Building da 'Copter.

Hello,

This post is coming a bit late, we meant to have it out a few weeks ago, some things have changed since that time, but this is where we were then.

Our primary goal, after receiving all the parts, was to put them all together! Besides the short delay with the frame, it was pretty straightforward. Our main struggle will be trying to get it to fly and using Xbees to communicate wirelessly.

A lot of the assembling was simply plugging parts into other parts. The motor leads plugged into the speed controllers, which plugged into the power distribution board, which plugged into the battery. All we needed was this pin diagram to know where the PWMs plugged into our Multiwii. Besides plugging stuff in, we had to drill through the propellers to make the inner hole big enough to fit the motor mounts. Here you can see it all nicely assembled.    
                                                       

Since putting together the body of our quadrocopter isn't too difficult, we decided to split off and do different jobs. While Kazmir put together the body, I attempted to test the Xbees. The first step was to solder pins for the Xbee extension board, so we could power our Xbee. We were able to get them connected using the XCTU software. We weren't sure where to go past that and the next time we tried to connect the Xbees, it didn't work.

Currently we are working on the code for the quadrocopter. We found open-source code for the Multiwii and the accompanying GUI and are currently going through the code in an effort to fully understand it. The motors may still be wired backwards because there were no positive or negative markings on the leads, but this will only cause them to run in the wrong direction.

 We have also added a switch to the battery for ease of turning on and off the quadrocopter! Stay tuned to see what else we do!

All The Parts!

Hello Again!

In the last few weeks all of our parts arrived, fully intact! Below are pictures of most of them.

The motor controllers and power distribution board

The propellers

The Xbee

The battery

Battery charger

Frame Number One

This frame was a bit of a disappointment. Being the first part we received, we were eager to start screwing it together. Sadly though, we ran into a few problems which we equated to the quality of the frame. A few of the screws did not fit in the screw holes, which meant we either had to buy new screws or drill new holes. Then we realized that this model is incompatible with the motors we had ordered due to weight. So, we went back to HobbyKing, figuring that was the best solution. We found a much much better quality frame with a fancy fiber glass (instead of aluminum) body. And here it is! Isn't it lovely!

This frame is the same as the one that Daniel suggests using on his guide, except that it is slightly larger. We made sure to look into the specs of our motors first though to make sure the weight increase would not render our motors useless. We did not go with the frame Daniel suggested  because there was still a lot of back-log and we only have a semester to build this quadrocopter. It just wouldn't have been worth the wait for a slightly more compatible frame. About a week after ordering, the new frame arrived! As you see, we have jumped ahead, plugging everything in. You'll hear more about that in our next update!