Why is this interesting to me?
I have been working with camera drones (drones for cinematography and photography) for a long time and I thought it would be exciting to venture in the world of racing drones. Not only are racing drones fun to fly, but they provide me with an opportunity to learn about how drones function and how one is built. Building a drone also helps me fine tune my soldering skills and electronics skills.

Why might this be interesting to someone else?
Building a racing drone might be interesting to anyone who has an interest in electronics and/or wants to touch up their soldering skills. Not only is building a drone a good electronics/circuits learning opportunity, but you get the reward of having a fun drone to race at the end.

What am I leaving behind?
Unfortunately, I was not able to finish my drone project because of school being closed for the fourth quarter. I am leaving behind a nearly finished drone and a step-by-step building process in my weblogs. In my weblogs, I talk about a lot of the problems I faced, how I solved them, and how to avoid them in the future.

For Who?
I plan on continuing this project next year, but the information from my experience is still available for anyone who is interested in building a drone. It would be fun to have people to race against and building a drone would be great for anyone who wants to more deeply understand circuits.

My next steps for this project are to finish my drone and to get other people interested in building their own drones. I would love to form a group of people to fly and build drones together. We could help each other solve assembly problems and help other people get interested in drone building. We would also have fun flying together and upgrading components on our drones. We could even turn drone racing into an after-school sport! Wow, I'm getting excited!

Here I will talk about some of the drone's main components and how they work. I will use the attached photo as a guide. I have also outlined some of the components I will talk about in the photo in different colors. Looking at the picture, it is easy to pick out the frame and the motors. The frame is made of carbon fiber because carbon fiber is both lightweight and strong. Outlined in green in the middle of the drone we see the power distribution board (pdb). As its name suggests, the pdb is responsible for distributing power to the drone's various components. It has a bunch of positive and negative (ground) terminals to connect components. Most of the positive terminals are 5v with the exception of a 12v terminal for the camera. To connect components to these terminals, I had to solder the components' wires to the terminals. It is important to be neat with the soldering to avoid a short. The circuit board outlined in blue is called the flight controller board (fcb). The fcb takes the input from the receiver (not shown) and controls the speed of the motors to respond to the operator's commands. The receiver is wirelessly connected to the operator's controller. You can think of the fcb as the control center/brain of the drone. The fcb tells the motors what to do through components called the electronic speed controllers (ESCs). The ESCs, outlined in yellow, take the instructions from the fcb and vary the speed of a motor accordingly. There is a separate ESC controlling each motor. The ESCs are powered by the big red and black wires that are connected to the pdb's large terminals. The twisted black and white wires are connected from the ESCs to the fcb. The black wire is simply a grounding wire and the white wire is called the signal wire. These signal wires carry the fcb's instructions to each ESC. The ESCs connect to the motors with the three black wires you see coming out of the motors. The direction of each motor's rotation is determined by the order with which these wires are attached to their respective ESC. I have attached a diagram showing how to control the rotation of the motors this way.

This week I got the weather station working! I am the router that Dr. Bill flashed with dd-wrt as a repeater/bridge and I plugged the receiver into the router. We put the router/receiver setup outside by the weather station so that the receiver could talk to the weather station. The router is strong enough to connect with the base station in my house. I put it back on weather underground after deleting it by accident and the link to its page is https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KHIWAIME114. I have attached some pictures below.

This week I started trying to move the weather station to its permanent location. My dad and I mounted the station on a long PVC pole and engineered a mounting bracket that we screwed into the top of the carport where I want to mount the weather station. I have attached pictures of the mounting brackets. Unfortunately, the range of the receiver that talks to the weather station is not large enough to make it to the carport. To fix this issue, we want to move the receiver to another part of our house so that there is only one concrete wall between the receiver and the weather station rather than three. The receiver has to be plugged into an ethernet port, and the only ethernet ports we have are too far away from the weather station. In order to move the receiver, we have to use a repeater so that there are ethernet ports to plug the receiver into. And in order to use the spare router we have as a repeater, we need an unsecured 2.4G wireless signal from a router that can be put in WDS bridge mode. The router we have is also not supported by dd-wrt. I am not too experienced in networking so there may be some user error, but I have been researching this and trying this all week with no success. Over the weekend I will pick up a router that Dr. Bill flashed with dd-wrt and hopefully I will be able to get that working as a repeater with his help.

