Drone Info

Pages / Links

Task List

    • Idea (2020): Buy CoDrone: Programmable with Ard / Py / jpytherNB - uses Bluetooth

Everything with !! should be done first. Everything with (( )) means we can do this later.

Baloon Camp

    • Balloon setup: Goal: Get a refillable balloon with 2 steerable motors which carries battery and controller.

      • !! How much carry weight do we need? See balloon carry info below, do we need larger balloon?

      • !! Can we find a mylar balloon? Check this out for ideas

      • (( Housing (bubble wrap?) for electronics and battery ))

    • Electronics

      • !! Build Motor Modules (maybe with servo)

      • Build Main module (Pi, battery, camera)

      • Build Sensor modules: Accelerometer, Distance Sensor, Photoresistor

      • Build Lights

      • Decide which modules the campers can attach, how much what will "cost".

    • Programming

      • Write first version of InCam (only store images in files), and flask to "stream" most recent file to client. (Adam) - or better version.

      • Develop Interface between the program parts (Adam) see draft under docs/Communications.txt.

      • Gui: Develop HTML for pagelets (Adam / David)

      • Gui: Make example page for interface (with camera and all pagelets) (Adam / David)

      • Connect and run Motors and Servo (Joe)

      • Collect Data, Log all motions (Marc)

      • Sensors Hookup -> Also electronics

      • (( Advanced control (like a "stop turning" button) ))

      • (( Test MMap with 2 python programs ))

    • UnderDome

      • Brainstorm: Design ideas

      • Test materials hanging up.

    • Contest Mechanics: Kathy and Rick

      • How much does which module "cost"

      • What are the challenges the teams have to achieve.

Drone Camp

    • Test all drone functions (remote video, flip, headless mode, photo and video recording) for each drone. NEXT Test the Photo and video and the new drones.

    • Drone carry capacity: Test how much which drone can carry for how long (Ben started this, see list below)

    • Which nice drone to buy (with GPS hold and FPV)

    • Which drone to buy for campers (under $80, would be nice to have altitude hold and FPV) - HolyStone HS110 FPV?

    • Hack the drone: Add arduino. RGB light, T/Hum sensor, radio communication, distance sensor, barometric sensor; logger or stream data back.

    • Develop drone challenges: What is story, what are goals (for students and for teaching), how will the drone be used / modified, where will the activity be held, how much time does it take, how to we grade the teams.

Drone Camp

Basic goal is to have the students learn to fly a drone and to do science with the drones.

Ideas / Suggestions

Students could start with a drone that is essentially already built and modify it for various purposes. These might be good drones to start, prices under $100:

Drone for Students: FPV is more important than Altitude Hold (which can be learned).

Possible drone kits:

What to do with Students:

Payloads

    • Adafruit Trinket is a 2.5g Arduino which uses 3.3V (just as the drones do). They also have a 5.5g GPS module (built for Flora but can be hacked).

      • To get running on Windows (after installing the Arduino IDE), follow instructions on this link. Currently it is a pain to get working on Linux and it's recommended to use Windows or Mac.

      • Documentation on drone project with the Trinket here.

Drone Info

Information about drones and drone models

Drones in Academic Research: Link

Drones in Science: link

Drones in Meteorology: link

Basic drone information for beginners: dronesglobe.com/guide/drones-for-beginners has good information about options and jargon.

List of Yerkes Drones

List of items we purchased for the drone camps:

    • UDI 818A: 7min 100m (good beginner, camera, no altitude control).

      • Weights Lifting power ??? (less than little camera with battery)

    • F181W: 7min, 100m, Altitude control, FPV

      • The drone can connect to a cellphone using the Deerc FPV app (the app is named HolyStone on the cellphone).

      • You can control the F181W drone by using a cellphone (or the cellphone gravity sensor) OR you can view the drones camera feed (using the phone) at the same time as using the controller (only one phone at a time)

      • Weigths: Easy 35g 3min, Barely lifts 49g (hard to fly), Short time lift 64g

    • MJX Bugs 3: 15min, no camera, POWERFULL, 400m, barrel roll

      • Weights: easy carry 300g - 10min flight, 350g barely

      • Small 5.8GHz camera attached works well but limited camera signal range

    • Hubsan X4 502S GPS: HARD TO SET UP (atypical propeller setup), 5? min. Will only fly with GPS (lock is difficult) so no indoor flying but with GPS it holds steady even in moderate wind. ⇒ works and does it's job. Uses 5.8GHz Video (i.e. other receivers are possible).

