While I was doing the test to see if yaw, roll and pitch were working fine, I pulled the pitch stick, expecting it to pitch backward, but instead it pitched forward, and crashed on the radiator, and destroyed the propeller.

It is a bit confusing, because everything worked fine, except for this little nuance of have that channel reversed.

After a bit of searching I realized that the pitch has to be reversed because that’s how it’s setup in the ArduCopter code.

If you go in the First time setup page, in the RC calibration section, you this line:

CH 2: Pitch Forward = low PWM – Pitch Back = High PWM

Low PWM means “stick back”, thus, pulling the stick would pitch forward, which is what I experienced.

But if want to stay sane, you probably need to reverse the channel used for pitch: you can do it either in the Mission Planner, changing the parameter in the advanced options or directly in your radio configuration.

This was a pic of the final result, but let’s go through the other steps of the building process.

Arducopter Frame

After the soldering of the power distribution board and assembling the motor’s arms, the next step has been assembling the frame.

The process was pretty easy, but a bit longer than I expected expecially because of all those little screws that kept falling off. Also I had a bit of problems trying to fix both the APM and the received to the frame. At the end I just fixed the receiver with a zip tie, but not the APM.

Here the timelapse of the frame assembling part:

Routing cables and mounting APM

One week later, I went with the assembling: I routed all input and output wires, and mounted the APM on the frame.

I decided to fix the APM to the middle plate, by taping with a double-sided foam tape the APM2 case (and making sure it doesn’t fall off by using some zip-ties). I had a bit of problem fitting the APM in its case because the pins used to keep the daughterboard were too high and were interfering with the top of the case, so I had to cut them off.

I attached the receiver on one side of the top plate, so that it doesn’t cover the GPS.

Here the time-lapse of that part, too.

Assembling and balancing props

Before going to the firmware upload process, I wanted to get all the hardware parts ready, and the last bit missing was propellers balancing and assembling.  I found out that in one of the bags I had 2 CW propellers instead of one per type: I’m glad I had ordered 4 bags of props instead of just 2. I tested for balance in props using a paper clip and some normal tape.

As usual, the raw unedited timelapse of that part:

Uploading the firmware and bench tests

And then it came the time to upload the firmware, to do the calibration of radio signals, ESCs, to verify the right direction of motors and checking the chart of sensors were moving in the right direction.

The bench power supply I did turned out to be very useful for testing and calibration.

Nothing strange to report during this phase: also the ESC calibration, which usually is pretty complicate and is causing us a lot of pains in OpenROV, was completed successfully at the first attempt.

Attaching propellers and marking the front of the drone

The last steps included mounting the props and sticking a hi-reflective orange sticker to make the front arm.

Bonus video: First test flight

After everything was assembled, I tried taking off indoor (was already pretty late and dark, and didn’t have battery for the radio transmitter).

At the beginning you can see the copter tilting always on the same side, the back arm: that was caused by the motor turning in the wrong direction: I switched the motor wires and immediately the quad started to hover just a bit.

The yaw was working perfectly, but when I tried raising the throttle and actually taking off, the quad was drifting a bit on the side. This could be caused by a few reasons:

• One motor or arm is a bit tilted, so is “pulling” slightly diagonally and not precisely on the vertical
• The APM is not flat and tilt not correctly statically compensated
• The copter is getting trapped in its own turbulence given the (small) size of the room

Some in-flight auto trim is needed, but first I’ll have to check for tilted or bent arms, and try to re-calibrate the accellerometer on a flat surface.

Here is a video of my first flight:

Videos

What you have seen here were just some raw unedited cuts of the assembly time-lapse. When the copter flies I’ll make a nicer (and shorter) video with all the steps.

So I decided to make two cables to allow powering both the radio and the copter from my bench power supply.

I basically created 2 power cables, one that goes into the battery socket and one that goes into the radio power plug: on one side the respective plugs and sockets (a JST connector for the radio and a XT60 connector for the battery) and on the other side two banana plugs that go into the power supply.

