Testing, testing

We are making steady progress with the new chassis, as you can see below. About halfway there to be able to mount the electronics and motors.

New parts! Woho!

The full status report of the chassis is as follows:

[CAD percentage/Printed/Total]

[100/4/6] Arms
[100/1/1] Centerpiece, lower
[100/0/6] Motor mounts
[100/0/6] Slanted arms
[100/0/1] Centerpiece, upper
[80/3] Landing gear
[0/0/1] Raspberry pi box
[90/1/1] Camera gimbal
[80/0/1] Battery bracket
[80/0/1] Sonar casing

So, as you can see, we have quite a bit of printing to do. Good thing is that since most of the parts have been designed already, we can simply start the printer and while it carries about it's business we can engorge ourselves in other tasks, with the occasional eye thrown towards the printer (Called Hilda btw) to see that she's not up to any mischief.

We've also set up a testing rig for balancing the propellers and the motors, so hopefully this will reduce the vibrations in the chassi and limit the unscrewing of bolts, blur in pictures and breakage of parts. Hopefully.

Test rig. All calculations point towards the vice being an accurate representation of the finished hexa. 

Really, I promise.

We've been looking in to the sonars for a while now and after a lot of googling, everything seemed to point towards MaxBotix. So, yesterday we placed an order at http://www.maxbotix.org. We've had a bit of correspondance with them prior to this order and I must say that they are really helpful! Also turns out that they have a educational discount which we could use. This was very fortunate, because still within the borders of our budget we were able to order 5 pieces of the MB1240 XL-MaxSonar®-EZ4™ and one of the MB1200 XL-MaxSonar®-EZ0™. We figure we will probably use the EZ4 in all directions since they have the most tolerance against prop noise and have the furthest reach. However this comes with a cost, since they have quite a narrow field of view which could possibly cause problems. We felt obliged to test more than one solution so we also ordered one of the EZ0 which has the widest field of view but in return the lowest noise tolerance. So, we'll test these and see if the EZ0 can function properly, and in that case we will probably order three more.

So, if you're in the mood for ultrasonic sensors or would simply like to keep track of what MaxBotix is up to, they've recently started a facebook page that you can like. 

MaxBotix Facebook page