Logan Digital Electronics Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Project: Work Night 5.13.15

Work Night 5.13.15
Time: 3 hours
Students: Joel and Jacob

A lot of things happening with the Logan Ranger UAV!

Our replacement part for the prop adapter came in on Tuesday so we knew we could do a flight test on Wed. Additionally, our telemetry radios came in on Monday so we hoped we could begin experimenting with them also.

Our goals for the work night tonight was to get the UAV in the air. The props were put on and secured. We first had to drill them out as they were not cut to the correct diameter of the motor shaft. They also had to be mounted so in a "push/pull" alignment. We recalibrated the ESC's earlier so we felt we were ready for the test.

In the video you will see us arming the UAV and then testing several modes. We successfully tested loiter and RTL (return to landing) mode using the radio controller. That met our goals for the night. We anticipated having some problems that did not occur so so we had additional time to work. We configured the telemetry radio's to work with an Android based phone. This was one of the requests Dairyland Power asked us to look into. We were able to get the system up and running where take off and landing were controlled by a phone. We also tested the follow me mode. In the video you will see Joel walking with his phone and the UAV following him.

Overall, a very good night the team reached a lot of milestones tonight.

Next workday will focus on adding the Live View system and Go Pro to the UAV and testing it out. We are close to getting this set for a field test.

The video below is one of our first flight tests with the UAV.

The video below is of the "Follow Me Mode" where the UAV follows the pilot who is controlling the UAV through his/her phone. The landing in this video was done using the autopilot feature in RTL Mode.