Developer Completes Fourth Drone Hardware Iteration Entirely on a Phone

Developer yacineMTB (Yacine) showcased a fully phone-based hardware design workflow: the fourth iteration of his drone hardware, from CAD modeling to 3D printing, was done entirely on a phone, with only occasional lab visits to test fit.

Confirmed

• The fourth drone design iteration was completed entirely on a phone, including CAD and 3D printing output
• A single agent controls his 3D printer via API with almost no manual intervention; per his description, "it does everything for me"
• His custom NPU kernel drives the chip to full utilization, causing overheating without a heatsink; he is testing cooling solutions
• The workflow is completely free: copying his shared prompts into Codex is enough to replicate it
• Yacine says astra is surprisingly strong at doing CAD work, but clearly describing what to build remains the hardest part

Why it matters

This case shows an end-to-end phone + AI agent hardware workflow—from CAD and printing to thermal validation—forming a closed loop that is fully open and reproducible at zero cost. It also highlights the real bottleneck of current AI CAD: instruction expression rather than execution, a useful signal for tool builders.

2026-09-13 ~ 2026-09-13 · 5 related posts

• Yacine completes 4th hardware design iteration entirely from his phone, printing included — yacineMTB · 2026-09-13
• [source] Yacine designs drone entirely from phone; custom NPU kernels max out chip without heatsink — yacineMTB · 2026-09-13
• astra is great at CAD itself, but telling it what to build remains the hard part — yacineMTB · 2026-09-13
• [source] You can do this too: free prompt turns Codex into a CAD design agent — yacineMTB · 2026-09-13
• [source] This Agent Runs a 3D Printer Hands-Free — Prompt Is Free to Copy Into Codex — yacineMTB · 2026-09-13