Helicopter/Howard Community College/Spring2012/p502JASS

Problem Statement
Build a helicopter to maneuver autonomously. To this end, create an aircraft structure, control multiple ESC's, balance the structure via a gimbal mechanism, design for a payload and power supply, and develop flight control software.

Team Members

 * josh
 * Spark93
 * Shatton8111
 * Amirrezasaharkhiz

Summary
We're building an autonomous quadcopter. The quadcopter will be a kind of helicopter that is balanced by four equally powered motors. By giving it software to control its movements and act independently, we hope to give it "a mind of its own."

Story
The first task of the helicopter project was to simply get the Arduino's, ESC's, and motors running all on the same connection. This seemed like a very easy task but it was not. We spent the first two weeks of the project just on getting a motor to spin. We first thought it was the wiring of the arduino and ESC. We then found out that this was not the case. After blowing up a lipo and having no success on the power from the boxes on the desks, we tried some PC power supplies that had just been purchased. Using these power supplies we had success. We then began writing programs for the arduino so we could control the speed of the motor from the computer, not from the Knob program. We ran into a few problems with the programing, a few simple mistakes like forgetting to switch the pin from pin 9 to pin 2, but these were overcome fairly easily compared to getting the motors to spin. After the programs were written we got two motors hooked up to one ESC.

Material List
We used the following materials during the course of our project. For materials for which examples could not be found, facsimiles have been substituted.

In order to continue this project and progress to further goals, the following kind of materials are recommended. The specific items are just examples.

Software List

 * Arduino Software Development Kit
 * Processing Software Development Kit
 * WaveForms

Time
58.42 Hours

Tutorials
None

Next Steps
The next steps are to construct a gimbal, get all four motors hooked up to a single arduino, construct the actual frame, add motors, batteries, ESCs, and the arduino onto the frame, then on to testing.