Mech Report

The following report will outline the requirements of the Tracking Antenna project as they pertain to the Mechanical subteam. It will begin with an overview of the system and the requirements, will cover the specific components and the role of each, and what the mechanical subteam needs to do.

The overall purpose of the tracking antena system is to track the drone. This will be done through rotation in yaw and pitch. There will be two antenna towers. We are planning to have each tower be a tripod which can be folded up and transported to the competition in a case in such a way where no assembly other than connecting cables is required on the day of competition.

Definitions:

Panning Arm → The antenna arm that rotates and aims at the drone

Tower Body → Part of the antenna tower that does not rotate

GS → Ground Station

Video Tower

• X-Air 1.3 antenna mounted on the panning arm [152mm x 152mm x 30mm] [135 g]

• BMX 160 IMU mounted on the panning arm [20 x 12.5 mm]

  • Allows us to know where the panning arm is pointing at any given time and adjust

• Neo M8 GPS will be mounted on the tower body [

  • Allows us to get the position of the tower and compare with the position of the drone

• Nucleo F401 MCU on the on the tower body [82.5 x 70 x ?mm]

  • Controls everything and carries out communication with GSP

     

• AKK 5.8 GHZ Video Transmitter

  • Rebroadcasts the video to different places nearby and located in the Ground Station enclosure near the RMRC 1.3 GHz

• RMRC 1.3 GHz video receiver connected with cable and located in the Ground Station enclosure [50 x 25.7 x 8.3mm]

Telemetry Tower

• Singularity 868 antenna mounted on the panning arm [65mm x xxmm + 90mm cable]

• X-Air 900 omnidirectional antenna mounted on the tower body [222mm x 222mm x 45mm] [324 g]

  • Signal will be received from it within a certain range to allow the 868 antenna to rotate easily

• BMX 160 IMU mounted on the panning arm [20 x 12.5 mm] [

  • Allows us to know where the panning arm is pointing at any given time and adjust

• Neo M8 GPS will be mounted on the tower body

  • Allows us to get the position of the tower and compare with the position of the drone

• Nucleo F401 MCU on the tower body [82.5 x 70 x ?mm] [50g]

  • Controls everything and carries out communication with GSPC
    
    

• RFD900x connected with cable and located in the Ground Station enclosure

• TBS Tracer 2.4ghz beside RFD900x in the Ground Station enclosure enclosure

Open

What Mech Needs to Do

• Design a system where one continous rotation servo motor controls multiple 360 degrees of rotation in the yaw axis and another servo controls pitch rotation from 20 to 90 degrees

  • If the servos, IMU, and antennas can be wired in a way where we can rotate as much as we want in yaw and cable length is not a problem that would be good. Otherwise a minimum of 5 rotations before the system is limited by cable length are required.

  • The continous rotation servo motor used to control yaw needs to meet a speed of 0.3889 rad/s or 3.7136 rpm or 22.3 degrees/s

  • There is no specific requirement for the pitch continous rotation servo motor but using the same one as for yaw would simplify things

  • The panning antenna arm must have a max error on any angle of +/- 15 degrees but it would be best if the servo had a safety margin

• The system is to be mounted on a 1.5m or taller tripod and able to be transported in some sort of case without it being dissasembled

  • Both antennas need to be transported in one case

  • Able to be setup on the field within 5 minutes

• All electronics on the tower could either be mounted outside and weatherproofed individually or those that are on the body of the tower could be mounted within a weatherproof sealed box on the body

• The design of the system needs to make part ports easily accessible

   

Budget

• Two tripods (www.amazon.ca/dp/B07F7B41PX) $49.50 each

• 2 Continous Rotation Servos $50 total for the two

• Case to transport antenna setup $200

• Sensors that we currently do not have $100