Preflight Checklist

This week we are going to get the hexacopter up in the air for its maiden flight. In order to achieve this goal, we still need to charge and mount the battery, program our flight controller, and wire everything together. We also noticed an error we made with the power distribution board and have to fix it, but it's an easy fix and will be done soon enough.

Under Pressure

This week, we have shortened the motor wires, soldered the connectors onto the shortened wires, and are planning to attach the extension cables onto the power distribution board today. Once all the cables are attached together, we will attach the power distribution board, the flight controller, and the transmitter. We are thinking of a few different ways of electrically isolating the boards from the carbon fiber frame, but don't have a definite answer yet. We are felling the pressure of a deadline fast approaching and we need to get the hexacopter flying by the end of next week. Hopefully, we will be able to get the fight controller to cooperate with us next week.

It's Christmas Time in the Tech Lab

This week we plan on mounting our power distribution board and getting all the ESC's wired up and ready for flight. We will also continue progress on our flight controller and try to work past the complications. Our landing gear mounts are close to the final design and we will finish printing them soon. The next custom part we will be making is going to have to be our gimbal mount.

Double Down

Seeing as we have a short week and we need two blog posts a week, we have two posts in two days. Not much has happened since the last post, but we do have our power distribution board and are planning on wiring it next week after we finish prototyping our landing gear mount. Our first prototype has been 3D printed, but the screws don't fit so we fixed the issue in our model and are currently trying to print it out.

Our First Printed Prototype

3D Rendering of our Current Model

Gobble Gobble

Update 11/24/2014: The Power Distribution Board just came in!!!  

There's only two days of school this week so we aren't expecting much to get done, though we'll do the most we can. We're getting started on 3D modelling the landing-gear we're planning to make. We kinda hit a road block on the programming side of our project, so we've decided to put that on hold. We'll come back to it with fresh minds when we're done with the landing gear. We're still waiting on the power distribution board to continue wiring and we hope that it'll come while we're gone for Thanksgiving.

Current prototype for the landing-gear mount.

We've Hit Turbulence

This week we have gotten stuck on flashing the software on to our flight controller. After following multiple tutorials and guides, the computer will not communicate with our flight controller. We are also waiting for our power distribution board to be delivered, we expect it to be in by next week, which will continue progress on the hexacopter build itself.

Code Monkeys

This week, we are planning to interface the flight controller with one the school computers. By attempting to program the flight controller early, we will be able to debug early as well. Once the power distribution board comes in, we will continue with the wiring, but for now we're doing whatever else needs to get done before the first test flight.