Actually for the TX I adapted the one I used for testing the OpenROV.

As you can see from the pictures, the routing of ESCs/Motors cables and APM to receiver is still a bit messy, just as I left it after the last : I just wanted to see if everything was working before tidying up everything. Also I need to find a way to fix the APM to the frame and still keep some space for the received.

]]> http://dronesandrovs.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/testing-arducopter-using-a-bench-power-supply/feed/ 6 ArduCopterBenchSupply simonech ArduCopterBenchSupply ArduCopterBenchSupply_Copter ArduCopterBenchSupply_Radio http://dronesandrovs.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/a-better-openrov-cape-wiring/ http://dronesandrovs.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/a-better-openrov-cape-wiring/#comments Sun, 09 Dec 2012 15:18:56 +0000 simonech http://dronesandrovs.wordpress.com/?p=278 Continue reading →]]> The OpenROV cape comes without any connector and last week when I tested the cape I just soldered wires directly to the cape. But it was not very neat, as I had to use alligator clips to connect it to the power supply. Also having the LEDs soldered directly to the cape makes it difficult to mount it in the E-Chassis and also difficult to change LEDs or plug-in something else.

So today I sat down and de-soldered the wires and mounted the JST connectors.

I didn’t solder anything on the AUX2 port as for the moment I don’t need anything and also because the JST connector doesn’t fit in the AUX2 port because it’s too close to the other connector and there is not enough clearance from the component on the back and below the pins would interfere with the BeagleBone power supply once the cape is on the main board.

Watch out for the little clearance

Probably the solution here will be to solder a small cable with a connector… or wait for a rev 2 of the cape with more clearance (and hopefully pins that have the right spacing for soldering connectors and not meant only for direct soldering wires)

I started assembling it one step at a time, and so far I assembled the motor’s arms and the power distribution board.

Power Distribution Board

I started off with soldering the PDB, as I knew it would have been painful since I’m still getting experienced with soldering. And in fact I had to de-solder and re-solder a few times because I screwed some joints.

Jjust to get a taste of the assembly here is a quick rendering of the timelapse of that assembly part.

The most painful part was soldering the battery wires to the board, since they didn’t fit in the holes. Also I soldered the ESC cables directly to the board, as I couldn’t get the dean connectors to solder on it. But apparently mine was a pretty old kit, and lately soldering the ESC wires to the board became the recommended solution.

And at the end it didn’t come out too bad.

Motor’s Arms

That step was a bit easier: no soldering involved, just some cable routing and screwdriver work. And again a quick rendering of the timelapse of that phase:

Here the final result with the 4 arms nicely aligned and ready for the next step.

Next step

Next step, hopefully this weekend, would be assembling the frame of the copter and maybe setting up also the electronics.

Setting up the cape

The prototype cape came without headers or connectors so my first step was installing 4 sets of 90° headers for the 3 ESCs and the tilt servo. But ESCs and servos are not the only things that have to connected to the cape: also the 2 AUX output and the power supply have to connected to the cape. At the moment I didn’t have any connector available so I soldered the cable directly on the board itself, but I think of buying 3 JST 2 pins connectors to make it possible to switch devices and power connectors (battery, or bench supply).

I soldered the 2 high power LEDs to the same AUX1 so that I keep AUX2 free for any other payload, and then directly to wires so that I can power the cape with 2 alligator clips, but I’ll replace both with the JST connectors.

Loading updated cockpit and arduino code

After I got the electrical part working, I got the latest code (I had already copied the official image on the SD). It was super-easy: all that was need logging on the beaglebone via ssh and launch an update command which goes online and pull all the latest changes from the official github repository. Just remember that “it goes online” so your board has to be connected to the internet, and not just to your computer with the ad-hoc connection.

On the other hand I couldn’t get the cape updated with the latest arduino code via the UI. It kept on failing and at the end I decided to remove the chip from the cape, put it on my UNO and load the code from my computer. No idea why it failed since the chip has the right bootloader on it.

