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.

Good book to lay out some clarity of those considering getting into drones, or those of us with questions. Interesting read.

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.

Great book! Ian Cinnamon and his coauthors do a great job making complicated subjects extremely accessible to just about anybody. The book not only tells you how to build drones but exactly what each part of the drone does. Mr. Cinnamon does not push you to do what he does; he explains the parts, offers suggestions as to which ones to buy, but then leaves the choice up to you. I came away feeling very confident in my new knowledge of how drones work and how I could build and/or customize them how I want using my imagination. The book even tells how to customize consumer drones. It is so interesting that even if you don’t plan to build a drone I would recommend it! Definitely a five star book! - John

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!

A great guide for a raw (Old) beginner. For me, worth every penny!

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.

I wanted to get a book which focused on how to build a drone and program it. I was really disappointed with this book. It spent to much on how planes fly and they theory of wings etc than building and extending the capability of the built drone.

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.

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