Project Details

Congratulations from RobotDigg to Matteo 8th, August 2016, thanks for the builds and sharing. "The great news is a little more complicated, we're trying to find a way to release this project as 100% working by the end of the school year in a way that even if we stop developing it anybody else could continue our work (we were thinking about a virtualized pre-built web-service that can be installed by anybody) but we'll describe better everything as soon as we start thinking about the real software." Matteo says.

Update n°9, 2016-07-27 21:06:34

IT FLIES!!!

And it crashed...

The problema was the PI controller on the kk board and we almost manager

ti solve it, till... Well, it crashed... The problem isn't just the

crash itself, I'm perfectly able to repair everything (just the frame is

broken) but this small crash has revealed some weak point on the

structure that we must fix before continuing. We're probably going to

redesign the chassis, a new design is still under development. For now,

take a look at what the crash did!

Update n°7, 2016-07-23 20:27:26

First manual flight

As you can read from the title, we managed to get our first manual

flight, it was a complete disaster, the motors were spinning very

strangely, the power wasn't enough, and we have only two ideas to try:

First: the KK board we used in this test wasn't configured for this kind

of ESCs.

Second: the battery isn't powerful enough (that would be weird).

Let's dig into those options, shall we?

Why I suspect the problem could come from the KK board? Simply because

when I was testing the motors without the KK board (no stabilization,

just an Arduino with a simple Servo sketch) the motor were working just

fine, all at the same speed and without any fluctuation in speed. The

only variable here is the controller, so that could be the problem. The

solution should be reprogramming the KK board with those servos.

Second option, when I tested the motors with the Arduino, I wasn't using

any propellers, obviously the power needed to spin the motors without

the propellers is less than with them on, and maybe on the last test,

the battery wasn't able to deliver enough power (anyway this is very

unlikely).

We'll start optimizing the weight of this setup before proceeding to any

of the fixes, so we are sure that we won't change the displacement of

cables again.

Till then, bye!

Update n°6, 2016-07-12 22:58:23
It's alive!
It's alive! It can fly!!! Today, after some mandatory cable management, and after rebuilding a new battery pack, we tried to lift it up, guess what? It flies!! Right now, it takeoff at about 50% throttle, the only thing that we didn't count is the UDOO, that I guess is about 100grams, but since we don't need a huge power for our demostrations, that's way better than what I was expecting!
The battery is perfect, this one reallycame out perfectly: small, compact, solid, lightweight.
Next step: trying our setup with an Hobbyking KK board!

Update n°5, 2016-07-10 21:10:12

Problems again!

The UAV is almost done! (We just need the UDOO board and... well... many other fixes)

Today I tried to lift the UAV with the batteries and... it didn't go very well.

I incorporated a BMS into the batteries (as you can see in the last

update), my first idea was to have two separate outputs for the

batteries, one controlled by the BMS and another one directly connected

to the batteries, I found out today that the "charging pads" on the BMS

are meant not only for charging, but for discharging too! Awesome, we

have a protected output from the batteries! WRONG! This output is

limited to 10 Amps! Guess when we found that out! Right after the

battery was completely covered in hot glue (for insulation purposes)!

How I discovered that?

Well, after attaching everything on the chassis, I decided to do a quick

run just to see the UAV floating a tiny bit over the floor, so I

attached an Arduino on the ESCs, I connected a small switch (to be able

to turn everything off remotely, safety first!) and than run a simple

sketch that translates a number in the serial console to the speed

applied to the motor.

First test: 10, the motors aren't moving.

Second test: 30, the motors are spinning!

Third test: 60, the UAV isn't lifting is own weight (keep in mind, 180 is the max value)

Fourth test: 100, the motors start to accelerate and than, stop. Nothing

is moving, I can hear from the buzzer that the ESCs aren't receiving

voltage, and the only thing that could block the connection between the

battery and the ESCs all together is this BMS.

The solution? Easy, just build another battery with an external BMS!

Maybe we'll be able to build another pack for next Saturday... hopefully

Till then, bye!

As mentioned earlier, Maker Matteo F won the 1st RobotDigg Educational Fund about his Project AMF as graduation design.

This section will follow Matteo F and his Team about AMF design.

AMF, which stands for Autonomous Multipurpose Framework

The first problems Update n°1, 2016-06-20 00:21:32

This is our first mockup for our very first Aereal UAV that we are going to build together with RobotDigg.
As you can see, the design is very minimal, this is caused by the lack of information (we don't know yet the real world data for the motors, nor their dimensions) and the fact that we don't need something nice to see, we want something useful to work with.
The two legs are directly connected to the PSU, which manages the power distribution for the whole system. All the left side is connected together with negative terminal of the PSU (the PSU overlaps the two structures, connecting them as a cable with the system), while the right side is connected as the positive terminal. This design allows us to manage the whole power management side with just one board, both charging and discharging.
We won't give all the information about the CPU right now, simply because it's on the way to us, we bought a UDOO x86 Advanced, from kikstarter, it should arrive around November, so we won't run for it.

2016-6-21， Matteo final confirmed what assessaries RobotDigg need provide.

2016-7-7，Matteo Received the items provided by RobotDigg, everything looks perfect.