Cardboard Drone Doesn’t Fly

[marble coyote]

Hello! I’m attempting to build a drone out of cardboard (yes it is very challenging), and I’m having an issue where it just won’t fly.
I have a slow-mo video of the drone attempting to fly, and one of me rotating it around to give y’all a better look at it, as well as a picture of the components list & details about them.

I suspect that the drone just doesn’t produce enough thrust, the cardboard square frame causes too much air resistance, the motors are slowly being pushed out through the bottom and that causes issues or something, or the chip just doesn’t understand its orientation because I goofed up, but otherwise I’m not sure what the issues might be or how to fix any of them, as this is my first drone & I don’t know the math behind them.

Do note that the red/blue wired motors are clockwise spinning and the black/white wired ones are counter clockwise spinning (all motors have the correctly oriented propellers)

[little ingot]

All of the thrust your props make is being completely wasted by the cardboard. It's like turning a fan on and then covering it with a blanket and being surprised that you get no airflow

[marble coyote]

OHHH ok, thank you so much, I’ll try fixing that

[marble coyote]

As Daedalus said what I wanted to say, make a center with just 4 thin but tall arms (tall as cardboard may bend easily) which won't block the airflow that much.

I have built a cardboard drone once like that, supported the arms with thin wooden sticks as mine was quite a lot bigger than yours

[past saffron]

I would try making arms from thin horizontal pieces, much like regular quad arms, but then glue a vertical piece along the bottom of each arm. like a T profile

or use thin cardboard tube you see used for shipping thin rods

[hearty karma]

This community is awesome. I love how everyone is just helping. Seriously, made my morning. 🧡

[marble coyote]

Thank you all so much 😭
I’ll try y’all’s advice when I get the chance and update yall on how it goes!

[twilit dirge]

I think that the cardboard might be deflecting the downwash from the propellers and pushing the drone back down

[marble coyote]

Yeah that definitely seems to be the consensus

I tried this design (not sure the arms are as thin as requested), attaching the arms with superglue. It still doesn’t fly (note that the first time it turned off, it did that on its own). Any ideas as to why? Maybe the arms are still too thick, or the chip needs to be perfectly level at the start, or the propellers are tilted?

The video shows me attempting to make it fly, then rotating it around to give y’all a full view of it, then showing what happens when I try to make it fly in different directions

[upper lynx]

Make sure that the motors are spinning the right way, because it looks like the 2 bottom motors are spinning the wrong way.

[marble coyote]

Woops, my bad, you’re right

I’ve fixed that, and now have this

(Also, I apologize for asking every time there’s an issue - I’m new to this, and don’t really know what causes the issues or how to figure them out beyond asking for help)

[past saffron]

https://discord.com/channels/536623076796923924/1144570522991067146

if the props are really definitely spinning the right way then my guess is FC orientation

[marble coyote]

Woops, thank you!

[marble coyote]

I’m very certain of the props, but do you happen to know anything (or know where I can find out stuff) about the Eachine E017 drone receiver board? I’ve heard a lot about needing both an ESC and FC, but the tutorial I saw (which I’ve deviated from greatly) used just this one chip, so I don’t know what that’s about (i will try the applicable stuff from the linked channel though)

[past saffron]

I don't know anything about that board sorry

[marble coyote]

It’s all good, thank you very much anyway!

[feral frost]

Assuming it's an AIO, the ESC and FC are integrated in one PCB

You double checked the board orientation right?

[marble coyote]

I’ve been looking online for info about that, but I haven’t seen anything about it how the board is supposed to be oriented, so imma try guessing and checking now

[feral frost]

If you open betaflight it should show you

[marble coyote]

I’m admittedly not sure about how to use beta flight with this thing

Or in general

And how to connect the chip to the computer to use beta flight

I was just going off this tutorial and deviated from it bc the wire cabling things were hard to work with, and since it seemed to work for him w/o betaflight, I was trying to avoid it https://youtu.be/q8fRenVYVIQ?si=8ZRnEI9yyUf4PzUT

Also I’ve tried the orientations - one steers immediately to a side as shown, another spins a bit, and two seem to stop using a propeller (obviously something else went wrong there, though I’m not sure what)

[dawn oasis]

Is there a USB port on your board?

If so, it's easy to plug into betaflight.

Betaflight will show you 3d model of your drone. My guess is board orientation. But you're not flying fpv, correct?

When I've had board orientation wrong, it's flipped my quad sideways instead of letting me fly forward. You can also check that your sticks are mapped correctly. (The order of throttle, aileron, elevator, and rudder matter)

There's a lot that the board needs to know about how the quad is configured in order to fly.

I'd triple check motor spin direction matches props. If trying to build without betaflight, I might try moving prop/motor combos to a props in or props out configuration. If you've got one of those and the board thinks you have the other, it won't work. You can change that in betaflight, but could likely also change it by moving the motors.

[marble coyote]

The board doesn’t have a USB port (and correct, it’s not FPV). I’ll look into that props in/out configuration stuff & triple check the motor / prop orientations as well, likely tomorrow since it’s getting pretty late. I’ve also found some videos using the same kind of controller / chip pair, and they seem to suggest I’m using the controller incorrectly & the chip needs to be level, so I’ll look into that too (I also suspect my motors are slightly tilted, and that’s also throwing it off)

Thank you all so much for your help

[dawn oasis]

I wonder if a cardboard circle would be a more efficient and rigid frame here.

https://www.instructables.com/The-Incredible-Flying-Paper-Tube/

Sort of like this.

[feral frost]

but... that'd make a wing

not a quad

if I am looking at it right

[dawn oasis]

Make it narrower and out of cardboard. It flys up instead of forward. This shape might solve for the arms flexing.