Vikram’s Status Report for 11/6/2021

This week, I worked mostly on the hardware platform for the device, and the Arduino software. We are using an Arduino for now communicating with the Pi over UART in order to control the motors. This is in the interim, and we may remove this in the long term using threads or something similar to allow for continuous control of the motors during flight. The new code took PWM values from the raspberry pi python vectorization code and runs the motors accordingly, and handles I/O and start/stopping. I also worked on a new custom soldered perfboard that integrates all the I/O and PWM cables to make the inside of the system less cleaner, and have it mount to the Arduino so there isn’t risk of disconnecting a cable during flight. I added another power splitter to the power distribution board I made as well, in order to drive 3 ESCs/motors concurrently for the demo.  In addition, I helped during the drop tests this week where we diagnosed some issues with motors causing spin and swing, and are working to address those issues. We believe that adding some weight to the system can help reduce this issue as well. I also helped develop the interim demo test apparatus we want to use to demonstrate our project working in a smaller scenario. We are currently working to calibrate our mounted camera such that the target detection will reflect in motor driving correctly. We are mostly on schedule currently, with basic integration essentially complete for the demo. The final housing got pushed because the interim one is functioning. In the coming weeks, I hope to continue flushing out bugs in the integrated system, as well as verifying that our thrust tests were accurate and that we can reduce the swaying by adding a little more mass to the system.