Raspberry Pi Drone for less than $100

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1

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 and a Raspberry Pi camera module 3. I want to build a drone with autonomous mission planning integrated with my Pi for a more advanced object detection on drones. I thought Pixhawk was a good option but it exceeds my $100 budget with just that. I found some amazing DroneDojo tutorials but their cost per drone is above $500. What could I use?

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Hi Devansh
I think a drone that will carry any sort of a payload could well exceed $100. I have not gone into this as most units I would like to have a play with far exceeded my pocket so I have just not bothered.
Have a good look around though. You might get lucky. My searches have not been extensive by any means.
Cheers Bob

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Thanks for your reply, Bob. I understand that it’s impossible to get a drone with my criteria for under $100, but even then, I want to keep costs as low as possible, so Pixhawk wasn’t a solution for me. Do you have any recommendations?

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No. I have not gone too far into the drone thing. Just looked at the prices then went away
Cheers Bob

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I think you can consider these designs: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/building-a-raspberry-pi-pico-2-powered-drone-from-scratch/
DJI MINI PHANTOM 4 PRO - Share Project - PCBWay

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Hi Lia, I love this project post you recommended. What would you approximate the total cost for this project to be?

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I did some research and I think I found a suitable flight controller for my project, it’s called the JHEMCU GF30F722-ICM (Link). How could I use this flight controller with the Raspberry Pi 4 for mission planning and autonomous flight via software such as ArduPilot or something similar? Also, I need this drone to carry a payload of approx. 1kg so what drone parts would be good for this project; which motors, ESCs, batteries, etc… As this is the first time I’m making a drone.

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Hi @Devansh256408,

This is a fun project but to lift 1kg you are going to be looking at some expensive hardware. You will need motors with a few kgs of thrust each. These by themselves will set you back a couple hundred dollars, ESCs for these will be expensive and you will want some beefy batteries.

This won’t be a drone you could 3D print reliably either, the forces that will be exerted by the props and the payload will require carbon rods to stiffen it up.

Here’s a reddit post where someone is trying to do something similar with a budget of several thousand dollars.