Special Purpose Y-6Multicopter
Electronics Final Project
My final project is also a personal project. I close to build a fully custom Multicopter from the ground up. As I am enrolled in both Electronics and Engineering courses, this could be a direct reflection of my course work. Granting me a much better understanding of the topics discussed and solidifying hand skills such as soldering. Also using programmable micro controllers called the Multiwii, an Arduino type board to control flight and read the on board sensors.
This Multicopter will be used in more ways than one. First it will be my training/ test vehicle, as I intend on becoming certified with the FAA. They can grant me an airworthiness license that lets me potentially start a business with these multicopters. This will allow me to charge for services such as surveillance, areal site inspections, and many more. As my family runs a legal videography company, this could be implemented very easily as a new service provided.
The Multiwii platform is a truly an amazing piece electronics. I've learned a lot in the last week of development in my Multicopter and through several painful hours finally made progress my Flight board is programmed with Y6 firmware, this means that I’ll be running six motors and is reading the accelerometer and GPS currently installed. Actually the accelerometer is a pre-installed piece of the board and the GPS is a separate unit. But both need to be configured before they can send and receive information.
The flight controller I am using, which is a Multiwii lite version 2.0, and has a variety of various open ports. Some of these include one single FTDI port, I2c level converter, and TTL port, commonly used for GPS Bluetooth and telemetry. Unfortunately my I2C port will be used by my barometer, which is in route to me via eBay shipped from China. I've had to make some modifications to my flight control board to ensure that my I2C GPS navigation module works alongside the other components I have installed. This is where the lessons from electronics really make a difference. This ensures that I’m able to use a single port for dual function. I accomplished this by soldering thin 26GA wires from the GPS nav module on to the flight control board directly. These wires were solder directly onto the SDA and SLC inputs or resistor converters something like that which grants me direct access to the i2c feed, also it's called i2c logic level converter. What does this grant me? The ability to use the GPS and I2C nav module . The Multiwii Lite only has one I2C port as I’ve said earlier and through this modification I have created basically two i2c ports on my Multiwii flight controller.
This Multicopter project is a mirror image of the classes that I'm taking at PCC. Through my engineering course I've developed skills in a software platform called SolidWorks 3D. In using this program I have designed a frame and motor mount for my multirotor aerial vehicle. My projected dimensions will be 630 millimeters from motor to motor, and is considered a Class D unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) according to the FAA. I have retrofitted a pair of retracts, from a rather large model airplane. This is the retractable landing gear, and those were obtained from a surplus store for 1/3 their original cost. But in reality, this project has cost me a lot more than I originally expected.
The first electronics class addition to my Multicopter was in the power distribution board. I tried to run to 12 volt battery life first of all and listening to it to other people and their projects project tricot is I've heard the flight time is one of the biggest issues. And one thing that I want more than anything is extended find time so there's a simple solution to that. The first thing I did was in the power distribution board instead of running just one battery I can run two. This is accomplished by wiring the batteries in parallel to the distribution board. This allows me to maintain the same voltage through both batteries of 11.8 VOLTS, but double the amp hours of life, with 4200mah a piece this should give me 8400 Mila and hours of battery life. As this isn’t a perfect world I most likely won't get the full double hours but will get over 3/4 of it and will it extended my life my flight time up to 8 minutes the drawback. But there is a drawback, and that is with running two batteries in parallel you are not doubling the weight of your batteries you're doubling the battery weight on your multicopter. This lowers the overall flight ability of your aerial vehicle as you become a little slower and you also have to eliminate other components to make sure that you can get off the ground.
Although I'm not completely finished with my Y6 Multicopter, most of the electronics portion is complete. Due to my inexperience, I have had to reorder, send back, or at orders to insure that this project is completed. I have minimized the wires on board by connecting the sixth yes he's directly to the soccer on pad distribution bored. This saved me about 9 feet of 12 gauge power wire and about 36 brass bullet connectors. These parts were needed elsewhere as I refuse to spend any more money on this project I have already gone over budget by about 300 dollars. I will complete what I have named spy 6 and hopefully within the first week of May.
As this is my first big project where I had a design, construct, and program something completely from the ground up. This was in only could be accomplished with what I've learned this semester at Pasadena city college. From frame design and multicopter layout using SolidWorks 3D from engineering class, to all the electronics, soldering, Arduino programming from the electronics course. These skills I have attained have put me through what I knew nothing about 4 months ago. Hand skills like soldering have greatly increased, giving me the confidence to tackle any new project like this with minimal mistakes this project alongside my classes has really helps solidify a certain subjects that were fuzzy before. I highly recommend anyone pursuing electronics or engineering to do something like this to help them understand the information being taught.
1x Multiwii ZMR light flight controller board
1x Power distribution board(Solder on)
1x RX1008 receiver I2C navigation module
1x UBlox Cirus neo-6m GPS antenna
1x external barometer -BMP 6085
1x Devo 10 transmitter / controller
6x ESC electronic speed control
6x sunny sky black brushless motors
20 feet of 12 gauge power wire
50x Bullet quick connectors
2x small voltmeter / display for battery monitoring
1x 5.8g hurts FPV video transmitter parentheses GoPro close parentheses
2 feet of various size / color heat shrink
This is a short and modified parts list as these are all the electronics related parts. A more complete parts list can be found in my journal excerpt’s.
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