      • 5.8GHz image broadcast can be received with USB receiver (not with PAL receiver).

    • U818W PLUS-W: Relatively easy to fly, has a working live stream camera. It can be controlled using the app called Flyingsee.

      • Weight limits???

    • UDI U818A FPV: Same as U818A but with altitude hold and FPV wifi streaming. Try it out???

      • Weight limits ???

    • Ryze Tello: Programable (can also purchase controller for it).

    • Parrot Bebop 2: Programmable (according to website)

      • Has a registration: Registration number is FA3373MR9M and is valid until 2019/6/15. The drone is registered under the email address yerkesstar@starsatyerkes.net. Registration is attached to this page.

Other items (some audio / video equipment is under Electronic Components ):

Purchasing:

    • UDI 818A - 2018 model: Wifi FPV and Altitude control.

    • Parrot Mambo

    • Tello

    • Parrot Bebop

Blimp Camp

Basic Idea: Make it an adventure to simulate research in an alien weightless environment (ex: the inside of a comet).

    • We're thinking about using drone balloons.

    • Inspiration for the activities can be NASA's Marsbound! student activity.

Helium Gas Rules

Compressed gasses and helium in particular can be dangerous. If you want to work on the Blimp Camp you must follow these rules:

    • Only use compressed gas when Kara, Ed, Jesse or Marc are in the building, contact either of them when you need to use the bottle, they will tell you if it's safe to do so and will set up the gas cylinder for you.

    • Always use safety glasses when working with compressed gasses, don't inhale any helium.

    • Don't operate any valves or regulators, don't move the cylinder by yourself (always ask Kara, Ed, Jesse or Marc for help).

    • Immediately notify Kara, Ed, Jesse or Marc if you notice anything unusual such as hissing noises from the cylinder.

    • At the end of the day you are responsible for filling out the usage log attached to the cylinder.

The Underdome

How do we want to set up the space under the dome:

Measuring the Underdome

We needed to know the approximate surface area of the underdome in order to know how much Tyvec was needed to set up in the space under the dome. First, we found the surface area of the floor by dividing it into rectangles and triangles to make it easier to find the area. We multiplied the floor area by two to account for the ceiling area. Next, we found the surface area of the walls by measuring the individual width of the shelves along the walls, and area between them and multiplying that by the height of the underdome.

Sketch of the estimated measurements in the underdome.

The size of the Underdome surface is 6100 sq ft or 560m2. 1x10 sq ft of Tyvec is 53gramms.

-Measurements made by Thomas Curry and Jack Adams

Decorating the UnderDome

Here's a video of something that might be used in conjunction with cheaper materials for some interesting structures:

Polyurethane System Sculptures

The polyurethane foam system costs $35.20, plus about $15 for shipping. It costs about $55 for shipping if you order 10 of them.

Flinn Scientific Polyurethane Foam System

Expanding spray foam insulations is about $40 for 15 board-feet (a board-foot amounts to foam that is 1ft2, 1 inch thick. 15 board-feet of foam is a bit less than 10 gallons of liquid). Given the square footage we need to cover, the cost is prohibitive.

Other possible options:

We could make some interesting structures with regular styrofoam, then cover with a thin coat of spray foam.

We could use packing peanuts for texture

We could use plaster for texture

Here's a site that shows how to use paper (butcher paper or even paper bags could be used):

How to Make a Cave Out of Paper

Interesting Crystal Structures

Life forms could be shown by something moving, but we could also put some primitive drawings to show intelligent life.

Mylar safety blankets sprayed with spray paint. They can be purchased at WalMart here.

Borax Crystals. The video instructions are here. These could be grown on styrofoam foundations.

Cost calculations: Given that each package of 10 Mylar blankets would cover 280 ft2of area (each of the 10 blankets in the package is approximately 7' X 4'), 25 packages of blankets would be more than enough to cover a 6100 ft2 area. Since each package is about $7.50 (let's round to $8.00 to cover tax), 25 packages would be roughly $200, much less expensive than Tyvec.

Safety: We also tested flammability of the Mylar vs. the Tyvec and found them to behave similarly. The Tyvec is less dense, so is less likely to cause damage or injury to those in the area.

Blimp computing

The code is at github under github.com/yerkesobservatory/techcamp.

Rasberry Pi Camera (Last update 3/12/2018)

To test the camera in terminal type: sudo raspistill -o image.jpg

If the camera is working you should see a video preview and a picture called image.jpg in the terminals directory

Currently, the pi has been set up to record a picture using openCV, the next step in the project is to send the image stream into flask for streaming.

