Arieann Defazio is a huge fan of the maker movement but still feels like there are barriers to entry. Much of the buzz around ‘making’ is centered around young people, especially young men, with a focus on electronics and programming. Along with her team at Kitables Defazio wants to make sure that a fifty or sixty year old inspired by the maker spirit can pick up a kit of parts and build a quadcopter with no experience.
Kitables is currently running a Kickstarter campaign for a DIY Mini Lego Drone Kit, a smaller and cheaper version of their Lego drone kit released in February 2016. The campaign also includes an option for backers to order one of 100 special silver Lego quadcopters, part of Kickstarter’s Make/100 initiative.
The kit looks like a nice barebones quadcopter, requiring some soldering, basic assembly, wire ties, and of course the highly satisfying haptic feedback of assembling Lego bricks. The design is a nice circuitboard top with legs extending to each motor for connection, receiver above and battery on the bottom. There aren’t details about component specifications, manufacturers or part numbers on the campaign page. A great video on the campaign page that runs for less than a minute shows a Lego drone being assembled from the kitted box to the finished product.
Defazio’s goal for this project is to promote the physical building and assembly aspects of the maker movement. Sourcing the parts, laser cutting components, idea generation, 3D printing, wiring diagrams and CAD modeling are all left out of the process for the end user and instead transferred to Kitables as the provider. This is an interesting model that feels less like an isolated maker hammering away in his or her garage and more like a Radio Shack electronics kit of my youth.
One great aspect of this Kickstarter campaign is the allowance for backers to ‘donate’ a drone kit to a local STEAM initiative chosen by Kitables. The campaign is well on its way to a modest $7,523 goal and will end on February 17, with parts expected to ship in April 2017.