Andrew Olson

The boards from iTead arrived on Wednesday and they look sweet.  We spent today soldering up the only the necessary components for operation.  We're holding off on the Accel and Gyro until we get a hot air gun.  Here's a video of the board toggling the on board LEDs.


The red LED is flashing, it's just not as bright as the blue one in the video.

My group and I are super stoked that it works.  Now we can work on developing code for the various peripherals that we will be using and start on the various control tasks.  More updates to come as they happen.

After months of trying to get a Free PCB from Dangerous Prototypes, I finally succeeded (read: was randomly chosen) this weekend.  I got myself a Bus Pirate PCB.  I'll post pictures once I build it up.

Anyway, I'm back in school and mostly focused on that.  I actually have a surprising amount of free time though.  I've stopped my other project work to focus most of my efforts on my mechatronics term project.

My adv. mechatronics course is basically focused on our term project.  All of lab time is dedicated to the project and the lecture provides support material that we will need to complete the project.  This class really follows Cal Poly's motto of learn by doing.

Any way for the project, my team is building a small ornithopter UAV.  When we first started out we were hoping to achieve something like this:

However, we have toned down our expectation and instead of trying to build some complex mechanism that would allow for control of the ornithopter solely through its wings, to something that is controlled by a tail.  The class is mostly focused on the PCB and software side of the build.  We went into the PCB design with the notion that the board should be able to be used outside this project.  The main use that we are shooting for is a general purpose control board for small UAV platforms.  Some of the specs of our board are:

• dsPIC33FJ128MC804
• 3 Servo PWM outputs and one ESC output
• 6DOF IMU (3 axis gyro and accelerometer)
• I2C port
• XBEE radio
• 2 LEDs
• Extra UART for debugging
• Leftover remappable pins broken out

The cool thing about the dsPIC33 is that it has remappable peripherals so you can configure your microcontroller how you want it and what pins the peripherals are on.  It make PCB layout a little easier since you have control over the pins.  It does take a little more planning though. Speaking of the board here it is.


It's a fairly small board, 2 x 1.5 inches.  I'm looking forward to assembling it and beginning development on it.  I'll post more updates once the boards are in and we have our prototype built.

In the next version of this board, I'd like to make it even more general purpose by increasing the number of servo outputs, adding servo/ppm inputs for RC receivers, etc.  Basically making it easier to integrate it into RC planes and other aerial vehicles.  I'm really interested in making a ball copter and a quadrotor.  I'd like to add some obstacle avoidance/basic navigation to a ball copter and have fly down the hall ways of my apartment complex.

That's all for now.  I will post updates in the coming weeks.

I flew an airplane about a month ago!!  My Uncle set me up with a Discovery Flight with his instructor.  Here are the take off and landing videos.



I've always wanted to get my pilot's license but this really pushed me to get serious about it and start saving.