Arduino workshop (research)

I am going to program the control board on the quadcopter with arduino. Therefore when the BMI was going to oragnise a workshop on Arduino i was one of the first to show interest.

Eventually the workshop was conducted  at TTL1 and the modules covers the basics about Arduino based programming.

The Arduino UNO board was use for practical exercise. We also used a custom attachment for the board provided by the presenter, which gives access to LCD, buzzer and some other stuff.

quad hardware = electric motors & propellers (research)

-          Electronic motors are the main components of a quadcopter drone which creates thrust for the movements of the quadcopter. However it is very important to make sure the specifications of the motors and propellers are right for the custom built quadcopter. Basically the main requirement is to create total thrust for the quadcopter about 2 times its weight. Therefore the motors must be powerful enough to turn the selected size of propellers. In balance to that the motors must also use minimal power for this action to increase battery life. Below motors and propellers configuration is used for this project.

quad hardware = electronic speed controller (research)

This is a device which serve the brushless electric motors on the quadcopter. The quadcopter drone is a vehicle which is controlled by the individual speed of its four motors. Therefore delicate control of each of the motor speed is very critical. This speed controller device facilitates these concerns by having a voltage regulator to feed equal and constant electric power to the motors. The speed controller also receive PWM signals from the flight controller board and then process them and makes sure stable signals are sent to the motors so that the quadcopter drone will move as desired. This project utilises the Afro ESC 30A speed controller.

quad hardware = GPS module (research)

The GPS module is the device which connects itself to available satellites and receive information about its current location. This location information is then sent to the flight controller as input to process the movement controls for the quadcopter drone. The NEO-6M GPS module is used for this project.

quad hardware = flight controller circuit (research)

-          This is an electronic board complete with microprocessors, ram, sensors and other related components and acts as the main brain of the quadcopter. Inputs signals from the RC module and onboard sensors will be processed here and then suitable output PWM signals will be delivered to the motors of the quadcopter drone. For this project the HK Mega flight controller board is chosen to serve this purpose. This flight controller board is equipped with atmega microprocessors, gyrometer, accelerometer, magnetic compass  and pressure sensor to assist on doing flight control processing. The firmware used is Arducopter which is arduino based and have been developed excessively over the years. The codings of the firmware will be modified to suit the functions of this project. 

App inventor (research)

Creating an application on the android based smartphone device requires some kind of programming facility. It is decided for this project, the program App Inventor is used. This App inventor is a web based platform by Massachusetts Institute of technology which allows public users to make and bake their own application for their smartphone device. Basically this web interface provides relevant tools to create an application from scratch such as a main screen to decide how the application will look like. This initially empty screen is then filled out with buttons, links, interactive controls and etc. to provide interaction with user. The programming is for setting up everything together is done through block programming method. When everything is completed the created application can be uploaded straight to the smartphone device for testing. It is identified that there is a specific tool in the App inventor that specialized on making an application for robotic related integration.

The basic mainframe of the control application for this project is having joystick controls and buttons on the screen similar to the transmitter device. These joysticks and buttons can be operated through touch detection on the screen.  In addition to that the application should be able to detect inputs from the accelerometer when tilting the device. This motion detection will then be used for controlling the drone. Finally, the application will have Bluetooth connection mechanism so that the smartphone will be connected to a corresponding Bluetooth module while running the application.

RC module (research)

Finding a compatible RC module for this project. Most RC modules are single way where only intruction digital signals are sent from the transmitter to the reciever.

However out quadcopter needs a feedback signal from the quadcopter to utilise its gps function. Therefore the RC module must be 2 way.

After some investigation, the frysky DF RC module seems to fit the project requirements. It has a forward 8 channel digital signal transmitter which feedbacks in serial signal.