-
The Ball-Drone Project MK II
10/22/2020 at 18:51 • 0 commentsDrastic changes in the design led me to open a new project. Here I will publish more details, also diy instructions! The Ball-Drone Project MK II
-
Still ongoing?
10/17/2020 at 10:28 • 0 commentsYES!
Much has happened in the meantime. I also restructured the project a bit and moved some items from the "Details" to the project logs. I hope to be able to show more updates in the coming days.
-
Whats next?
10/17/2020 at 10:26 • 0 comments- improve the mechanical design and make it lighter
- design of fully integrated electronics with esc and postion control
- replace the lipo and use a more suitable battery system
- continue to have so much fun on the subject!
-
Updated vanes profile
10/17/2020 at 10:24 • 0 comments -
Control the hole thing and stop the jitter!
10/17/2020 at 10:22 • 0 comments -
First assembly
10/17/2020 at 10:22 • 0 commentsThe 3d printed parts were assembled with nylon screws for the first sample.
-
Things become clearer
10/17/2020 at 10:02 • 0 commentsThe idea behind the structure is to reach a low center of gravity with the battery underneath the rotor in order to not build an inverse pendulum. Furthermore, standardized components from the RC area had to be included in the planning (with the exception of the flight controller). The safety of the drone is an important aspect. Touching the rotor is made more difficult by a kind of ball-shaped cage, but the rotor can continue to rotate when the drone is pushed or flying against an obstacle. In an early state of design, plates were used to control the air flow.
In order to make the flow more efficient, a wing profile was modeled. Further bracing also took place.
Everything was designed in FUSION360 and 3D printed.
-
Testing of the new flight controller
10/17/2020 at 10:00 • 0 commentsOnce developed - it has to be tested. To keep things simple, a first test of the new flight controller took place on a standard 220mm 4X copter.
The first tests (and flights) went well ... This was the base to start with the further design and construction of the ball drone.
-
It doesn't work without electronics - luckily!
10/17/2020 at 09:59 • 0 commentsDesign of the flight controller:
This build requires a flight controller with small dimensions and minimum 5 ESC or servo connections. The development of an own flight controller was one of the goals anyway. So the decision was to downsize a TI launchpad and limit it to the required connections. In addition, an InvenSense ICM20689 and a Bosch BMP388 for position control were added. The "real-time JTAG" was particularly important for development tasks. Thus, a complete debugger (XDS100v2) is integrated on the flight controller and allows communication with the controller via JTAG and UART, just as you know it from the development board...
The board features:
- Some of the newest TI Controller: TMS320F280049PMS
- Dual channel debugger (JTAG//UART) based on a FTDI 2232 (XDS100v2)
- 3V3 buck-converter
- connections for 5(!) ESCs or servos
- external I2C and UART connection
-
How it all started
10/17/2020 at 09:56 • 0 commentsIn mid-2018 I completed my first quadcopter project with the goal of designing a own flight controller and expand the software, mainly to further and deeply deal with position algorithms. Additionally looking for new ideas for building drones, a very rare case came across: a single-rotor drone with air vanes for control, which is based on the principle of "torque" of an RC model aircraft. This principle aroused my curiosity and it was clear to me: I would like build up something like this and get this thing flying!