2024-03-14 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 or E5 1006

 

Attendance:

In person

Online

In person

Online

  • @Jerry Tian

  • @Neel Patel

  • @Allan Liu

  • @Ryan Scomazzon

  • @Anthony Zhelnakov

  • @Mostafa Hussein

  • @Parker Lawrence-Valeriani

  • @Rayyan Mahmood

  • @Yuchen Lin

  • @Hardy Yu

Quick Links:

Updates this week!

Announcements/General updates

 

 

Active PCB Projects

Drone Harness (Neel)

  • @Neel Patel

  • Vtx harness may need to change wiring path

  • new rangefinder arriving soon

High Current Power Module (Taim)

  • @Taim Al-Dabbagh

  • Not the most useful results from Power Analyzer tool, except for highlighting peak current density and giving diagram of current density (and voltage drop) through out the circuit

  • Trying to use TRM, a thermal simulation program. Now figuring out licensing in order to use it and start simulating the board. If curious on what software I am trying to use: https://www.adam-research.de/en/software/

Battery Elimination Circuit

  • @Ishman Mann

  • @Jerry Tian to follow up

12S ESC (Mena)

  • @Mena Azab

6S ESC (Rayyan, Mostafa)

  • @Rayyan Mahmood @Mostafa Hussein

  • Rayyan: Almost ready to design all schematics.

    • Need help in understanding ADC pin connections for MCU

    • image-20240315-001258.png

  • Mostafa: Buck schematic updated with smaller caps, will finish off current sense component selection.

LED Controller (Neel, Parker)

  • @Neel Patel @Parker Lawrence-Valeriani

  • The Attiny’s footprint has been corrected

  • Pinout issue rerouting is done

  • Discussed with Owen (EFS) about incorporating SpenceKonde onto the board, makes flashing easier

    • has to flash through rpi for now

    • SpenceKonde does the above on led board

  • Researching the posibility of incorporating a barometer into the design to allow for different colours being emitted at different altitudes.

  • Researching a connector with a better form fit as well as a pull up resistor on reset (just need to do the impedance calculations

PDB (Tom)

  • @Tom Chiu

Tracking Antenna (Nolan, Hardy, Michael)

  • @Nolan Haines @Hardy Yu @Michael Botros

  • Forest is gonna review

  • fixed a pinout mistake

  • Final Stages need to Schedule Review

ZP3 Rework (Anthony, Ryan)

  • @Anthony Zhelnakov @Ryan Scomazzon

  • PCB done

  • @Jerry Tian will review before next EE meeting

CAN Interface Board (Hardy)

  • @Hardy Yu

gg there is a $18 off the shell option

maybe can interface for specific sensors

@Jerry Tian will follow up with Nathan on project scope

Redundant Diversity ELRS , RF project

  • @Nolan Haines

5V-24V Boost Board

  • @Allan Liu

  • First idea is to use TPS61175 to boost to 40V before using buck converter to drop to desired voltage.

    • This is due to mostly cost, TPS61175 is 6$ whereas something like TL2575 (buck converter) is only 3$, so fair bit cheaper. cheaper than boosting 3 times

    • Also buck converter will minimize power loss unlike LDO which is good in this case because power efficiency is a concern.

  • please help out with needs assessment @Nolan Haines @Nolan Haines

Flight Test

Flight test on Saturday 10am

New Projects

Project

Link

Description

Needs Assessment

Project

Link

Description

Needs Assessment

Houston harness schematic

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

Mena needs help ;d

see confluence page

CAN Interface

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

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