*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!