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2025-04-03 Electrical Meeting

2025-04-03 Electrical Meeting

Owned by Kenny Na
Last updated: 2025-04-04 by Tim Gu
5 min read

Agenda

Attendance

In person

Online

In person

Online

@Kenny Na

@Megan Lee

@Santosh Erathasari

@Ryan Scomazzon

@Ernest James Ramas

@Jeremy Poulin

@Andrew Chai

@Arsalan Nasrifar

@Himansh Garg

@Meghan Dang

@Tim Gu

General Updates

  • Last EE meeting of the term

  • @Ryan Scomazzon is stepping down as EE Lead at the end of competition.

    • don’t think software can fix this one…

  • Work sessions

  • EE/Mech/Ops Dinner TONIGHT from 6-8pm!

  • Shameless plug, vote for my (Ryan's) logo for MME logo contest if you're in MME (this is a demand from your EE lead, not power abuse)

  • Electrical Engineering Intern (Co-op) at WARG posted today!

    • Job ID: 412965

  • Cant find the handheld dmm, please let us know if you know where it is

Flight Tests

  • Last week’s flight tests

    • Mar 28th, Pegasus 2

    • ‘Lebron’ flight test (California)

      • https://discord.com/channels/776618956638388305/1354894423359619235

      • image-20250402-231646.png

      • Proof of flight recorded.

  • Next flight test

  • image-20250402-234801.png

  • Likely going to be a competition sim during finals. If you’re free, stay tuned for that

Reminders

  • Put boards from your board order on the GitHub

  • Put batteries away (Problematic LiHv)

  • Use LCSC components on new boards (Ideally from the JLC library) for PnP

  • Make sure to clean up after yourself

    • TURN OFF DMMs WHEN DONE please!

  • Don’t forget to fill out the team roster: Microsoft Forms

  • Get the electronsite role if on site - reach out to @Ryan Scomazzon if you have issues

  • Reach out if you need help on a project or bootcamp

  • Recruit your friends!

    • If you like the team, then we can do even more with more people!

  • BEWARE OF SCAMS ⚠️

  • Ask for reviews on boards

    • If it has a microcontroller, ask EFS to review too

  • New E-waste bin

    • Box in the bay by the EE shelf

    • SDC has an e waste bin that shows up sometimes

  • Epic tip: Opening bags

    • DigiKey bags have convenient tear lines. - They are convenient now, but make your life easier later when you put it in a box and components fall out

    • To open bags, its often better to just poke a hole in the middle of it to take the parts out so that once you put them back in, there is no open edge for pieces to fall out of

 

Pegasus/Competition Updates

2025-03-31 Competition Architecture Sync

  • Lots of planning, logistics for transporting drones, proof of flight videos

  • Task 1 Drones:

    • Dallas/Houston → RPI 5 + interface → 10 mins flight time → not very stable airframe currently

    • X500 → RPI 5 + interface → 10 mins flight time → can definitely be flown, needs Pi and firmware

    • Cali Drone (Lebron) → RPI Zero → 45 mins flight time

    • Prepping for all 3 airframes and then descoping as the plan for competition becomes clearer.

      • May or may not need one RPi Interface Rev. C validated, depending on descope or not.

  • What drones are we flying for task 2:

    • Drones

      • Pegasus 1

      • Pegasus 2

    • Justification

      • big drones carry lots of water, two drones trade on the source tank

      • battery swaps will eat time as well and reduce cycle rate

  • California Drone is now called LeBron

  • Still need to get proof of flight fight for all drones (we just have peggy 2 and

  • LED Board Rev. 4s are good to be flown

  • What needs to be done by EE?

    • Fix broken pad on led board

      • One of the LEDs came off and ripped a pad with it

      • Can be fixed with flywire

      • Maybe solder didnt fully melt? Check other boards too

        • Happened with RPi Interface where the solder didn’t melt. The oven unevenly heats boards, even at 300 degrees C

        • Maybe do 400? 450 kinda burnt the revc

    • Finish last XT splitter harness

    • Do buck for peggy 1 harness

      • We can pull the 12S BEC off of the phone and use that one

    • Put it all together!

