2025-01-16 Electrical Meeting

Agenda

• Introductions

• Info about the team and goals for this term

• General updates for this week

• Flight test

• Reminders

• Competition updates

• Eclipse (fixed wing updates)

• Project updates

Attendance

Team Info

https://uofwaterloo-my.sharepoint.com/:p:/g/personal/m2dang_uwaterloo_ca/EQth80dq7DtIkZgCvulYfxcBgJrxdD7GeU_YgO1J3dSUxg?e=DJEqbT

Our competition

• May 9-11

• Fire fighting themed

• Task 1 is mapping ir hotspots

• Task 2 is dropping water in buckets

• Comp syncs Mondays at 9

• Check out Conops for AEAC! Get involved in comp syncs for discussion National Annual UAS Student Competition - Aerial Evolution Association of Canada

Why joining WARG EE is a good idea?

• Great mentorship

• WARG is well run

• Testimonies

Project Goals this Term:

• Entire Eclipse electrical system

  • Trying to get people super involved in the system

  • Gonna be super fun getting involved

• Peggy payload

• Ongoing boards (more later)

• New project/programs?

  • Tracking antenna hybrid board

  • Custom battery, PDB, ESC?

• Continued work on LED board program?

• Continued work on current boards

• Plan for doing boards: Main person PM, smaller tasks

General Updates

• Leads:

  • @Ryan Scomazzon (onsite)

  • @Meghan Dang (offsite)

• Project managers

  • @Kenny Na: Eclipse PM

  • @Nolan Haines @Ahmed Osman: Tracking antenna w ELRS

  • @Andrew Chai (offsite) TBD

  • If you have been around for a term or so and are interested in being PM, reach out and we can get you involved! Could be higher commitment or just leading a bigger project.

    • We got lots we can do

    • Microsoft Forms feedback/leadership interest

• Meeting times

  • How does this time work?

  • Not too late to fill out LettuceMeet - Easy Group Scheduling

• Work sessions

  • We typically do work sessions for things like harnessing and creating PCBAs

  • Probably wont start until next week

  • What times work for everyone? After flight tests?

  • LettuceMeet - Easy Group Scheduling

    • Note this is a time that will reoccur weekly

    • Might not do every week depending on interest and what needs to be done.

  • Can't do work session until done bootcamp

  • Can come and get help on the bootcamp during the work session ONLY IF you finished the safety training

• Competition Interest Form

  • Microsoft Forms

  • This MUST be considered if you want to go to competition

  • Comp is fun and I am jealous I didn't go last year.

  • We can only bring 10 people so we definitely can’t bring everyone

  • Wont hurt to fill out anyways.

• Start of term board order

  • Date pending

  • Driven by @Meghan Dang

  • Thoughts from people here?

• Pick&Place machine

  • This exists in the SDC

  • No one is using it

  • Sahil was told he can use it if he wants to set it up

  • Since it is just collecting dust, we can probably convince them to take it

  • Needs someone who cares enough to drive it though

  • Sayan, Edson interested in setting up

Flight Test

• What is a flight test?

• Where do we go?

  • WRESTRC

• Not mandatory but cool to see the drone in action.

• Planned to be on Sundays this term

• We go to Costco after 🌭🌭🌭

• Last flight test

  • Discord - Group Chat That’s All Fun & Games

  • 2024-12-14 Pegasus 2 Manual Piloting Flight Test - Flight Tests - WARG

  • Plan was to test system for competition task 2

  • Found our planned landing solution would be too risky

    • Tuning was less stable than expected

  • Water tank was leaky

    • Mech problem, they are working on it

  • Batteries sagged too much in the cold. Hard for autonomy to collect cluster data.

    • Gonna have to find a solution for future flight tests

• Next flight test

  • January 19th (This Sunday)

  • Discord - Group Chat That’s All Fun & Games

  • 2025-1-19 Autonomy Flight test - Flight Tests - WARG

  • Plan:

    • Autonomy cluster estimation test

• Must be done bootcamp for flight tests

Reminders

• Don’t forget to fill out the team roster: Microsoft Forms

• Make sure to clean up after yourself

• Get the electronsite role if on site - reach out to @Ryan Scomazzon if you have issues

• Competition syncs Mondays at 9pm

• Eclipse sync Tuesdays at 8pm

• Reach out if you need help on a project or bootcamp

• Recruit your friends!

  • More fun with friends

  • If you like the team, then we can do even more with more people!

Pegasus/Competition Updates

• Brief overview of competition tasks

• Last term the plan was to land on the barrel

• At the end of term flight test, we realized the tuning is not reliable enough for this and if the drone clips the barrel, its ggs

• Now we will be doing a winch that lowers the pump

• A new pump is needed, servo will likely be controlled by Pixhawk. Worst case we do an single servo driver

• 1-2 servos needed

• If someone wants to help with this you are welcome

Eclipse Updates

• Figuring out what software to use for harness diagrams

•  

Project Updates

In order of priority. These are the active design projects.

RPi Interface Rev C - Electrical - WARG (atlassian.net) @Kenny Na @Daniel Puratich

• Motivation: Redundant C2 ELRS link for 2026 Pegasus over LTE

  • PDB for RPi 5 (CV device)

• Completed and good to go for start-of-term board order

12S ESC - Electrical - WARG (atlassian.net) @Ethan Abraham& @Andrew Chai

• Motivation:

  • Make our in house ESC tailored to the specs of our drone

  • Our current ESC’s are expensive and go out of stock quite often

  • Can reduce costs and produce in volume with a custom designed PCB

• Layout needs very minor cleanup (99% done)

• need to address some comments in the schem

• Find suitable heatsinks and mounting strategy

• Place board order and determine copper pour stackup

• Maybe some more PDN sims

• Will be on Jan 20th Board order

ELRS Redundant Diversity RX - Electrical - WARG (atlassian.net)@Nolan Haines

• Motivation

•  

12S Pre-Charge Controller Module@Robert Tang @Kevin Li

•  Motivation: Reduce in-rush current on high-capacitance boards (harming connectors)

• Preliminarily completed

3S ESC @Kenny Na

• Motivation: Space-efficient custom ESC for 12V systems

• Expected EOT W25 completion

Tracking Antenna Controller w ELRS@Ahmed Osman@Nolan Haines

• Make and link confluence doc for this

• Motivation:

•  

12V Input to 65W USB-PD Source - Electrical - WARG @Ian Van Den Steen

• Motivation:

•  

12V to 24V Boost Groundside Converter - Electrical - WARG @Tim Gu

• Motivation: We have 12V power supplies. Charge batteries faster by boosting this voltage.

• High current means we might need to do off the shelf instead

• Looking into options to buy it instead

• Gonna look at math

• Look on facebook marketplace?

Water System Controller rev 2 - Electrical - WARG @Shawn Yang

• Motivation: Add current sensing to water pump controller for Pegasus Task 2

• Expected Jan. 20th completion

Action Items

• Look into Pix current limits

• Look into new projects: BMS, PDB etc…

• Follow up un redundant rx

• Make thread for board order and discuss chinese new year