A reflection on a deed not yet done?

We're getting pretty excited as we close in on the final product. We're really close to being ready to start testing and tuning the sensors. Last weekend Richard made the aluminum plate for the bottom of the quadcopter while I soldered and assembled the remaining electronics. All that's left is the top plate which, for testing purposes, is inconsequential. That should be done by the end of the week anyways along with the complete assembly of the quadcopter. That gives us a week to test and try to get it to fly to some extent for our presentation.

Now this blog is supposed to be reflective, unfortunately we are not done yet, but here's what I think so far:

Wow. Just wow. It has been a crazy ride jumping from one commitment to the next, all while trying to stay on track with this thing. 

I've learned so much too. Both of us have, and not just the hours upon hours of research about quadcopters that preceded the design and building but about time management, electrical and mechanical work, and design work.

I definitely feel I pushed my ability to design to a level I had not previously reached, only to be pushed further by the competition that interrupted this project. I learned how the power and output of batteries relate to the power consumption of the internals and motors works as well as how to solder the needed parts into a working system. The actual assembly and making of the aluminum plate were their own lesson to be learned. 

The biggest struggled proved to be time management. Richard and I are both very busy people who are quite active in and outside of school with advanced classes and extra curricular. It was difficult for both of us to get together and work and even separated it wasn't always easy to find time to work on this. The whole project was riddled with interruptions from important concerts to standardized testing to our win a state competition.

The most important thing I learned about was probably my own love for creating. I've done other projects and made other things in the past and enjoyed it however with something this big comes with many opportunities to grow and learn and with those a huge sense of accomplishment even when finished smaller parts. I really hope to be able to continue doing things like this in the future as I love the feeling of creating.

Well, here's to hoping that we get this thing in the air by the presentation! Wish us luck!

*Insert witty title here*

Hello all! So we've made some progress but not as much as we had hoped. We had the project fair and we even had a large piece of the frame done so that people could see sort of what it's going to look like. The fair was a lot of fun and plenty of people seemed interested in what we were doing. It would have been nice if we'd been a little farther along but at least we had the full model as a prop. We know what we need to do and have the process laid out.

1. Finish making the base plates (both the 3D printed one and the aluminum one).
2. Get the electrical set up (solder some of the connectors on)
3. Put the electronics in the fully assembled frame
4. Power it up and start testing

It really does't seem nearly as daunting as the process that we had laid out at the beginning of this project. We really are starting to come up on having an actual drone and I'm super excited.

Unfortunately both Richard and I are in the .4 History of the Americas class and its started picking up in difficulty. We've made the mutual decision to pause work on the quadcopter until after we've finished our big final papers for HOA.

Here is a pictures of the limbs assembled with the motors and propellers attached. The thing is pretty dang big when all is said and done, but it shouldn't have any issues getting off the ground.

Here are the control board, GPS, Bluetooth module, and receiver all connected. This is what goes inside the body of the quadcopter that makes in function. The motors all connect to the minds on the left side of the center board.

Hopefully we can continue to work after this weekend because both of our history projects will be done.

Falling into place!

Hey everyone! So we're finally able to really start making progress again. Of course it isn't without setbacks and issues, but there's stuff to work on. There ins't any more waiting for the shipping of parts.

While I was waiting for the limbs to be done printing and some more pieces to be shipped, I made a smaller scale model on the school printers. It was easy and quicker and it gave us a good idea of what we're looking at for a finished product. This one is half of the size of the finished quadcopter.

The limbs are done printing and the only thing left to make is the top plate and to cut the aluminum plate for the bottom and all of the pieces of the frame will be done. I've started assembling the frame with the pieces we have and testing the fittings. The holes need to be drilled through because some aren't perfectly accurate, some of that may be due to modeling, but a lot of it is just the way 3D printing works. Most of them aren't a problem however the holes for the motors are not quite lined up because we had to convert the dimensions from metric to imperial and the holes are slightly offset. This is an issue because its far enough that I have to try to grind away material until the slots are lined up with the holes in the motor. This is a dangerous game to play because if I'm not careful I could compromise the structural integrity of the limb (no pressure or anything).