    • Optional (prob to time) Really big XT splitter (xt60 in to xt30 outs x5)

      • This is to have custom parts for the COTS airframe

    • Will ping as needed during finals but most of this can hopefully be done on saturday!

Eclipse Updates

2025-03-18 Eclipse Arch Sync - Meetings - WARG

@Jerry Tian @Manasva Katyal

  • Come to Eclipse Maiden Flight on April 4th!

  • Chassis assembly almost finished

Project Updates

Pick & Place Machine @Santosh Erathasari

  • Stalled for finals

  • Not sure where he is gonna be next term

  • If not here, might as well return it to graeme

 

12S PDB @Andrew Chai @Kenny Na @Megan Lee @Santosh Erathasari

  • Power Distribution Board (PDB) - Unarchived - Electrical - WARG

  • Met on Sunday

    • Discussed architecture

    • Plan moving forward

    • Compensation!!!!

    • Tentative schematic review for 3V3 SMPS

  • Design of 12V SMPS: Done

  • Design of 5V SMPS: Mostly Done

  • Design of 3V3 SMPS: Making good progress

  • Sensing + Comms: Mostly Done

  • Moving to layout

    • People busy with exams & end of coop term stuff so this will likely be ongoing into end of this term where we can get it onto a board order start of next term/after comp

  • Going to make a floorplan of the layout where sections divided for sub-circuits

 

BMS @Sam Zhang @Chenxuan Yuan @Arsalan Nasrifar @Andrew Chai

  • Cell Monitor - Electrical - WARG

  • Custom Battery Pack

  • Working on schematics!

  • @Arsalan Nasrifar is working on wiring the cells together and picking connectors for the board.

  • @Chenxuan Yuan is working on cell sensing and the FETs external circuitry.

    • Considering JST

      • Look into XH-series?

  • @Andrew Chai and @Farris Matar are good resources for fet selection

    • Andrew might add to fet docs?

 

3S ESC @Kenny Na

  • Reviews appreciated!

  • Stalled for finals

  • @Derek Tang to look at STM design from an EFS side

 

Tracking Antenna Controller + ELRS Gemini Tx @Ahmed Osman

  •  

 

ELRS Gemini Xrossband TX @Ishman Mann

  •  

 

12V Input to 65W USB-PD Source - Electrical - WARG @Ian Van Den Steen

  • Rough layout finished

 

12V to 24V Boost Groundside Converter - Electrical - WARG @Tim Gu@Daniel Rolinsky @Himansh Garg @Thuvaragan Prathifkumar

  • @Tim Gu Got a rough idea of a few more parameters

    • How do you pick a switching frequency?

  • Would like to go over MOSFET selection more closely with @Daniel Rolinsky

  • Still in research phase

 

LED Board Rev. 4 Assembly

  • 2 boards assembled, one sustained a minor injury (side LED broke off with a pad)

  • 1 more board assembly in progress!

 

Zeropilot 4.0 Hardware (ZP4HW) @Daniel Puratich @Kenny Na @Derek Tang

  • Pending architecture meeting in the spring term

    • Discussed architecture briefly with in Discord: https://discordapp.com/channels/776618956638388305/779158507034771456/1352551664632070145

      • Pixhawk FCs have essentially 2 sections: bottom-side with connectors for harnessing, power electronics, and then modular top module that contains the microcontroller/processor

      • Could we do the same design, except a Pi CM5 or NVIDIA Orin with an STM32H7 on the side?

      • Good enough reason for us to design this (integration, more TOPS for autonomy?)

 

Sensor Cluster - Electrical - WARG @Michael Botros

  • Stalled until someone is able to drive it

 

https://uwarg-docs.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/EL/pages/2782593034@Robert Tang @Kevin Li

  • Higher priority things to work on

 

Open Tasks

  • Power bank research and order for Pinecil @Ryan Scomazzon

Action Items

  • Wiring for competition drones

 

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