Electrical Engineering Capstone Project: Drone Development

This capstone project details the development of a drone capable of carrying a DSLR camera. The project progresses through 14 weeks, starting with initial planning and component selection, including motors, batteries, and a remote control system. The student builds and tests the drone, documenting the design, wiring, and physical layout. The project involves constructing a frame, soldering components, and configuring the flight controller. Challenges include burning circuits, flight controller issues, and troubleshooting. The project culminates in flight testing and calibration, showcasing the iterative process of drone development, with references to relevant research papers.

CAPSTONE PROJECT

CAPSTONE PROJECT
1st Week Update
For 1st update, the plan about the capstone project is described. The goal is
building drone which is capable of carrying DSLR camera having great
quality range by using GoPro in one style cameras.
Few of the things required for this plan are amount of motors, remote control
device, camera cage, gimbal, communication system, power and building
materials.

CAPSTONE PROJECT
2nd Week Update
The motors, batteries and wires were bought having goal to build simple
drone which have capability of flight for getting basic idea of how motors
work as well as figuring out rudimentary design.
For second design, little weight was used for the design. Simple ”X” design
was selected by using clothes hanger. Raspberry Pi is used to understand
how this worked.

CAPSTONE PROJECT
3rd Week Update
To build supplies, this was suggested to use wood, this would be quite easy
for building mockups from it, though strength of weight ratio might be little
rough.
4th Week Update
I decided in moving out physical layout as well as wiring. Power source of
Pi is USB type C port.

CAPSTONE PROJECT
5th Week Update
I was waiting if delivery of the parts, I ordered also power distro board
which is more resistant for making motors run at 22.2 volts. For getting 22.2
volts, I ordered extra three 14.8v 5000mah LiPo batteries.
I also ordered carbon fiber’s small sheet for cutting bases for motors for
attaching to arms. I have been trying in figuring out layout of parts for
mounting to body of drone.

CAPSTONE PROJECT
6th Week Update
To cut carbon fiber, jewelers saw was bought by me, as this allowed easy use
as well as omi-derectional cutting by the blades. Next day, I used my
friend’s garage to solder whatever required. It consisted of connecting
3.5mm female bullet connectors with lengths of the wires 12 times.
After that I connected ECS’s and NavioPi along with connecting motors
together for seeing motors in spinning for figuring out orientation.

CAPSTONE PROJECT
7th Week Update
Carbon fiber tubing of arms of drone showed up as well as props which I
ordered showed up finally. I set also about how my drone would talk to the
laptop for the ground control information.
I then headed to the shop for starting cutting up tube, drilling holes and mark
drilling points. After that, I took the decision for seeing if motors could
connect to mounts properly. With this underway, also I was charging LiPo
batteries.

CAPSTONE PROJECT
10th Week Update
I was mounting components in last few weeks as well as getting ready for
testing of motor orientation along with flight testing. I began with trip to
shop for drilling holes for parts to attach them as well as figure out all parts’
layout. While flight testing, I would determine if I have the need in using
few tape for vibrations of motors.

CAPSTONE PROJECT
11th Week Update
The week started with ordered new power board as well as flight controller.
While soldering iron, I bought few dryer ducting for making improvised
fume hood as I can solder from safety of room. I unsoldered old board and
soldered new board, however I took different approach for attaching wires to
board. I connected battery and hit switch. I connected camera also as well as
attached HDMI transmitter.

CAPSTONE PROJECT
12th Week Update
I faced few issues such as burning up the circuits. Beginning with hook up,
configuring within Mission Planner was not bad as with NavioPi. Another
issue was flight controller was not seeing ESC.
13th Week Update
Getting the drone fly might be impossible by end of month of April, however
I plan still to make the thing work within same point.

CAPSTONE PROJECT
14th Week Update
I connected my drone with Mission Planner and got in working to calibrate
RC controller. I then moved in programming the controller as I might arm as
well as disarm drone remotely without requiring use of ground control.

REFERENCES
Applin, S.A., 2016. Deliveries by Drone: Obstacles and Sociability. In The Future of Drone Use (pp. 71-91). TMC
Asser Press, The Hague.
Ciesielski, M.M., 2017. Vision system project for drone navigation (Doctoral dissertation, Instytut Techniki Lotniczej i
Mechaniki Stosowanej).
Davies, B., 2016. Build a drone: a step-by-step guide to designing, constructing, and flying your very own drone.
Simon and Schuster.
Eller, L., Guerin, T., Huang, B., Warren, G., Yang, S., Roy, J. and Tellex, S., 2019. Advanced Autonomy on a Low-Cost
Educational Drone Platform. arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.03516.
Le-Tien, T., Nguyen, K. and Nguyen, T., 2019, October. Encoding Blocks for Digital Video of DVB-S2 Standard with
Drone-based Communications. In 2019 International Symposium on Electrical and Electronics Engineering
(ISEE) (pp. 23-27). IEEE.
Mairaj, A., Baba, A.I. and Javaid, A.Y., 2019. Application specific drone simulators: Recent advances and
challenges. Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory.