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:
Flew pegasus successfully!
resolved LTE range issue caused by speeding up and increasing angle of flight from Feb 3rd FT
antenna was moved to the leg, probably solved by avoiding all the noise on top of pegasus
Flew OA + Gemini on houston, OA with varying degrees of success
crashed houston into some blue bins once (minor damage)
Gathered speed data again, this time nice and fast (on pegasus)
Logs in logs folder in onedrive, can pull battery efficiency out of these (mahperkm)
graphs exist in debrief 2024-02-10 Pegasus + Houston Flight Test thank you @Anthony Luo
VTX and OSD worked
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:
2024-02-02 Surface Area of Front and Right of Pegasus - SysInt - WARG (atlassian.net)
relevant to wind estimation
Mech |
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Electrical | Capacitor analysis | Question: are we making a second pegasus?
@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 |
discussion brought up with reference to above section (capacitor analysis) |
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EFS | Wind Estimation | logs analyzed in order to find propeller drag: from Feb 3rd FT
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Motor control / FFT bidir dshot? |
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Sensing
Action items / blockers:
Updates:
Mech | Houston Sensor Mounts |
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
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
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Autonomy |
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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 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.
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EFS | RC Controller Mapping | standard template to be created at some point @Anthony Luo
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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
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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 |
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 |
building custom version of firmware after reading week! |
ally Improved Streaming |
can’t find RP1. : / Waiting for EP2s.
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| 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 |
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?
consider other VPN services? - Tailscale?
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 |
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| Houston | Houston landing gear request via @Anthony Luo from jan 29
Estimated 300 g additional weight max for new landing gear https://discord.com/channels/776618956638388305/824066661820399697/1206579554274119680 @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…
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| Power Harnessing | Smaller / lighter weight battery harness to be made. +4 configuration only. Current wire lengths are significantly longer than necessary.
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| 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 |
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 |
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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
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EFS | Arduino Tracking Antenna |
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Autonomy |
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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
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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 |
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saturday, autonomy pathing code was tested
make FT request
on houston