Use full link dump:

Creating a web server with flask

Using PiCamera

Possible solutions for streaming

Accessing the raspberry pi camera with opencv and Python/

How to Build Web Camera Recorder Using OpenCV and Flask

RasPi Program

(Adam and Marc 2018-3-28)

    • Different Programs:

      • Flask: One for Flask sends request over socket. Gets data over (socket / files / mmaped files)

      • Output: Gets commands from flask via socket, implements time delay, runs motors and servos. Save all commands in a log.

      • InCam: Gets camera images and stores on HDD in regular intervals. Gets requests over socket and returns data (or over files / mmaped files). Gets commands from flask to store RGB.

      • InSense: Gets sensor data and stores on HDD in regular intervals. Gets requests over socket and returns data.

    • Open Questions:

      • Using files / sockets or mmaped files for input data transfer?

      • Command format between Flask and Output?

      • Data format between Input and Flask (probably different for camera data and other sensors)

    • Setup: How to set up the Rasberry Pi

    • Install flask (On linux) use sudo pip install Flask

    • Install cv2 use sudo pip3 install open-cv - PiCamera should be preinstalled

    • Run the programs:

    • cd techcamp/programs

    • python3 output.py ../configs/master.ini

    • python flaskserver.py (looks for config by itself)

    • python incam.py ../configs/master.ini

  • Use [Cmd][F2] to switch screens

  • Access is pi / blimpcamp

Completed Tasks:

    • Write Socket send and receive code for Flask, InSense and Output. (Marc)

Electronics

We should consider having the following sensors / actoators

    • Lights: With option to have wide angle or spotlight moving with the camera.

    • Servo: Make it such that camera, motor, lights, distance sensor can be attached to it.

Balloon Details

Weight experiment

Joe and Marc filled the orange 36" balloon with air from the hose by the drone battery recharging station. On the scale we weighted the balloon with the closing clamp consisting of two office clamps and two pieces of plastic half-pipe. The balloon by itself weighs 26g (140g for the 60" balloon)

What did we learn:

    • The additional pressure inside the balloon does not make the balloon much heavier. Even in case #2 the additional pressure in the balloon is still 100 times smaller than the background pressure. So the gas inside the balloon is only about 1% heavier due to the additional pressure inside the balloon (less than 1g for helium).

    • The balloon can carry itself and about 360g. The 60" balloon could carry itself and about 1600g under the same conditions. On Amazon 40" and 48" balloons are also available (the 48" balloon would be able to carry approximately 850g).

Balloon Gas Holding

    • April 13: Test of Giant Peach - diameter 78cm.

    • April 16: Orange balloon is 39.5cm in diameter ⇒ Not much loss at all (about same size)

  • June 28: Test of Big Blue Baby Balloon-diameter capability: 60", inflated to 48": Ring only: 0.235 kg, ring + balloon: 0..380 kg, balloon clamp: 30 g = 0.030 kg, balloon: 0.145 kg, balloon carrying capacity (48") : 0.785 kg

Balloon Alternatives

  • June 23: Test of heavier 48" (121cm) Balloon: The balloon inflates to 49" easily and could go larger. The balloon is 200g.

Balloon Clamp

    • Make sealable opening for the balloon: Just a Binder Clip with foam. We can use large binder clips.

Weight Estimates:

    • Weight of Components:

      • Pi Assembly (total): 205.9g

        • Pi 3: 41.3g

        • Motor Shield: 21.7g

        • Servo Shield ????????

        • Camera: 3.7g

        • 4 AA Batteries: 111.4g

        • Battery Holders (x2): 16.7g (total of the 2)

        • WiFi Antenna: 11.1g

        • UDI 818FPV battery: 25g

        • USB battery stick (came with UDIs): 80g

      • Balloon: 150-200grams

      • Hoop: 240grams (40inch / 100cm diameter)

    • Lift Capacity: Air 1.2kg/m^3, He 0.15kg/m^3 --> 1.05kg/m^3 lift

      • Spherical 48inch (120cm) balloon: 0.904m^3 --> 950g lift

      • Elipsoid 48x40x40inch (120x100x100cm) balloon: 0.63m^3 --> 660g

I don't know where to put this, but these are the dimensions of the Big Blue Balloon a.k.a.(Triple B)

54.5" Long width

47" Short width

60" Length (actual)

55" Length (theoretical)