two made and installed, but the third still needs to be completed). The drawers are 19″x22″x8″ and supported by some heavy duty drawer slides that claim that they can withstand 100lb at the tip when fully extended. Because I hate when things fall back behind a desk, I used some of the leftover wood I used for the bench top as a backboard so nothing can be pushed off the back of the desk. I later mounted a large power strip to this backboard.

Currently I am using particle board as a bench top because I already had it laying around. Once the particle board gets too destroyed I’ll replace it with something nice.

The entire bench was designed using SolidWorks.

I modeled the entire bed frame in SolidWorks. The bed was designed around a Twin XL mattress. I needed a bookshelf for all my textbooks and I saw a photo once of a bunkbed that had a built-in bookshelf so I decided to do something similar.

With the help of my brother, I was able to build the bed in the course of a day. The bed frame was built to accept a twin XL bed.

I’ve been using the bed frame for over almost 2 months now and it’s worked well. It’s very sturdy and I haven’t had any issues with it as of yet.

I was surprised on how easy it was to fly the first time. I’m still not great at flying a circuit or similar, but the first flight I was able to hover it, fly it away from me, then back to me, and land. This is all without any stabilization modes enabled.

I’m very impressed with how durable this thing is. I’ve crashed it so many times and all but one time it was back in the air within 60s. The most common damage when I crash is the zip ties that hold the landing gear on break (like they’re intended to). All it takes is about 30s to put in a new zip tie or two and she’s back in the air. I’ve only ever broken one prop and that’s when I crashed at full speed into a stadium light pole about 30 feet up. (It should be noted that that particular crash was absolutely hilarious).
I will say that the booms crack easily, but I’ve been flying with all three booms cracked pretty much since the beginning. It’s not an issue at all and it just allows the booms to fold a bit when I crash….similar to that of the folding boom design.

After flying a bit without lights (and crashing a lot due to orientation issues), I added LED strips to the underside of the booms. This has helped immensely with orientation.

Last year there was a 3D printing contest within my Engineering club. The contest was to model/design something you would want 3D printed from Shapeways, but it had to fulfill certain criteria. Some of the criteria was it had to cost under $40 shipped and it had to utilize 3 or four specific SolidWorks modeling tools (I don’t recall what they were anymore).

I wear a tuxedo semi frequently due to the fact that I play in a string quartet for weddings and I occasionally have to wear a tux for other ensembles I’m a part of. This inspired my idea for the contest. My idea ended up being to make SolidWorks logo cuff-links.

I had the cuff-link pendants 3D printed in the material that Shapeways has labeled “Polished Nickel”. When I got the pendants in the mail they were really good-looking, but I ended up polishing them myself which really made them shine.

I then soldered the pendants to the cuff-link studs that I purchased from Amazon.com.

If I were to make them again, I would have a little recess modeled into the backside of the pendant so that the cuff-link studs will be mechanically lined up and I wouldn’t have to eye-ball it.