order purchase (developement)

In order to ensure that developement phase runs according to scheadule, required hardware items have been ordered and purchase. This process have been completed through the hobbyking company which has business franchises throughout the world. Its closest location is at Hongkong therefore delivery is done from there.

About rm 1700 worth of expenditure has been done due to date.

quad hardware = lithium polymer battery (research)

the quadcopter drone needs a power source to juice up the onboard electric equipment. A lipoly battery pack is used due to its high capacity and low weight. Calculation is made to predict the flight time available for the quadcopter with selected capacity of the battery. This needs to be balanced as a larger capacity means the battery need to be bigger and heavier. It is recommended by a technical expert that a 4 cell lipoly battery pack of 4500mah capacity to be used for the above quadcopter configuration.

quad hardware = body frame (research)

-          In order to allow flight control for the quadcopter, the body frame of the quadcopter must be as light as possible. The reason for this is to create enough thrust to weight ratio so that the flight controller has enough freedom to control the movements of the quadcopter through the motors. The best option is to use ready made frames which are constructed specifically for quadcopters using best lightweight material. The X605 frame made by glass fiber and aluminium is used to ensure strength and rigidity to the quadcopter while saving weight.

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.