I installed the most popular utility drone motor on the hobby helicopter for IOT/MQTT/COAP research to see what happened. It cruised for 35 minutes straight, breaking the world record of any commercial platform of 250 grams by 50+% extra mission time! The fuselage is Blade230 or BSR body, the main motor is T-motor 4004 from utility inspector drones. The main rotor is built from 180-250 sized helicopter parts. The flight computer and tail motor are taken from the famous racing quadcopter HGLRC Petrel 132. The fuselage is less than 11 US dollars apiece. Is it nice if highways were patrolled by camera drones to broadcast the video of traffic accidents, and an AI server phones motorists to get out of the road at the immediate exit before lining up in a traffic jam?
The part listing is in the following table. A shipping discount for multiple items from a vendor has been applied. No volume discounts are used.
The entire craft can be built without a machine shop and hence can be repaired by gig workers in a car. Only light hand tools and light electric tools powered by car batteries are needed. This creates jobs.
