Patrick O’Keefe

New Parts!

A bunch of parts came in the mail the other day. I also just got news that the only remaining part on backorder (IMU 5DOF) shipped today! Looks like things are coming together. Below you can see the assembled protoshield where the sensors will be mounted. I also took some better pictures of the XBee shield since the last ones were taken with the iPhone.

Below are the frame, the battery, the battery charger, the BESC, and the brushless motors. I’ve already assembled some of this with the team and I’ll post pics soon. The battery charger is a little confusing…but it is one of the many details that will be worked out in the process.

Next up, choosing a Tx Rx and implementing some sensors in code to see how things work.

XBee Shield

Last Friday a lot of components came in the mail for the quadcopter. The first thing I did was assemble to XBee Shield Kit…and it turned out to be much more work than I thought! Click on any image below for a larger preview.

Thanks to a helpful guide online the assembly was pretty straightforward, there was just a lot of soldering.

Completed shield next to its partner XBee on an XBee explorer for simple USB to serial interfacing with a computer:

Quadcopter Parts List

Parts have finally been ordered to begin the project! They should be arriving within the next week or two.

• Seeeduino – two more ‘Analog In’s than an Arduino
• Protoshield Kit
  
• XBee Shield Kit
• Turnigy Brushless Motors x4
  
• Turnigy Brushless ESC x4
• 4000 mAh LiPoly Battery
  
• MikroKopter Frame
• EPP1045 Propellers
  
• IMU 5 Degrees of Freedom
  
• Dual Axis Gyro IDG300
  

Still no official purchase for receiver/transmitter. As you can guess from above there will be an XBee on board, but will it be just for debugging or will it end up being the main control too?

Windows 7 on a MacBook Pro

In a moment of confusion, I downloaded the beta preview of Windows 7. Microsoft has been pretty cool about the whole process. At first, the demand was too high so they pulled the download to add more servers. My download of the entire OS took about 8 minutes.

The most advanced operating system and mirror in one…

I used VMWare Fusion to install it by making Fusion think it was installing Vista. If you plan to attempt this don’t do the easy install, but opt for the manual. I didn’t try the easy install, but I bet those shortcuts don’t apply to the new OS.

Install was done within half an hour. The only trick was getting VMWare Tools to install. I recommend shutting down the Virtual Machine right after the installation (don’t just suspend). For some reason I needed to do this before the tools would successfully install. Then, adjust your screen resolution in the setting since mine didn’t originate as widescreen. It doesn’t autodetect your display resolution so check your OS X Display settings if you don’t know them.

At first impression this just feels like a much lighter, faster Vista. No BSOD or unresponsive application so far. One cool thing I noticed about IE8 was its initial prompt to have it recommend sites based upon your browsing history.

I’ll be installing Quartus soon (the only reason I have Fusion) and then I’ll be able to tell if there is a performance boost or not. Check out IE8 and Chess Titans running in Unity mode below too…