DIY Drones for the Evil Genius: Design, Build, and Customize Your Own Drones

"DIY Drones for the Evil Genius" (by Ian Cinnamon, Romi Kadri and Fitz Tepper) provides a very effective overview to move from the many available toy drones to the more serious hobbyist level. The book is well organized, allowing the reader to dive into the theory as deep as desired or pick and choose specific subjects of interest to rapidly meet their needs.For me, I was admittedly after more of the "get your hands dirty" portions of the book to get right in and start building my own drone after "outgrowing" my more "toy" drone. But for those more interested in taking a "theorist" approach to the flight of drones, the book also provides aerodynamics of aviation flight and supporting physics, all very useful depending on how much you thirst for theory vs. just the practical aspects. Regardless of which extreme you fall into, or a balance of both, the book provides the information in a well written, easy to understand document, along with great illustrations and organization.In conclusion, the reader can immerse themselves in as much or little of the theory needed to build their own drone, or more likely, come back to the theory later on as building and flying the drone progresses and the interest level for the theory increases.Several key considerations make this book a great purchase. First, its very well priced, and provides ever so important specific drone first class component sourcing references and vendors to build a top notch drone, and at attractive pricing. One of my concerns going into this purchase questioned if the supplier references would be limited to purchasing from authors of the book, which refreshingly was NOT the case. In fact, the references provided in the book take you to various Amazon vendors, many of them "Prime" in fact, selling the specific components and at very reasonable and competitively priced. For me, this is very important keeping the presentation/learning materials very separate from the purchasing side of the components so the book does what its supposed to do, provide objective guidelines and references.Finally, and something one does not often see when purchasing "how to" books is the outgoing support and availability of the primary author, Ian Cinnamon. I had several questions regarding following my initial reading of the book. A link is provided to reach out to Mr. Cinnamon, which I honestly did not expect any kind of effective or timely responses. To my surprise, he responded within minutes of my first inquiry, answering all questions with a willingness to continue helping me as needed which he has. So the author takes a wonderful "hands-on" approach through his timely availability.I look forward to progressing towards the start of building my first drone which is anticipated shortly, having confidence that the book will provide such a broad amount of information, but most important, knowing that the author openly is making himself availble via email to help, making this home-built drone nothing short of a success.

Very interesting and informative. I don’t like using the word Evil everywhere in books

This is good book and there were no issues with delivery.The book has good section on theory of flight. Drone building is described in detail, hopefully I can follow it through.I reduced by one star for several issues:1. Continuous referral to book's web site for components list instead of teaching reader to select components on their own.2. Electronics descriptions are rather sketchy, some info on using GPS with flight computer and RC protocols (SBus, etc.) would be useful.3. Drone LiPo batteries are fire hazard. It would be nice to read how to store them safely.

I got this book and the parts needed to build a drone; great Christmas gift for my husband. Diydronebook.com had the links for what we needed and author Ian responded within a day when one of the links didn’t work. (If you are a novice, don’t waste your time trying to figure out which flight controller you need. Also, use amazon prime gift option in case you choose wrong.). You really should have some experience working with wiring. Husband needed to get easy disconnecters (from autozone) for the ECM and motors, and then use shrink wrap to make sure positive and negative stayed separate. Also had to get a XT60 male connector for the battery we chose. And the frame we chose did not include the little 3mm x 10mm screws to connect the motor to the frame. Finally, the battery charger did not come with an outlet plug so we had to find one that meets the specs. So, you see, a great guide but be prepared to problem solve. It’s alot of effort but much better to spend about $300 instead of over $2000 for an already built drone!

When I ordered this book I thought it would be like the other evil genius books, where you get some interesting projects and learn some new concepts. I was shocked and thrilled that the first 30 pages are about how flight works. This book goes into such interesting detail for each of the projects. I have read the book, and now I am working on getting the parts to actually start building.I hope they come out with a second book on programming these drones, as I think that would be a big hit, as children love drones and if you can quickly build one and then they can look at programming it, that may attract more people.But, considering the topic, this book is incredible, and they are very thorough, as they also talk about how to get a drone license from the FAA, so your hobby won't land you in jail.

For an entry level book I would definitely recommend this book. I followed the instructions and built my first drone with the help of this book. Every person will probably make their own adjustments to suit their need as they build their own, but I think the author does a good job focusing on the basics and not making it too complicated for beginners. There are some parts that may need a little more description (some wiring), but over all I really enjoyed the material of this book. The website used makes it easy to search for the materials needed, some of the products are naturally updated, but all the materials are comparable to the predecessors. If you want to get into building your own drones and don't know where to start, then I would highly recommend this book to start with.

This was my first book about drones. It is very well written and a fantastic source of information regarding drones technology and how to built them. I am a novice in this field but after I have read this book I feel I am a pro. I will suggest this book to everyone interest in understanding, building, and operating a drone.

I got this for my boyfriend for christmas. He had recently taken up the hobby but would ger frustrated navigating how to repair. I actually spent alot of time looking into books before i decided on this one because it was a little priceier then others. But totally worth it! My boyfriend loves it. He said its the best all in one source for drones. Im glad i spent the extra cash.

Won't download

Very good for the beginner. Lacks information on flight control computers others than cc3d.

Over priced and not too helpful.

I am an engineer and I found this book extremely helpful to learn more about drones. It starts with a very good explanation about basic concepts of aerospace engineer, that even for me working in this field, was helpful. I really recommend.