2023-01-21 EE Program Discussion

Unsorted

• Arm Disarm Board

  • Validate Pixhawk COTS solution

  • Hand board off to newer member

• 6S BMS

  • This will become a WARG Project

  • Kevin will be running this

  • Kevin wants to push to take more care of our batteries and give every battery a BMS

  • Wants to keep project very generic

  • Create Asana, Confluence (this is already started), Timeline

    • We need to clearly identify the requirements ← made into an Asana Task

    • Confluence: 6S Battery Management System

  • Kevin will be doing this project himself so it is “streamlined”

    • Wants to do it himself to avoid slowing down the process

    • Doesn’t wanna be to “micro-managy”

  • Possibly Kevin taking on just one person to kind of teach so that the project is not so isolated

    • allows for more opportunity for knowledge transfer ?

    • Instead just have people snoop his design to learn

  • In the real world people design boards themselves so we should copy that mentality in WARG

    • Someone else could possibly do validation / bringup / rev 2 stuff, but Kevin will handle the initial design phase of the board

  • We don’t want the knowledge to be isolated to Kevin, but we also need people to work their way up the chain and slowly gain knowledge in segments - you can’t jump into the deep end

• 50V-24V @2A Buck Converter Board - (Unasigned)

  • Project was schemed up a while ago but never assigned.

  • (12S) 50V-24V Synchronous Buck Converter PCB @2A Max Load Current Consumption (48W)

  • I/O:

    • Input Voltage Connector

      • (12S) +36V to +50.4V

      • GND

    • Output Voltage Connector (3x)

      • +24V

      • GND

    • Current Sense Connector

      • V_sense+ and V_sense-, or:

      • I_sense and GND

  • Features:

    • 50V-24V Buck Converter @ 2A

    • Status LEDs for both +50V and +24V voltage rails

    • Optional current sense interface

    • Should also be able to provide 12V @ 2A if needed with the change of a few passives

  • Dimensions:

    • 25mm x 35mm

    • No vertical design constraints

Easy Difficulty Projects

• Step Down Converter Modules:

  • Current

    • 5V_USB to 24V, 18V & 12V low current

    • 12V to 5V Buck 3A

    • 24V to 12V & 5V Buck 2A

  • Proposed

    • 12S to 24V Buck 1A

    • 12S to 12V Buck 2A

    • 12S to 5V Buck 3A

    • Servo (4x) module 6S to 6V at 500mA per output, data passthrough

    • Servo (4x) module 12S to 6V at 500mA per output, data passthrough

    • LED Driver Board

• High Current Power Monitoring Module

  • Single Current transformer for current sensing + ADC

  • Voltage ADC

  • Passes that data over I2C to flight controller for processing

• Low Current Power Monitoring Module

  • resistive current sensing version of the high current power module

• ZP3.0 Primary Minor Fixes

Medium Difficulty

• Mock COTS PDBs

  • (12S-5V & 12S-12V) with on-board MCU for diagnostics (voltage & current sense)

  • (6S-5V & 6S-12V) with on-board MCU for diagnostics (voltage & current sense)

• Mock COTS PDBs

  • Castellated boards for steps-downs sized

  • Allowing for more modularity

• In-rush current limiting (aka Pre-Charge) Project

  • As we go to 12S and we’re adding more capacitance

  • (this feature is also implemented in Kevin’s 6S BMS)

  • Possibly a 12S and 6S version

• ZP3 Interface

  • Locking connectors instead of headers

Hard Difficulty

• Current

  • COTS 6S Single Channel Motor Controller

  • 6S Battery Management System

• Proposed

  • COTS 12S Single Channel Motor Controller

    • DSHOT support - Solder pad input & output

  • Research into custom Li-Ion Battery Pack

    • We need members that are interested in doing this in order to pursue it

Extreme Difficulty

• GPS Module

  • GNSS & ADS-B

• USB-C Battery Charger

  • Li-Po battery charging profile over USB-C

  • Up to 24 V (4S)

  • USB-C Power Delivery is 200 W 24 V

• Camera Streaming Module

  •  

Deranged Ideas We’ll Never Do

• FPGA+ARM Chip Flight Controller

  • ZYNQ-7000 (or cheaper alternative) (this would be expensive af too)

  • This is trading HW complexity for FW complexity

  • Definently a copium project

  • Will not be touched this term

  • (doesn't wanna dash Daniel’s dreams, but its not gonna happen)

• NVIDIA Jetson/Xavier Carrier/Companion Module

  • (this is another dream )

  • Because of supply chain it’s impractical to commit