Hardware Overview Autopilot Control Board- Serves as common platform for other components and has autopilot code and flight plans Battery- Powers the board and servos as well as motor Modem/Antenna- Facilitate communications Ground Control Station- Used to control UAV midflight GPS- Used for altitude and navigating to waypoints IR Sensors- Determines control movements Motor and Controller- Manages the motor functioning Servos- Adjust control surfaces

Autopilot Control Board (Tiny) The main control board is the Tiny v2.11 is the brain of the UAV and controls: Servos (via Pulse-pulse-modulation) Infrared sensors GPS Any applicable payload (CAM) The autopilot board design is released by and updated by the Paparazzi development team

Battery 2100mAh 11.1V Li-Poly battery 6.1 – 18 VDC autopilot input voltage

Datalink Radio (Modem & Antenna) Autopilot – Groundstation communication Serial channel

GPS Receiver Receiver & Antenna built into autopilot uBlox LEA-4 serial receiver – 4Hz update

GPS configuration Proprietary control software

IR Sensors One x-y sensor + one z sensor Each axis is a thermopile pair Differential output from each pair

IR Sensor Modification Driven by 3.3V instead of 5V Changes amplifier gain Replace biasing resistors for unity gain

Motor & Controller Brushless motor and electronic speed control

Servos Hitec HS-55 servos

Payload We never officially implemented a payload, though this would not require extensive work Ostensibly, we would have added a camera to feed back images or video over the modem Due to data transmission rate limitations (9600 baudrate) any video taken would be of very low quality, though images could certainly be sent at a decent frequency Payload would likely be placed on the side of the modem transmitter beneath and partially embedded in a wing

Hardware Preparation

Custom Cables

Software Setup Paparazzi software requires Debian based Linux distribution We used Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” for all our testing Can build source locally or install prebuilt binary package

Install Bootloader Bootloader must be flashed to a new board before it can be programmed Allows Tiny to be programmed via USB Flashed via custom serial cable This procedure only needs to be done once per board

Program GPS Receiver Install GPS Tunnel Program to Tiny Allows direct communication to GPS Receiver Program GPS using U-BLOX software Uses custom serial cable Software runs on Windows

Programming Autopilot Tiny is programmed directly from the Paparazzi software Configuration files are modified and tuned as required for a given configuration Direct USB connection to Tiny