2024-02-12 AEAC Sync

Attendance

Mechanical:

  • @Alison Thompson

  • @Conall Kingshott

  • @Evan Janakievski

  • @Smile Khatri

  • @Sohee Yoon

Electrical:

  • @Neel Patel

  • @Nolan Haines

  • @Jerry Tian

Embedded Flight Software:

  • @Ayush Ganguly

  • @Derek Tang

  • @Ayoung Eun

Autonomy:

  • @Maxwell Lou

  • @Tong Zhang

Operations:

  •  

Directors:

  • @Anthony Luo

  • @Megan Spee

Flight test Recap

 

Good:

Bad:

  • tracking antenna did not work

  • were not able to complete all objectives

    • Weathervaning

    • Any kind of special VTX’ing on pegasus didn’t happen: landing pad things, any face-down FPV camera behavior

  • Houston was doing really funny things after OA: potentially the flight controller/IMU had shifted, or it was trying to avoid the ground??

  • LTE dropouts on pegasus again: this time, when 1.3 GHz video transmitter is on.

  • Houston kinda tipped → sensors dropped out after this, did not resolve on weekend

  • 360 lidar is choppy: not very smooth spinning.

    • Auto or EFS to take a look at this?

Agenda


Propulsion + Control

Action items / blockers:

  •  

Updates:

Mech

 

 

Electrical

Capacitor analysis

Question: are we making a second pegasus?

  • yes: new one will have thinner plates, be lighter

  • functionally the same

  • control system for 2 pegasus…. up to you @ EE EFS

@Anthony Zhelnakov wants to measure inductance of the power wires. He is thinking about making a copy of existing power wires for the 2nd pegasus. Coz it makes measuring inductance easier.

Wait on this until harness is cleaned up :?:

Doing this capacitor analysis while harness for peggy 2 is being made, analysis is done on peggy 2 harness, not 1.

 

Harness for pegasus 1 & 2

  • Can reduce weight and make this smaller - we want this for pegasus 2 in particular. “Plus configuration”

    • it’s no biggie if the harness on peggy 1 remains how it is

discussion brought up with reference to above section (capacitor analysis)

 

 

 

EFS

Wind Estimation

logs analyzed in order to find propeller drag: from Feb 3rd FT

  • @Anthony Luo will tell someone about this in EFS meeting

Motor control / FFT bidir dshot?

  • @Anthony Luo will tell someone about this in EFS meeting

Sensing

Action items / blockers:

Updates:

  •  

Mech

Houston Sensor Mounts

  • We have 1 op flow mounted on houston

  • We do not have a second rangefinder (1D lidar)

    • We would need to take the 1D lidar off pegasus in order to fly it on houston.

 

The next time we fly autonomous OA with terrain following, we will want the rangefinder on houston - within next 3 weeks mount complete

+ do not need lidar on peggy at the moment

Electrical

Houston Sensor Harnessing

Lot of extra wires on houston at the moment, starting to interfere with compass

put some time towards new houston harness, good opportunity to learn/teach during potentially an EE work session

things like crimping wires/ anything we need to replicate for pegasus we should try out on houston first!

 

Rangefinder harness needs to be made too (see above mech section)

EFS

Houston Sensor Calibration

All was prepped for the 10th Flight test; maybe needs some looking, because of strange control behavior near end of the flight test? to be discussed - note from @Megan Spee

  • matek opflow working from @Andy Meng experience?

 

Houston has large twitches to lean angle. could be caused by OA, sensor glitch, GPS issue, loose mounting, etc. old sensors may work better? See above point for Andy Meng experience

 

perhaps houston was not using the optical flow last flight test…. examine further to make sure houston is getting the data it needs

 

Autonomy

 

 

Video System

Action items / blockers:

  • Antenna locations (read: interference yay)

Updates:

Mechanical

Mounting

VTX mount may need to be done again.

Depends if we change VTX location/item based on interference!

remember this

Monster mount exists. nice

Electrical

VTX harnessing

@Neel Patel @Neel Patel built harness for this. This new VTX harness needs to be labeled.
we should raise antenna handling awareness RF Devices (to be written during reading week)

we need to order pre-crimped jst wires and build harness with proper connectors

when testing VTX, make sure there is an antenna!

 

general antennas

Antenna mounting locations.

  • some antennas may need particular connectors or lengths that will be difficult to source

  • gemini for example, cable maybe not easily extended…

  • LTE/VTX/GEMINI antennas places so they don’t interfere with each other.

    • as far away from each other as possible

EFS

RC Controller Mapping

standard template to be created at some point @Anthony Luo

  • to understand logical switches, etc

Ardupilot Mux Output Config

“Really easy to do” (true)

For next flight test latest

Ardupilot OSD Config

@Jerry Tian and @Neel Patel helped with building the harness connecting the vtx , OSD and FPV Camera. Tested the OSD overlay on a video receiver, and it is working, could see the telemetry data when Pegasus flew.

Need more investigation and testing on the intermittent disappearance and reappearance of the overlay, also need to include more FPV cameras and a mux in the harness for completion. - @Ayush Ganguly

Autonomy

LTE Video?

assigned out, blocked kinda. difficult to parallelize.

Command + Telem

Action items / blockers:

  •  

Updates:

Mech

Gemini case?

“can be done but not urgent” - last meeting

Someone was assigned to it

  • “done relatively soon” (unofficially)

Electrical

RFD Board

waiting on cables! mostly assembled.

 

ELRS Gemini PCB

XT30 not arrived yet

@Farris Matar submitted an RFC for arch doc!

