7 Inch X8 With DSLR Camera on Board

About the drone

The oth­er day we already told you about the XM2 Inter­sep­tor high-speed drone capa­ble of car­ry­ing DSLR cam­eras on board. A sim­i­lar solu­tion was imple­ment­ed by Andy Shen of the well-known hob­by team “Shen­drones”, who became famous for ser­i­al devel­op­ment with the sub­se­quent imple­men­ta­tion of a wide range of frames, as well as ready-to-fly FPV drones based on them. The Shen­drones Thicc is a cus­tom made 7″ octo­copter in X8 con­fig­u­ra­tion con­fig­ured and adapt­ed to fly with large cam­eras such as the Black­Mag­ic Pock­et Cin­e­ma (cam­era mount with 1/4–20 screw and straps).

Accord­ing to Andy, the idea of ​​​​build­ing the Thicc drone came about by chance, and to be pre­cise, he received an order from three buy­ers for the man­u­fac­ture of 7‑inch hexa­copters, and when almost every­thing was ready, his friend and fel­low hob­by­ist — Gab (Gabriel Kocher — top pilot League DRL 2017–2018; has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in shoot­ing and build­ing UAVs from scratch; assem­bled, con­fig­ured and test­ed one of the three Thicc drones) rec­om­mend­ed, through weighty argu­ments, to aban­don the hexa­copter con­fig­u­ra­tion and imple­ment a project based on the octo­copter in the X8 con­fig­u­ra­tion. And they did­n’t fail!

Anoth­er per­son, known both in the hob­by and in the world of drone rac­ing, also took part in the imple­men­ta­tion of the project — Paul Nurkkala or Nurk (Drone Rac­ing World Cham­pi­on DRL Allianz 2018; cur­rent top dri­ver in the DRL league; has vast expe­ri­ence in build­ing UAVs from scratch; assem­bled, con­fig­ured and test­ed one of the three Thicc drones).

A detailed report on the man­u­fac­tur­ing process, assem­bly, test flights of the hexa­copter and octo­copter from Andy Shen can be viewed here. You can also access the data to print the drone ele­ments your­self here.

Frame

The drone arms are made from 8mm car­bon fiber. The thick­ness of the plates of the cen­tral part of the frame is 2.5 mm, the bot­tom plate is 3 mm. At the base are two stacks for flight con­trollers 30 × 30, 20 mm high. The devel­op­er clar­i­fies that when order­ing a drone, you can ask to install 25 or 30 mm racks instead of the stan­dard ver­sion.

Recommended build

The main com­po­si­tion of the rec­om­mend­ed assem­bly includes:

• Flight con­troller: Lume­nier Lux7
• ESC: 2×4‑in‑1
• Motors: Broth­er­hob­by 2806.5 1300KV

Full kit includes print­ed parts: land­ing feet, FPV cam­era mount and cam­era damper mount (both ver­sions shown). The DJI ver­sion also includes a bay for the DJI Air Unit and anten­na mounts.

Price

The Thicc drone is sold through the Shen­drones com­pa­ny store at a price depend­ing on the con­fig­u­ra­tion:

1. Car­bon & Hard­ware only — $120
2. Full Ana­log Kit — $135
3. Full DJI Kit — $140

Photo

Pho­to of two fin­ished Shen­drones Thiccs on one of the test days.

Drone assem­bled by Nurk on the left, with addi­tion­al con­nect­ed in par­al­lel. pow­er sup­ply for max­i­mum reserve. The motors on his drone are a Hob­by­wing 2408 1300KV, and Andy’s drone (drone on the right) has a Broth­er­hob­by 2806.5 1300KV. Andy not­ed that his drone was notice­ably more pow­er­ful.

Paul Nurkkala (with FPV gog­gles on his head). Pre-flight prepa­ra­tion.

Video

Test flights of the fin­ished assem­bly with and with­out a cam­era.

The final result of the flight and shoot­ing on the cam­era.

Test flights of the Thicc drone.

Test flight of Thicc drone with­out pay­load. View from DJI FPV cam­era 720P.

Test flight of Thicc drone with pay­load (800g water bot­tle). View from DJI FPV cam­era 720P.

Test flight on the rec­om­mend­ed DAL7056 props with a Black Mag­ic 6K cam­era on board, fol­lowed by a crash (result — minus the lens). In the video, you can see the vibra­tion, which, accord­ing to Andy, dis­ap­peared after dis­man­tling the Black Mag­ic cam­era. The drone crashed after tak­ing off again with the cam­era. The fail­ure prob­lem was an incor­rect­ly select­ed PC.

Crash result.