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IceDrone Documentation

IceDrone is a small, 3D-printable brushed quadcopter built around the Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-S3 Sense, GY-91 IMU, VL6180X ToF sensor, 8520 motors and the current Airframe V2 mechanical stack.

Airframe V2 assembly

This documentation belongs to github.com/icepaule/IceDrone and is also published at icepaule.github.io/IceDrone.

Table of contents

# Chapter Covers
01 Bill of Materials Current V3.4 parts and electrical requirements
02 Electrical V3.4 power architecture, motor stages, pin map, sensors
03 Mechanical Airframe V2, printable parts, STL/SCAD, Kobra S1 settings, CG
04 Firmware Open32Drone strategy, build settings, video/MAVLink design rules
05 Build and Test Step-by-step assembly and bring-up
06 First Flight Test environment, hop/hover phases, acceptance criteria
07 Safety and Legal (DE/EU) Workshop safety and UAS legal notes
08 Troubleshooting Common faults and causes
09 Amazon.de Order List (DE) Dated marketplace shopping aid
10 Perfboard V3.4 soldering (DE) Hole-by-hole solder map, SMD practice, multimeter gates
11 PCB-Reflow Sn42Bi58 (DE) Stencil, paste printing, YIHUA YH-853AAA profile, inspection
— Reflow Quick Card Condensed workbench checklist
— Sources Upstream projects and references

Current project status

Area Status
Electrical revision V3.4 HW-VERIFIED is authoritative; V3.2/V3.3 are obsolete for soldering
Perfboard prototype 70×30 mm V3.4 layout and detailed solder guide available
Custom PCB 70×30 mm PCB and stencil received; manual first-article assembly/reflow procedure documented
Reflow process Sn42Bi58 low-temperature workflow for YIHUA YH-853AAA documented; separate bom/reflow_bom.csv available
Bill of materials Updated for SS34-class motor flyback, 10 V bulk capacitors and regulated XIAO 5 V supply
Mechanical Airframe V2 current; parametric OpenSCAD + STL + previews in cad/airframe_v2/
Propeller CAD Standard and experimental toroidal models in cad/propellers/
Bench-test firmware Available in firmware/bench_test/; V3.4 motor map uses GPIO4/44/6/5
Camera Wi-Fi diagnostic firmware/camera_wifi_test/ streams MJPEG over the existing Wi-Fi LAN
Flight-critical firmware Tracks upstream Open32Drone; motor mapping/rotation, IMU calibration and battery calibration still require full hardware bring-up

V3.4 electrical highlights

  • M1 GPIO4/D3
  • M2 GPIO44/D7
  • M3 GPIO6/D5
  • M4 GPIO5/D4
  • I2C SDA GPIO2/D1, SCL GPIO43/D6; firmware must call Wire.begin(2, 43)
  • D1-D4 = SS34-class ≥3 A Schottky
  • C1 = 470 µF / 10 V low-ESR
  • C2 = 100 µF / 10 V low-ESR
  • raw LiHV is not connected directly to XIAO 5V/BAT; use 1S→5 V boost + D5
  • photographed VL6180X order: VIN, 2V8, GND, GPIO, SHDN, SCL, SDA