Maestro A2100-B Manual de usuario descargar pdf (Pagina 4)

programs (the GUI). We want to interact with a computer

program, so we added a USB connection for the computer

from the Groundstation microcontroller. The ground station

will also house the second transceiver, the ﬁrst being on the

blimp, for long range communication (up to 750 meters,

but but only expect 200-300 meters at best). To control all

these communication modules we will need a microcontroller

to direct out all the signals to the corresponding places as

well as set the transceiver to transmission (TX) or receiver

(RX) mode. Next to the ground station also plugged into the

computer is the Camera Video Feed’s Receiver box with the

encoder. This receiver is part of the ground station setup but

will not be included in the component box housing the data

control link.

1) Microcontroller: The microcontroller we chose for the

ground station is from the Microchip PIC line. We used

a different company of microcontrollers (from the Atmel

Atmega) since we wanted experience with different types of

microcontrollers and their communications with each other.

We chose the PIC18F2620, we went through a different

microcontroller, the PIC18F2550, but we found out that

hardware UART and hardware SPI shared the same pins.

So we looked into getting a new PIC getting both serial

communications hardware deﬁned on seperate pins and

came up with the PIC18F2620. We run the PIC at 40Mhz

using a external crystal and have the SPI pins used for the

NRF24L01+ transceiver. We programmed the microcontroller

in MPLAB X and use the C18 compiler which is a free

microchip PIC C library compiler for the PIC18 family of

microcontrollers.

2) USB Connection: For the USB connection we used a

UART to USB module, the CP2102. This module ﬁt our needs

for connection to the computer and simply uses the UART pins

of the microcontroller to interface with it. The nice thing about

this module is that we do not have to use a 48Mhz clock on

the microcontroller to control the speed of the USB device,

instead it is all built into the CP2102 module. We only use the

RX and TX with ground pins of this module since we do not

want to power anything through this module and we do not

need the reset pin, but it does come with 3.3V and 5V power

lines for USB charging.

E. Blimp Structure

For the balloon of the blimp, we decided to make our

own, since a advertising blimp cost upwards of $700 for the

weight lift that we needed. It turned out much cheaper to get

the material and bond it together into a balloon ourselves.

It might not be as aerodynamic as a bought balloon but it

ﬁts our purposes pretty well. The undercarriage and the axel

mount for the motor are also part of components we needed

and are custom built to house our PCB and other components.

1) Envelope: The envelope is the main structure of the

entire assembly design. Since the envelope is the building

block of the MASS it needed to be measured out perfectly.

Made up of six different sections, also known as gores (refer

to ﬁgure for section design), which had to be measured out

perfectly, the envelope ended up coming out to eight feet in

length and three feet in diameter. The design process of the

envelope is displayed in Figure 3 below.

Fig. 3: Main envelope section designing process. L is the value

of the arc length, R is the value of the radius, and N is the

number of sections in total.

It is made out of a lightweight plastic material that was

mended together with a heating process using an iron.

Although it was effective, the mending process took a lot of

testing and many different variants of trials, but in the end

the envelope is of the non-rigid design not including any type

of frame and also takes the popular elliptical shape. Some

of the problems we encountered while mending the sections

together were the fact that we kept getting holes from the iron

heating the plastic too quickly, however when we lowered the

heat, it did not want to seem to melt the plastic to a strong

hold. As a solution we just added patches to where the holes

had developed and for the ones we could not see we added a

rubberized sealer to the seams.

2) Stabilization Wings: The stabilization wings are made

of lightweight insulation foam. Cut out into four equally

measured, semi-oval shaped wings, they will account for the

MASS ﬂying at a straight like pathway and are designed to

cut down on movement from wind by making the system

more aerodynamic. They are attached to the envelope in the

rear by line anchors.

3) Gondola: The gondola serves the purpose of containing

the circuitry of the system. To maintain the consistency

of being lightweight we used balsa wood as the building

material. This is attached to the envelope in the central

bottom area for weight distribution. Since the material is thin

and lightweight our GPS and transceiver for the controls and

camera system will not be affected as far as any interference

is concerned.

4) Motor Mounting Bracket: Since we want our system

to be as stable as possible we wanted to mount the motors

in the best area to maximize the stability. We had originally

planned to put the props and motors in the gondola, however

we ﬁgured since the gondola is located at the bottom of

the blimp it would not be as stable. We decided to build a

separate bracket using balsa wood to hold the motors and

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