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I work for an insurance company that's trying to keep adjusters from falling off of buildings by looking at the feasibility of using drones to map roof claims. As a proof of concept, my boss bought a $1500 DJI Phantom 4 Pro. He's asked me to look into building drones as a feasible way to keep costs down. I've been researching it, but I keep coming against conflicting data. I was looking at using the following list as a preliminary build, and kept seeing people who have a similar build saying that everything works great and that it flies beautifully. But when I run the math (using a SWAG for the mass of some of the items), it's a bumblebee. It's too heavy to fly, it will only fly for maybe 6-8 minutes, etc. I'll grant that I'm looking at doing some things that probably haven't really been done as much in home builds of aerial photography drones, but I need to beat a Phantom 4 in price and ability if possible, which is no mean feat. My Preliminary Parts List (All Multiples for Redundancy): Flight System 1x S550 F550 Upgrade Hexacopter Fuselage Frame Kit PCB w/Carbon Fiber Landing Gear 3x Crazepony 4pcs Emax Mt2213 935kv Brushless Motor with Orignal 1045 Propller for DJI F450 F550 Quad Hex Octo Copter 2CW 2CCW 3x Makerfire 4pcs BLHeli_S 30A ESC OPTO Electronic Speed Controller 3-6S Brushless for FPV Multicopter Quadcopter 2x APM2.8 ArduPilot Flight Controller+6M GPS+915Mhz Telemetry+ Power Module RC150 6x MB1010 LV-MaxSonar-EZ1 Range Finder (I'm not sure about this one. For the way that we want to use it, it really needs a collision detection system, and I've found posts of ymmv results with ultrasonic sonar. I'm open to suggestions as long as it's not too crazily expensive.) 3x Venom 20C 3S 5400mAh 11.1V LiPo Battery for DJI Flame Wheel F550 RC Hexacopter (This is one that I saw suggested for the size and typical weight of the materials used. Payload 1x Quanum FY Mini 3D PROS 3 Axis Gimbal - GoPro Hero4 Session Compatible 1x GoPro HERO Session And here's my basic guesstimate on weight: Frame: 550g Motors: 330g ESCs: 46g Flight Controller/Avionics: ~120g (Can't find exact weights for all components included in the flight controller package) Battery: 450g Gimbal: 167g Sensors (NOT INCLUDING MOUNTING HARDWARE): 42g (Figure mounting hardware will be plastic, and probably pretty light.) GoPro Session: 74g Estimated GTOW: 1611g or just about 3.5 lbs. Any and all help is appreciated. If there's something I'm missing, feel free to let me know.