Finally made by first PCB board

Like all electronics projects, the skill of "PCB making" is of paramount consequence. After doing my research, I finally assembled the ingredients to develop a servo control PCB.

The Goal:
I wanted the UAV to have be capability of Manual or Autopilot Mode while in flight as a safety option. This was to be controlled by the Control Station (RC transmitter for now) using a switch.

The Parts:

Single sided PCB board
PCB toner transfer paper (I tried using HP Photosmart paper - DIDN'T WORK)
Clothing Iron - Temperature set on "Medium"
Wooden cutting board (Just beg the wife!)
Ferric Chloride Solution (Here in SA try Mantech or RS Online
Drill Machine
Drill bits (0.6mm or 0.8mm). I used 0.8mm.
Plastic gloves (Please wife!)
Plastic Container (Any container will do as long as it's plastic).

So as the point 2 say, I tried using HP Photosmart paper but it failed dismally. The glossy side of the paper melted and got stuck to the copper clad and it was a pain to get it off. I even tried to silicon baking paper between the iron and the glossy paper and still a no show.

So I decided to revert to the popular saying "the wheel has already been invented" slogan and buy a PCB toner transfer paper. And guess what! It worked perfectly FIRST TIME round! Although it's not exactly cheap paper it did the job. NEXT: Assembly and Testing

So After PCB assembly and testing the servo control board was put through it paces using a testbed Arduino script and I'm glad to say... IT WORKS!

Comments

Setting up the Tarot T4-3D gimbal on the Pixhawk 2.4.8 with Specktrum dx6 Gen2 toggle switch

So i took the challenge of setting up the Tarot gimbal not just for inherent stable video footage but also the flexibility of controlling it from the radio control. However, I encountered quite a few challenges which made me aware that I'm not the one only in this battle . It's quite clear that the setup of the Tarot gimbal using its own software is completely different from how it's been described in the Ardupilot/Arducopter webpage and in mission Planner. In Mission Planner and it's associated site makes one believe that it should be done through software, only to realize that in actual fact the setup is more complex than that. After two evenings of trying various combinations, I realized the getting the pixhawk Aux channels to communicate with the T4 gimbal requires the following steps: - The Pixhawk Pin9 (Aux1) needed to be activated to pass through user-chosen channel from the transmitter. For the Dx6 Gen2 it was the channel 6, which can assigned the ...

Setup ArduPilot flight modes with DX6 Gen 2

Hi, I've looked around the web to get an understanding the setup of the Ardupilot flight modes with a Spektrum DX6 2nd generation and there was none. So I decided to write this blog. The few things to consider when doing this: Please follow the instruction given on the ardupilot webpage . Have the Pixhawk hardware connected to Mission Planner (I have 1.3.50 - Copter V3.5.3) Use the display bar in the Radio Calibration page as a guide while changing the rate pulse widths on your transmitter. I've used switch D to change the pulse width ranges on channel 5.

Matlab to C/C++ code development - Some learning points

Over the last few years, the engineers at the company have invested both their time and sleepless nights in formulating a process for the development of Machine learning algorithms that will satisfy real-time constraints with minimal RAM usage. This is quite a tall task as per default, that would force one to do their development directly in C language. Although that seems like the right choice, the downside is the direct correlation of the debugging time with algorithm complexity. Such a time could have been rather used in optimizing the algorithm within the MATLAB environment which has excellent tools for the analysis, plotting and debugging. So it was decided to rather learn the Code generation process with the hope that future algorithm could be designed in a similar fashion without the hassle of the compiler-specific run-time issues. The development of this machine learning algorithm would eventually be implemented in a 32bit, 160Mhz speed, 260KB RAM microcontroll...

Search This Blog