This week I let my weather station run and I checked on it frequently to see how it was doing. So far, it has been working perfectly. Everything seems to be working properly and I can see all of the readings on weather underground. I have shared the link to the station with many of my neighbors so that they can see the real time weather and so that they don't complain about the station. It also rained yesterday and got an accurate reading from the rain gauge. A few ants are still crawling around on the station but they don't seem to have gone inside of it or messed with any of the sensors. Next week I will continue to monitor the data from the station and I will try and get it mounted in its permanent location. There is a link to the station on weather underground below.

https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KHIWAIME111

This week I made some very good progression the weather station. I set it up temporarily in my backyard and started getting some good readings. The weather station is mounted on a pole and transmits to a receiver in my house which is connected to the internet. This way, I was able to put the weather station on weather underground. You can see it here. Over the past few days, I noticed some ants crawling around on the weather station but I did not see them go into any of the components or battery compartment. Next week, I will work on mounting the weather station in its permanent location. This location will be better because it will be free from the building's wind shadow and from normal shadows from trees. The permanent location will also not be touching the dirt so it will probably have fewer ants. After we find a good mounting spot and a good way to mount the pole, we will have to work on getting a good internet connection to the spot. I hope that the receiver is strong enough to reach the new location because it will be a big challenge if it is not.

This week I began assembly of the weather station and figured out how it works. The station wirelessly connects to another module (which we have) that is connected via ethernet to the internet. The module is what uploads to weather underground. I have figured out where to mount the weather station but I still need a 4'-5' long, 1 3/8" diameter pipe (PVC or metal). I can also use the U bolts it came with to attach it to another pipe, but this the other way is preferred. Next week I will try and connect the station to the weather underground module. I might also try to see the station on weather underground. If I have trouble getting the proper mounting accessories to mount it where I want, I can temporarily set it up in my backyard and start getting readings. I have attached some pictures of the assembled station and the box it came with for the model number.

This week we had our first online ISR meeting. I have decided to work on setting up an extra ambient weather station that my dad's work didn't need at our house. I will set it up about 80 feet away from my house on top of a carport. There is also a module for connecting it to weather underground. My goal is to set up the weather station and connect it to weather underground. The main challenge I can think of is getting a good internet connection to it so it can upload data quickly. I am not quite sure yet how to tackle this problem.

This week was the last week before spring break, so it was pretty low key. I helped Shauri design a plaque on the CNC machine and it is ready to cut out. I need to contact the people who gave me the sensors for my drone to learn how to set them up.

I was not at class today.

Today I helped set up the wood for the plaque that shauri wants to cut. We also got the design in the computer and it is ready to cut out. After break we will cut it out.

Today I helped shauri design a plaque for the music room and I showed her the different possibilities for making it such as the laser cutter and the CNC machine. I also used the driving simulator for a bit at the last few minutes of class.

This week I sent some drone footage to people, I began working on my sensor project, and I showed the CNC router to Mr. Terpak's freshmen class. I have to contact the people who gave me the sensor to learn how to get it running and connect it to a computer. Once I do that, I will be able to get live readings from the sky with more specific detail than before. Max and I are also working on cutting a 3d elevation map of Hawaii island with the CNC router.

Today Mr. Terpak's freshmen class came up to the ELAB and Max and I showed them the CNC cutter downstairs. We showed them the computer program we use, the different bits, and we talked about the different parts of the cutter and how they work. We made the machine cut out an outline of the Hawaiian islands and we answered some of their questions. We also talked a bit about automated machining and how we use the different automated cutters and builders around the ELAB and how they differ from normal hand tools. After they left, Max and I started trying to cut out a 3d elevation map of Hawaii island with the cutter. We decided to get the elevation by splitting the map into multiple layers of different thicknesses and overlaying them on each other.

Today I tried to get the sensors going. I was able to turn them on but I couldn't figure out how to connect to them. I will contact the person who gave them to me and see if they can give some instructions on how to set them up.

Today I sent some drone footage of the island to someone visiting from Cornell who asked for the footage. While the files were uploading, I watched Alec prepare for a commercial flight (with passengers and fuel weight and everything) in the flight simulator. I was pretty cool watching all the things pilots do before flight and I would love to be able to do a fun flight on the simulator at some point.

This week I helped Shauri record a podcast and I helped Alec look for the lost RC plane. Next week I will help Alec look for the plane a bit more but then I really want to get started with my sensors.

Today I helped Shauri record a podcast on her microphone mannequin. It sounded pretty good. Then I looked for the RC plane with Alec. We looked by GPAC, the faculty cottages, and the softball field but had no luck. We will keep trying to find it but I will be pretty hard due to the tall grass and trees.

Today I was going to start working on my sensors but Alec asked me to go fly the new rc plane with him. I am not really an experienced fixed wing pilot but I seemed to be handling pretty well even with the wind. The wind was a bit of an issue at times though because of the plane's small weight and size. Unfortunately, when Alec was flying, he got up too high and the wind was stronger than the propellor of the plane and it blew the plane towards GPAC. We don't know exactly where it is but we will look for it next class.

This week I worked on a heart-shaped, laser-cut box for my mom's 50th birthday. I found a template, printed it out, glued it together, and stained it before giving it to her. She seemed to like it a lot. Next week I will start trying to setup the sensors and/or I will work a bit on my FPV drone.

I finished the box for my mom today! Shauri helped me glue it during class and I took it down to GPAC to stain during my off period. I have attached a picture of it.