This week, I helped the team create a test setup for the motor to measure the thrust. We initially had the motor set up on a flat piece of wood with legs, standing on a scale so we could measure thrust; however, the lack of space under the motor did not allow the propellers to move enough air, and no thrust was generated. I suggested that we should attach the motor to an arm extending over the test setup such that the motor had clearance. When we did this, we were able to actually measure the thrust of the motor. In preparation for this, I soldered wires for the motor controller, and helped put the overall construction (drilling, screwing, gluing).
I also did research regarding potential boards to connect our antennas to, to be able to measure RSSI. We had trouble with our ESP32 board when connecting an external antenna to it; we had to move an SMD resistor to change the antenna from onboard to external, which proved difficult and resulted in a solution that could effect our antenna reading (excess wire, solder). So, I found a board that required no DIY work (SparkFun Thing Plus). Once we get the board, I will be able to run more Antenna tests to gauge the antenna sensitivity more accurately; Specifically, I will need to test multiple antennas to see the difference in RSSI observed from different directions (before we get multiple Antennas, I plan to use a single spinning one to replicate multiple ones). In the meantime, I will begin working on the design for the vectorization algorithm which takes in RSSI and outputs PWM duty cycles for each of the motors, so I continue to be on track for my tasks.
Lastly, in considering other perception methods (if the Antennas do not work sufficiently well), I brought an 8×8 Thermal Camera I had lying around for an Arduino to test if it is a feasible method. I soldered and wired it up to test it. However, the low resolution mixed with potential damage to the camera meant the data was not too useful. Additionally, the small sensor size meant that the range was highly limited. If we wanted to test this perception method again, we would need to acquire a higher resolution thermal camera.