Surveillance Drone
This Aerial Surveillance Drone was designed with the purpose of being used to take high resolution images of anything the pilot desired. The initial idea was to be used for time-lapse footage of a facility or construction site, where you would designate a time, place, and angle for pictures to be taken and it would do it automatically, but that was eventually replaced with what we have now, which is a surveillance drone.
Demonstration Videos
Below are a few videos demonstrating our drone in flight. These are to show our drones ability to take flight and capture image, but also to show our failures, and lessons learned.
FPV Footage - Success
Tethered Test Flight - Success
Pilot Error - Failure
Motor Bolt Error - Failure
Components
DJI o3 Air Unit
1550mAh 6s Lipo Barrery
Sector 5x Frame
5” Propellers
Servo Motor Gimbal
2207 1700kV Motors
2.4Ghz ELRS Receiver
F405 V3 FC/ESC Stack
Assembly
Step 1: Assembled open frame, our frame was acquired from a broken bind and fly.
Step 2: Arranged and routed the wires and fitted the components.
Step 4: Checked for component clearance with propellers.
Step 5: Soldered capacitor in correct orientation to the bottom of the ESC.
Step 6: Assembled and attached the stack to the frame.
Step 7: Attached motors to frame and trimmed the wires to fit the system.
Step 8: Tinned the soldering pads and the tip of wires.
Step 9: Soldered wires onto appropriate pads.
Step 10: Performed smoke stopper test.
Step 11: Plugged into computer and used follow-along betaflight youtube video.
Step 12: Performed a fuse test, tracked motor spin direction.
Step 13: Mounted camera gimbal and legs on the drone.
Step 14: Test flew the drone with a tether.
Step 15: Test flew the drone without a tether.
Conclusion
This project overall was a great success. My team and I learned a lot about the Axiomatic Design process and we used that knowledge in a practical setting to create a functioning drone.
We sustained damage caused to the batter cable after the crash (seen above) where the drone flipped over. The motor disconnected from the frame resulting in rapid acceleration of the propellers, where the disconnected propeller struck this battery cable. We replaced the battery and mounted the motors to the frame with longer bolts. This was a lesson learned, but luckily only a minor mishap. The drone is currently operating and in good working order.
If we continued developing this drone we would have made a more complex gimbal system, and we would have implemented GPS flight planning.
