Work night 5.20.15

Work Night 5.20.15
Time: 3 hours
Students: Grant and Max

The goals for tonight was to get the Live View system working test it out and set up the UAV in guide mode. We then wanted to run a mission being controlled by only and Android based device.

In the photo below you see the UAV with GoPro mounted in front. The red frame holding the GoPro to our UAV was made in our 3D Printer at Logan.

In the photo below you see the UAV now with two black antennas in the right rear of the copter. The one closed to you is the FPV system. The one farthest away is for telemetry and navigation.

In the video below you see flight test #3. The main goal here was to get the First Person View system in the air and tested. The image we received on our hand held device was a clear video signal for the most part. Some distortion occurred at times but overall, pretty good. We also had another quadcopter in the air to film our UAV. You will see some brief footage of a flyover. Using GoPro's with a fish eye lens does not allow for close film footage so some of the video seems far away.

The video below shows our most important test with the UAV to date. We downloaded an App which allows us to set up GPS waypoints on an Android device. This was to simulate the GPS coordinates of power poles. We established a base line elevation although that can be changed also. The takeoff, flight path and landing were all controlled by the Android phone. This was one of the features Dairyland Power wanted us to investigate. We were very pleased with the results of the test! Everything went as planned.

Our future goals will focus on a field test which will be done this weekend. Battery life is an issue as we ran our battery out within 10 min of flight. We are also powering our FPV system by the same battery so we need another power source for that.

*NOTE*

On 5.18.15 we did a short flight test to check the ESC calibration as we had problems the last time we did a flight. The day was overcast and winds were 20 mph. The flight was short but the UAV handled the windy conditions well. We normally would not fly on that windy of a day, but we had to test the ESC's before our work night this week and we wanted to document vehicle control on a windy day. One thing we found out is we really burned down battery life on a windy day. It seems the UAV has to work twice as hard to stabilize, especially when landing.