The Lunchbox Copter

After experimenting with a few different styles of DIY quadcopter frames, I came across some posts on DIYdrones by Jake Wells who has built some quadcopters out of plastic storage boxes. Dubbed the BoxCopter, his creations are light, stable, and watertight on the bottom, so they can land on water which is especially cool when a GoPro in a waterproof case is attached to the box. I decided to try my hand at building a BoxCopter of my own.

At Target I found a plastic bin pretty much identical to the one used on DIYdrones. This box cost around $7.

For arms, I cut a couple of 20″ lengths of the 1/2″ square wood I had laying around from previous frame builds and ziptied them to the lid of my lunchbox.

Next I mounted the motors to the ends of the arms with small wood screws.

There’s plenty of room inside for the electronics, so I got some industrial strength velcro and attached the receiver and kk2.0 flight control board to the bottom of the container. I ended up putting a long strip of velcro on the bottom of the container between the back of the box and the flight control board (after this next picture was taken), so that I could adjust the position of the battery to keep the center of balance as close as possible to the center of the box. When I attached a camera to the front end of the box, I’d place the battery farther back, and if there was no camera, I’d place it right up next to the flight control board. I punched a couple of holes in the lid for the wires from the ESCs to pass through so I could connect everything.

Here it is with everything hooked up.

And finally, with the board configured and receiver tested, I put on the props.

This is yet another DIY quadcopter frame that cost less than $10 and didn’t take very long to assemble. It is surprisingly stable in flight and can carry a GoPro with no trouble.

Flight videos coming soon!