2024-02-29 EE Meeting

Meeting times:

  • EE Meeting: Thursdays 8 PM EST E5 1006

  • Leads Meeting: Monday 8 PM EST E5 2004

  • Team Competition Aircraft Sync (AEAC): Monday 7 PM EST E7 4043

 

Attendance:

In person

Online

In person

Online

  • @Jerry Tian

  • @Anthony Zhelnakov

  • @Yuchen Lin

@Ishman Mann

@Mena Azab

@Mostafa Hussein

@Nolan Haines @Nolan Haines

@Ryan Scomazzon

Quick Links:

Updates this week!

Announcements/General updates

 

 

Active PCB Projects

High Current Power Module (Taim)

  • @Taim Al-Dabbagh

Battery Elimination Circuit

  • @Ishman Mann

narrowed down to buck converters or buck controllers

would be nice to have guidance on LTSpice

12S ESC (Mena)

  • @Mena Azab

    • Busy this week as well. most likely start on this in March

  • need to work on

    • Field oriented control firmware setup to know MCU pinout

    • microcontroller schematic

    • gate driver schematic

6S ESC (Rayyan, Mostafa)

  • @Rayyan Mahmood @Mostafa Hussein

  • Rayyan: Been busy past couple weeks. Will have gate driver component selection done this weekend.

  • Mostafa: created buck circuit in Altium, still need to update inductor selection.

LED Controller (Neel, Parker)

  • @Neel Patel @Parker Lawrence-Valeriani

PDB (Tom)

  • @Tom Chiu

  • Found a couple of buck regulators that meet the high current demand with good efficiency and reasonable thermal performance. Looking into switching controller options for safer options though, I am still reading up on them and will add to the spreadsheet: Part Selection Options - Google Sheets. Will note this in the discord when the selection is complete.

Tracking Antenna (Nolan, Hardy, Michael)

  • @Nolan Haines @Hardy Yu @Michael Botros

  • Routing is done, no formal design review yet

ZP3 Rework (Anthony, Ryan)

  • @Anthony Zhelnakov @Ryan Scomazzon

  • Repicked some parts with recommendations from EFS

  • Schematic finished, need review @ee leads

  • 1 GPIO pin on connector is connected to ground

  • Starting with PCB

Capacitor Analysis for Drone (Anthony)

  • @Anthony Zhelnakov

  • Has done some research

 

  • still need inductance value

  • worst case load transient on ESC

  • maximum ripple on ESC

 

CAN Interface Board (Hardy)

  • @Hardy Yu

 

Drone Harness (Neel)

  • @Neel Patel

  • Need to shorten power harness on Pegasus

    • @Anthony Zhelnakov Will make shorter Power Harness only + configuration

  • Houston wiring needs to be cleaned up

  • Make VTX harnessing better ie. less janky

  • Make Harnessing Diagrams

    • Altium

 

Diversity Gemini ELRS , RF project

  • @Nolan Haines

Still doing research, Nolan understands the architecture

on component selection now

Flight Test

 

New Projects

Project

Link

Description

Needs Assessment

Project

Link

Description

Needs Assessment

Houston harness schematic

Houston: Configuration

Draw houston schematic from scratch.

We want a schematic for all possible power + sensor harnesses so that we can quickly build/grab harness for flight test

Wiring is too messy as of Feb 13, 2024.

Also sensor harness is gonna be different for different flight tests

 

Pegasus harness schematic

https://warg.365.altium.com/designs/EE4130C4-749C-446F-8B89-B208A6919071

reorganize into hierarchical structure (see 12S servo module example)

Label length, color, wire gauge

the schematic as of now is a bit hard to read

12S ESC

12S ESC

Mena needs help ;d

see confluence page

CAN Interface

CAN Sensor Interface Brainstorming

see confluence page

see confluence page

ICM 42688 breakout

Could get fancy using CAN bus w/it later but for now just breaking out SPI, and maybe having an onboard voltage regulator or smth (better perf).

EFS is looking to move from bmx160's to ICM 42688's . These are used commonly on all sorts of drones and fc's (probaly the most popular drone IMU being sold new right now). They're about 2$ for a chip, can be pick/placed by JLCPCB, but the eval kits are 58$.

Smoke stopper

https://www.amazon.ca/VIFLY-ShortSaver-Electronic-Short-Circuit-Overload/dp/B088TVVNVM/ref=asc_df_B088TVVNVM

Analog design.

Switch between different efuses (e.g. 1A, 2A, 3A)

The board limits current flowing through when we run the motor test. It protects downstream electronic devices. It also prevents drawing too much current from the batteries.

 

leads need to decide whether we want a MCU on the PCB

5V-24V Boost

Boost Converter

See confluence page for details

we want output to be adjustable, so boost chip has to handle voltages 12V, 18V, 24V. It is even better if it can also handle other voltages in between 5V and 24V

should also bypass 5V

See confluence page