Back in May 2016, EDN published my teardown of Cheerson’s $10 CX-10 quadrotor drone. More recently, you saw my dissection and analysis of its $15 CX-10C sibling, with an integrated still and video camera that captured images to a memory card inserted in the drone’s microSD slot. And now it’s time for the ~$20 CX-10W, which live streams those same images to a Wi-Fi-connected Android- or iOS-based smartphone, tablet, or other device.

By default, the CX-10W is also controlled by that same Android- or iOS-based device … but drone enthusiasts report that a CX-10 or CX-10C’s transmitter can alternatively also control the quadrotor.

these are the exact same three foundation ICs found in the CX-10 and CX-10C:

A Panchip Microelectronics XN297 2.4 GHz transceiver at the bottom, intended for wireless mice and other applications
An InvenSense MPU-6050 MEMS IC above and the right of the XN297, which combines 3-axis gyro and 3-axis accelerometer functions along with integrating a motion processor
And an STMicroelectronics’ STM32F031K MCU to the left of the MPU-6050 (as well as above and to the left of the XN297), based on an ARM Cortex-M0 processor

Flip this PCB over and, in addition to gaining a clearer view of the lithium-ion polymer battery, you’ll also find another antenna. This one, considering what’s on the other side of this same PCB, likely handles Panchip’s proprietary 2.4 GHz protocol:

Now for the top-half PCB. As you can already tell from the markings on the other PCB, one of this PCB’s functions involves Wi-Fi (the other two wires handle power and ground). And in fact, the IC at the center is a Marvell 88W-class 802.11 transceiver:

it appeared to be mostly fine, except…one motor was seized. On the plus side – teardown excuse.

This stuff is small, and probably not up to many disassembly/reassembly cycles.

The main processor is an ST STM32F031K6, an ARM Cortex-M0 with the usual cadre of peripherals, as well as a motor-control block (the leftmost large chip in Figure 2). Although at the lower end of the ARM continuum, it’s doubtless more than powerful enough for this application. Amazing what $1 will buy you in a microcontroller these days.

The next major chip is an Invensense MPU-6050, which combines a three-axis gyro and accelerometer with onboard processing.

Chip #3 is labelled AMS29023, but I haven’t been able to find any information about it. Clearly though, it’s the 2.4 GHz RC receiver (the video transmitter uses 5.8 GHz).

I’ll wager the foam-covered part at the bottom of the board is a pressure sensor, as Hubsan claims height hold ability.

Drone-Drone
http://hackaday.com/2017/02/15/drone-drone/

Yes, the pun was ripped off the article that got our attention . It was just too good not to share. A team of researchers in Japan created an artificial honeybee, a small drone that is meant to cross-pollinate flowers. The (still) manually controlled drone is 4 centimetres wide and weighs only 15 grams. At the bottom side of the drone, a mix of a special sticky gel and horse hair resides. The purpose of this gel is to collect the pollen particles as it bumps into the flowers and exchange it as it goes hopping around from plant to plant. In experiments, the drone was able to cross-pollinate

You’re Looking at the World’s First Artificial Honeybee
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/youre-looking-at-the-worlds-first-artificial-honeybee

Tiny drones may help pollinate crops when dwindling honeybees aren’t enough.

In a honeybee colony, normally it’s the female worker bees that go out, gather pollen, and make honey. The male drones only exist to provide the queen with sperm to make more female workers. But, in response to declining honeybee populations, researchers in Japan are putting drones to work. Only these drones are the plastic, remote-controlled kind.

Combining scotch tape, paint brush hairs, a tiny quadcopter, and a failed, forgotten experiment, these interdisciplinary researchers have produced an artificial honeybee. A drone-drone. (Sorry.)

Miyako had bought 10 drones, and destroyed nine of them. In the paper describing the drone, published today, February 9 in the journal Chem, he wrote, “a certain amount of practice with remote control of the artificial pollinator is necessary.”

Source: http://www.edn.com/design/consumer/4442669/Teardown–A-tiny-camera-drone?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20160909&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20160909&elqTrackId=652232de708d4a3e8bb73a537f5f7df7&elq=f88271a4810749f6bb0362c38a375893&elqaid=33805&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=29546

Does a 0.3 Mpixel image sensor-and-lens assembly, mated to a microSD slot supporting up-to-32 GByte flash memory card capacities, justify a 50% price increase (to $15 total, mind you)?

Drones come in all shapes and size, and [Kedar Nimbalkar] was wondering if the guts of a tiny Cheerson CX-10 nano-drone could take off with a larger body, leading to an interesting brain transplant experiment.

For his test, [Kedar] acquired a CX-10 and the body of a larger Syma X5SW drone. After gutting the CX-10 for its LiPo battery and circuit board, which features an STM32 ARM-core MCU, a 6-axis IMU and the wireless transmitter, [Kedar] studied the datasheet of the onboard SQ2310ES driver MOSFETs.

DIY How To Make The World’s Smallest Drone Bigger ! Cheap RC Drone Hack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EltCLJGEm5A