Week #7: Delays and Good News

Intro:

Welcome to Week 7 of my blog. This week was a slower one. At the end of last week’s blog, I mentioned my two week delay due to the delivery of the wrong type of ESCs. I’ve got great updates regarding that. I’ve also got news on my latest weekly setback and how I solved it. Let’s dive into it.

ESCs:

Amazon has done it again, delivering the ESCs two weeks ahead of time. I now have my 60A ESCs, and I just have to prep them. I’ll do this by extending the wires and attaching bullet connectors on them, and the motors.

Electrical Stack Problems:

As I was reviewing my project, I came to the conclusion that key parts of my electrical subsystem were wrong. I’ve been using Claude over these past few weeks to verify my designs, and act as a second pair of eyes. Well this week, I wanted to order the telemetry modules. I would use to livestream my thermal and Runcam feeds from my drone back to the pilot. The wiring seemed to get unnecessarily complex, and in an attempt to get a grasp of things, I caught an error in my design.

My PM07 power module, which I distinctly remembered having two XT60 connectors for power, had only one. This was one of the most crucial points of my project, as it was responsible for converting 22.2V battery input to regulated 5.2V output for my electronics. At first, I thought it was a parts error, until I realized Claude had falsely told me it was compatible with my design. I quickly evaluated the rest of my design, and found a few similar errors.

Electrical Stack Solutions:

Luckily, as I had caught this relatively early in the week, I was able to spend the next few days brainstorming, and changing some of the orders for parts that I was about to place. Overall, I’d say the situation is now under control. I’ve ordered the right telemetry parts and verified they work with my newly modified electrical stack. I’ve verified this stack by manually checking the connections myself, and ensuring the inputs and outputs in my design actually match the physical product.

Questions:

I don’t have any questions this week, as I’m pretty clear about my next steps. My original plan for this week was to prep the ESCs and motors, and start preparing for flight. But I got side tracked by this electrical system fiasco. I’m glad I’ve taken care of this now though, as if it happened two weeks later, the project might have been at risk. As I’m not out of the woods quite yet, I’ll still push on at full speed. Next week, I’ll start preparing the frame for flying, and 3D print a casing for all the mounted electronics on the drone.

Key terms:

ESC: electronic speed controller which controls how a motor spins (speed, direction, etc.)

PM07 Power Module: Converts 22.2V input to regulated 5.2V output

XT60 connector: certain standard of electrical connector