ALAPPUZHA: Three times he failed, but Muhammad Insaf was not ready to give up. The 14-year-old persisted and had the last laugh as he proudly unfurled the Tricolour on August 15 at his school using the drone he made using scrap materials and a mobile phone camera. “His passion to make a drone grew after I brought him a small one from China when I went there for a business purpose four years ago,” said father M A Ansil, of Inayath, Neerkunnam.
“It got damaged after four or five flights, but passion grew in him. He started developing one, but it too got damaged three times during its making. But he was in no mood to give up. Finally, he developed a drone that can fly 600m at 30m height. The teachers of his school demanded him to unfurl the Tricolour on the Independence Day in school and he proudly did it,” Ansil said.
Insaf spent around Rs 10,000 to make it. “I studied its assembling watching YouTube. Caps of plastic bottles, an old CD, a pen refill and an aluminium rod formed some of its components. Flight control devices, transmitters, OTG receivers, and few other devices were purchased online. Father gave me Rs 6,500 and sister Nouzha Fatima the remaining sum by breaking open her treasure box,” Insaf said.
“The tilting camera too was purchased online. The drone is controlled by a joystick and the video captured by it is saved on the mobile phone, which is connected with the camera,” he said. Insaf’s mother Sulfia said he was very passionate about digital devices and electronics from an early age. “He studied Hindi, too, to follow the instructions about drone-making on YouTube,” Sulfia said.