 

Diversity Gemini RX board

  • Forgive my ignorance I am new to RF and all of this

  • My main question: How do I do component selection for the chip? Does it depend on what’s on Farris’s Gemini Board, the frequencies, or something else?

  • This may be less of an AEAC question and more of an EE question…

 

ELRS website for this. they have open source designs, can start with one of those! end up probably combining 2 of these.

EFS

Gemini LinkStats

  • Gemini linkstats not being passed through to TX16? (Only relay linkstats)

    • Assigned to @Owen Grimm

building custom version of firmware after reading week!

ally Improved Streaming

 

can’t find RP1. : /

Waiting for EP2s.

 

 

 

Post-flight test thoughts on tracking antenna:

code was polling GPS too often. causing motors to twitch.

got it working again by initiating the polling after GPS has a lock.

 

another issue - a GPS doesn’t get any satellites? resolve by trying another GPS, maybe.

Autonomy

LTE

  • Mavlink packets have signing! Warg laptop is the only one that can communicate with this.

    • be sure to stay close to the warg laptop and also have service on your phone when hotspotting the warg laptop.

    • possibly android phones you can select a frequency

    • affected by many things

    • Will add this to the next flight test request document as a checklist item @Megan Spee

LTE monitoring script:

script written thurs, tested friday. Issues with libraries. getting logging script ready for next flight test @Maxwell Lou !

@Nathan Green got this working saturday?

 

@Mihir Gupta @Maxwell Lou

telemetry forwarded to server, routed to ground station.

for image transmission: assumed we were using zerotier. Can we continue to use zerotier for image transmission?

  • Yes - @Nathan Green

  • zerotier still running

  • takes a long time to reconnect if it disconnects

consider other VPN services? - Tailscale?

  • Open to testing this on a spare RPI

  • potentially the same thing on the backend

  • also good engineering to exhaust all available options

 

architectural background

TX assumes RPI/GS are on the same network. assume you can find the IP of the other computer instantly w/o SSH/FWD’ing.

Airframe - General

Action items / blockers:

  • Houston: New landing gear, takeoffs & Handling at different weights.

Updates:

  • < Decision Documentation >

Mech

Pegasus

  • peggy 2’s plates getting cut, other parts getting machined

  • ordered things for waterproofing!

    • consider 360 lidar with waterproofing ….

    • @Conall Kingshott testing some materials

 

Houston

Houston landing gear request via @Anthony Luo from jan 29

  • couple times houston tips over when it lands

  • requesting landing capability while in ‘slight translational motion’

 

Estimated 300 g additional weight max for new landing gear

Discord - Group Chat That’s All Fun & Games

@Smile Khatri

Electrical

LED Board

Board is brought up. We are having problems flashing code to the MCU. See EFS Section below

2 LED boards assembled, will assemble 1 more

solder bridge shorted one

 

Sensor harnessing

Need appropriately sized wiring looms(?) for the sensors.

Potentially crimping own wires? Colour standards? Sheaths? etc…

  • start making harness schematic. See @Michael Botros version? @Mena Azab ?

  • physical locations should also be updated in arch doc! :D

 

Power Harnessing

Smaller / lighter weight battery harness to be made. +4 configuration only. Current wire lengths are significantly longer than necessary.

  • within reason! - do not risk cable integrity

  • also consider different series configs? @Anthony Luo

  • saving weight, anything counts, its a drone

 

Houston Harnessing

pls clean this up ! Lots of compass interference issues & extra weight that we don’t want to be carrying

good test run for trying things before doing the same on peggy

lots of time to clean it up and test things

EFS

LED Board Firmware

  • @Owen Grimm tried flashing the firmware to the microcontroller after the board assembly. They encountered some obstacle on flashing, and I think they will try the high voltage programming later because this is what written in the data sheet the proper way to do flashing

want EE to build an on board circuit that allows us to flash? @Derek Tang

arduino mega <> LED board. LED board not sending anything.

follow up in thread

Autonomy

 

 

Tracking Antenna - General

Action items / blockers:

  • Ground tests blocking tracking antenna flight test.

  • EFS going to procure GPSs

  • EE going to make a confluence doc yayyy

Updates:

  • < Decision Documentation >

Mech

Tracking Antenna Mechanical

On track. Need to 3D print. Bearings and Gears received. Still waiting on ServoCity parts.

Electrical

Nucleo Shield

follow up on discord if necessary

 

EFS

Arduino Tracking Antenna

  • Lost ELRS receiver, RP. Another procurement coming next week.

  • Had issue where we were polling GPS too often. fixed now.

  • GPS getting 0 sats when outside -new gps on the way

Autonomy

 

 


General Updates

 

Flight test schedule

Past

Feb 10: 2024-02-10 Pegasus + Houston Flight Test - Flight Tests - WARG (atlassian.net)

  • Pegasus Video transmission solution (incl. tracking antenna if possible?)

  • OA/gemini on houston

  • bumped Houston transmitting LTE video.

Future - beginning of March? (7th)

  • “thinking about it”

  • have a few weeks to get a handle on things slipping, so we have time to work on these

 

Action Items

 

 

 

 

Pilots/GSO’s - please submit interest in the link found in #announcements

(not copied here because conf is public : / )

 

Doesn’t guarantee spot @ comp - but we are looking for members that are able to commit to going to comp earlier rather than later.

Need at least 2 - ideally 1 pilot 1 gso, but will consider 2 of either if necessary.

All interested team members will be given access to ground school - only 2 members will be sponsored.

Fix 360 lidar

EFS or Auto to take a look

 

 

 

saturday, autonomy pathing code was tested

  • make FT request

  • on houston