YA's Blog

Finally, I completed making my first drone. I wanted to make something new so I chose to make a Hexacopter. Its the first Hexacopter ever made in my college. Above is the video of its first flight test. The Hexacopter is an under-actuated, dynamic vehicle which uses six rotors to push air downwards to create a thrust force for keeping the hexacopter on the air. They offer higher power abilities hence it can have much better elevation and speed controls as compared to quadcopters. UAV(Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are gaining popularity for their capability of flying without an onboard pilot. They can be controlled using an operator autonomously. The interest of the research community for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) design is fast growing up with the aim of developing cheaper and more capable machines. Flight Controller: APM 2.8 The flight controller is the mind or ‘brain’ of the Hexacopter. This board is what sits at the center, controlling the firmware within the ESCs, cons...

Lithium Polymer batteries are widely used in various devices as in drones and multi-copter for its ability of recharging. When you look at the battery there are two sets of wires coming out of it. One set is a pair of thick wires, one red for positive and the other black for negative. These are usually used in RC electronics especially for multi rotors and planes where the battery is discharged quickly ! The other set of wires contains the number of black wires which is equal to the number of cells in the battery and one red wire. It is for balance usage i.e. equal amount of current is drawn from all the cells so at any point, the voltage of all the cells remain the same. The voltage of the battery shown is the total voltage of all the cells included. Note that all the cells of the battery are connected in series. One cell of a battery has a nominal voltage of 3.7V . When fully charged it goes up to 4.2 V per cell. It can go upto 3V at a minimum. If it goes below, the cell gets dam...