I've also started figuring out the electrical and leaving most of the programming and stuff to Richard. I had to order several connectors and adapters in order for the pieces to fit together and those finally arrived. In order to use the bullet connectors I'm going to have to learn how to solder (inconvenient, but exciting because I know I'll need to be able to in the future some time).

I'm excited to see everything start to come together. We still have a long road ahead of us, but we're making a lot of progress for the first time in a while!

Slow and Steady... doesn't finish by the dead line...

Hello everyone! So all of our previous set backs have be handled... only to be replaced with more setbacks.

All of the control board parts and electronics have arrived, only to realize that the connectors for a lot of our parts don't fit. The next big step is to figure out what adapters and such we need to get everything hooked together. The State Championships are done as well and I'm glad to announce that Richard and I took second place in additive manufacturing (3D printing) in product design. That little hold up is, of course, replaced by serious 3D printer malfunctions on my friends printer. We had him try to print one of the four limbs and it pulled off the build plate and warped so we had to stop the print ten hours in. Perhaps it was for the best because with what we did end up getting printed, I found places where the design could be improved to fit together better. To solve this he is ordering a heated build plate for the printer which should prevent warping, however this may take a while.

Here are a couple of pictures of the misprinted limb. As you can see in the bottom pic, we had to end it less than half way through because of the bending and warping. You can see some of this in the pictures and its even worse in real life.

So we were supposed to incorporate a theme or message to talk about in this weeks blog. Richard and I both drew "Caring" which is unfortunately the only one that our project seems to really miss all together. Instead of focusing on how our project cares for others or how we can help people, I've decided to use this opportunity to talk more about why people should care and how we can care more about people.

It has come to my attention via my teacher that not everyone is fond of the technological break throughs or expanding capacity of things like drones or multicopters. In fact some are put off or uncomfortable with the idea. While I agree there is potential for some serious misuse of the increasing abilities of unmanned aerial vehicles, there is the potential for any new technology to be abused. These are issues of public safety as well as the security of privacy.

I've decided to look more into the laws surrounding such devices and how to use them in a way where it will bring about interest instead of fear or concern. There's a lot too it, but a lot of it we don't have to worry about as much. The big things include licensing which is unnecessary until you hit  a certain size or unless you're using camera drone for commercial reasons. Other restrictions include not flying near airports or crowded places for obvious safety reasons.

There also comes the issue of privacy and private air space. Who really owns the air above your house? Generally above 500 feet is considered public highway, however up until then is still undecided. While the FAA, which is for the most part "the end all be all" of air craft, has declared all US airspace under their control, many local and state government have been trying to pass laws solidifying restrictions on flight in cities, in public areas, or over private property.

Hopefully this (very brief) overview has helped some people think about whether or not they should care about drones and laws regarding them in one way or another. I've learned what can be done and where to fly to help people feel reassured or safer when we're flying. While you can probably figure out where my opinion falls, I'd love to hear about what your think about all of this.

Until next time,
Spencer.

Oops. Sorry not sorry.

Hello everyone. So. We didn't' actually  do much relating to this project. For the past couple of weeks Richard and I have been at a bit of a stand still. You see, Richard and I have made it to a state level competition in product design, specializing in 3D printing. We also got the information extremely late so we've been working super hard to prepare for that and meet the deadline.

This was not the only speed bump that we ran into either. We ordered all of the parts that we need to get started however the main package with all of the electronics, control board, gps, gyro, etc, are shipping international and will not be here until the end of this week or next week. This means we've had very little to work on since the last post relating to the project.

Hopefully next week we'll have something more to show and we can start making progress again.

