2023-10-01 LED Controller Sync

Attendees

Problem Statement:

Most drones or arial vehicles, all have a navigation and position lights that have colors and certain sequences that allow other pilots to identify the aircraft; orientation, visibility especially in nighttime operation. Certain lights must be on the time due to regulation.

• Realism points for replicating this on our drone.

• Legal requirement for flying at night/civil twilight

Past implementations:

ICARUS

LED strips taped to cable channels.

• looks bad (white strip on entirely black drone)

• Zip tied on

• not very bright

• tied to one relay, poor control of lights

Previous drones have not had lights other than Icarus.

Proposed Solution:

Constraints:

• Visible at night and daytime (very bright)

• Controllable through Ardupilot software

  • Autonomously without pilot input

• Well integrated

• Each light must be visible from 120 degrees,

  need to go on ends of motor mounts and below/above arms?

• 4 LEDs (red, potentially blinking) one on each corner is the absolute minimum control requirement.

  • realism for airplane:

    • white strobe light (pulsing?), visible 360

    • beacon light, visible from 360 around. red.

    • red on left, green on right, white on BACK. static.

      • ‘don’t need white on back probably'

Open

Navigation light

• maybe: green, red, yellow, one on each corner, based on movement.

• yellow on back motors while slowing? not requirement for realism…

• green LEDs on PAX aboard - if still conops req

• also need to decide reflectors - these can be picked in tandem with LEDs, as adding reflectors may eliminate the need for a stronger LED, etc.

• even numbers are good for neopixels with pixhawk

  • note that pixhawk is not required. can be controlled with whatever

  • lights controlled through ardupilot …. but maybe EFS can do it better

  • uses serial protocol

  • lua scripts… suboptimal… ?

• EE global constraint should be weight

  • save weight instead of add more brightness (if the tradeoff is reasonable)

Existing Solutions that work with Ardupilot:

1. Existing I2C, Neopixel

2. GPIO, PWM - Use PWM/relay sequence to toggle light off.

Decision Matrix:

Potentially ruling out neopixels

• we don’t need to change colour

• having too many connected to pixhawk → not great

Suitable LED strip lights should be chosen via similar setup to Decision: Type of Rangefinder for Obstacle Detection page. Can include neopixels if desired, but please compare individual part numbers.

Project Owner Availability:

@Neel Patel : 10-15h hours a week

@Parker Lawrence-Valeriani 5-10h a week - better idea of availability after midterms.

Agreed upon timelines:

1. Architecture plans for next week. (research and decisions)

2. Order components end of October.

3. Full working prototype for end of term.