Attendees
Structure
Meeting structure being driven by Daniel Puratich to facilitate architecture development in accordance with Iterative Design Process . This project is currently in extremely early architecture phases and is being scoped out as a project.
System Context
Some background on our existing system:
Current sensors use mainly I2C, SPI and UART
These are single ended protocols
Currently Sept 2024 our drone is pre heavy
To mount lidars on the drone it would be fairly annoying
Problem Statement / Needs Assessment
What is this project trying to solve?
We’re limited on data ports on the Pixhawk for current sensor protocols
Heavy to run many signal cables for each individual sensor
Single ended protocols used on current sensors are prone to noise over long runs
Mounting is difficult on some COTs boards due to non-standard mounting patterns
Some sensor boards are expensive (individual ICs are cheaper)
Requirements
What requirements must this system meet?
Should support rangefinders, optical flow sensor, lidars, barometers, GPS etc..
Our solution should be incredibly adaptable to multiple airframes and can be optimized for such
Our board should follow Mounting Hole Specifications for easier mounting into our system
Existing COTs Solutions
COTs CAN breakouts
Large to include with the sensor plus these boards
Expensive
Having a sensor plus a separate translation board is a lot of space on the drone
I2C repeater
bad idea because of limitted addresses
hassle of extra wires and boards
still a single ended protocol
Implementation Ideas:
PoC or PoE Custom board
Power and Data on one protocol
lots of EE complexity
would reduce wiring
PoE
Overkill for our application
Lots of implementation details
Monster Mount/Board
One CAN Node
multiple connections to lots of onboard sensors
Integration of an individual sensor and CAN node onto a single PCBA
no separate translational board (it’s all integrated in one board)
Bus based differential wiring scheme that only requires one set of wires to stack of sensors
Start with doing this?
Small boards with a single sensor and CAN node
Start with LiDars and Optical flow sensors because they’re high priority for Pegasus 2024 System Architecture
Final Implementation:
Lidar CAN PCBA
EFS and EE pick chips and sensors
Useful for lots of comp cycles
Will save lots of monies in future
EFS figure out CAN comms to ardu
Timeline
How many people are available to allocate towards this?
EE has a lot of bootcampers who are slowly working on it
Lidar CAN PCBA
hopefully done by end of april
then few months of testing
fly in comp 2025