Setbacks and progress

Hey everyone, it's been a couple weeks and I don't have a funny or interesting title this time. I don't have any tragic setbacks or huge things. Only steady progress, and that's not a bad thing. The parts list and design are finished. Everything is going according to plan and staying relatively on schedule but the hardest parts have yet to come. We still need to get all the parts, 3D print the limbs and frame. Then comes the hardest part of bringing all of the expensive, oddly shaped, puzzle pieces together into a working quadcopter.

The limb is about nine and a half inches long with the truss like system to keep it strong and light with a slight curve on the bottom to distribute the weight evenly. The landing gear only adds a little weight and keeps the main body about 4 inches off the ground. This should be efficient with the material and weight being a decent compromise between strong, light, and aesthetically pleasing.

The total length of the quadcopter is about twenty five inches on the diagonal. The base consists of the center joints of the four limbs, the bottom aluminum plate, and the top 3D printed plate. The four bases of the limbs interlock to create a space at the center of the quadcopter. Inside this is where most of the electronics and such will be housed while the battery will be strapped on top. 


We were hoping to do most of the assembly and testing over spring break, however it turns out that the shipping for the control board and other main electronics could take up to three weeks. It's going to be a time crunch to finish this and make it operational but it's doable. 

Some salt and batteries.

Gollly-gee-wiz, take off your socks, because you’re going to need your toes to count the number of hours we researched quadcopters to have any real idea of what we’re doing. It most likely did not help that we chose a project that neither one of knew anything about so we had to learn everything from the ground up. Richard and I have both researched hours on hours by ourselves and probably about eight hours together. There's probably twenty four to thirty hours of research between the two of us if not more, hence why you are now sockless. 

We started by just finding general information and reading guides on quadcopter builds, what types of motors are used, what variables affect the propellers, what frames are made of, and the options for the control board, etc. We had 5 snow days since the start of this so we’ve had some time to work on learning what we need to. We set the high goal of creating a comprehensive parts list for this Wednesday and we did pretty good, but boy was it a long, snowy road.

We started the whole thing off by laying down a maximum budget, how much would both of us be willing to put forward to build a fairly high end quadcopter? We decided on a combined budget of $400 as Richard has “a good amount of money.” As we read we created a list of the major components that we’d need:

>Brushless motors/ Propellers/ speed controllers

>Frame

>Battery

>R-C Transmitter+ Receiver

>Flight Control Board

               

Now this may not seem like much, it's only five items right? WRONG. People write books just on the function of the motors and how to find the right ones. We had to calculate the approximate weight of a quadcopter we hadn’t built in order to find the right motors, so we had to find the weight of the components that we didn’t know we wanted to find the weight of the quadcopter we didn’t have. Confusing, right? We decided on designing and 3-D printing the frame, found several batteries to narrow down, looked for the cheapest R-C transmitter, and found different options for the control board.

The rough estimates for weight with the motor systems we were looking at were upwards of 1700 grams. That’s too much. That’s crazy heavy for a quadcopter the size we’re building and we didn’t know where the weight was coming from. Turns out it was my fault. I had grossly overestimated the weight of the frame at almost 1000 grams and after many recalculations and estimates we found it to be less than 500. We continued to narrow down the list of things we wanted, making sure the puzzle pieces could all fit as we went, and things were looking good. Then my computer broke. Failure of the hard drive. Unrecoverable (I'm still salty about that). Luckily I had made backups of all the quadcopter files regularly but it still took me a while to be fully operational again. We eventually got it done though. A finished list of the price and weight of all the main components. 1100-1200 grams and $300. Well within weight limitation and budget. Awesome.

Air Gear 350 Motor, Prop, and ESC Combo Pack

This is the picture of the motors we're going to use. We're getting higher end ones to give us more wiggle room with weight and power. If you'd like to read more about them you can click the caption to go to the website. We're going to outfit the control board with GPS so we can program auto functions in and hopefully make it easier to fly. We also decided on the biggest battery we could afford, because why not?

I apologize for such a long post, however there is a lot that got done over the past few weeks and even this barely scratches the surface of the information. Over the next couple weeks we hope to finish and refine the design and have a complete CAD model of the quadcopter.