Plugging in ESCs and Servo

Once I finally had the arduino code on the cape I was able to control brightness and tilt servo via the Cockpit’s web UI. I had some problems with the brushless motor, which was not running at all. Thanks to the latest diagnostic screen I tried manually controlling the speed and at the end I just ended up calibrating the ESC again. And after that everything went smoothly.

Testing everything

As final step of the day, I decided to do a complete system test, both with the keyboard and the gamepad. Apart from the beaglebone shutting down sometimes when there is too much current drained from the motors the cockpit software worked great. Here is a short video that shows the test:

As you see, also the tilt servo acts a bit weird at the end of the video: I think it’s the gamepad sending some noise that needs to be filtered somehow, but apart from this, everything looks pretty for tagging the code for the release. Other improvements will be done later, and hopefully everyone will update the software as first thing after they receive the kits.

Especially the calibration is important because otherwise the ESC doesn’t know which are the limits of the transmitter, and it cannot control precisely the speed of the motor.

Before putting a ESC in any complex Arduino project, it is better to get used to how a ESC works using a very simple sketch.

But before seeing the code, let’s see how to wire it up, because care must be taken otherwise nothing will work.

Wiring up the circuit and powering the ESC

Usually ESCs need a voltage higher than the one provided by the Arduino from his 5V pin: typically they need 2 LiPo cells (around 8V). To achieve that all the circuit must be powered from an external power supply connected directly to the ESC and not via the Arduino, which will be powered by the BEC circuit of the ESC. To make that happen it’s enough to connect the red and black of the control connector to the 5V and GDN of the Arduino board.

The rest of the circuit is pretty easy: from pin 9 of the Arduino we have the signal for the ESC, and into pin 0, the voltage reading from the potentiometer comes in.

Let’s now see the code.

Arduino code

A ESC is made to receive inputs from a R/C transmitter, so it works as a servo: to control it you can use the Arduino Servo Library, so the test code is based on the servo library basic example published on the Arduino site.

#include <Servo.h>

Servo esc;
int throttlePin = 0;

void setup()
{
esc.attach(9);
}

void loop()
{
int throttle = analogRead(throttlePin);
throttle = map(throttle, 0, 1023, 0, 179);
esc.write(throttle);
}

It just takes the reading of the “throttle”, maps it from 0-1023 to 0-179 (analog reading to servo “degrees”) and then sends it to the ESC via the Servo library. Even in its extreme simplicity this sketch it very useful when you want to calibrate a new ESC to work with the Servo library of Arduino.

Calibration

Now that everything is setup, chances are that you motor might not rotate, or might rotate only forward, or might rotate only to 80% of the throttle (forward and reverse) and then stop: all these are symptoms of lack of calibration, or a calibration done with a different range of PWM signals.

More or less all ESCs have a similar calibration procedure:

• Power up the ESC while the having maximum forward throttle applied
• You’ll hear a tone and some beeps and after a while (usually 2 seconds) you’ll hear a confirmation tone and the led will blink a few times with a different color: this indicates that the ESC has measured the wavelenght of max throttle.
• At this point apply zero throttle (in a fwd/reverse ESC this means full throttle reverse), wait again few seconds for the tones and led to blink: full reverse measured.
• Then move to central (only for fwd/reverse ESCs) and wait again for the tone and blinks.
• Have fun with the motors

Another possibility is that even after that procedure, the motor will not turn immediately in reverse, or will only go 50% of forward speed: that’s because ESCs are programmable, and you can change many of their behaviors via either a programming card or via, again as with the calibration, hearing and decoding beeps and blinks.

A video is worth a thousands words, so here is a video I recorded to show the calibration procedure used with my ESC (sorry for the bad lighting and sound, my first instructional video).

There were a lot of stands of companies doing robotics and projects funded by universities, so, even if interesting, not of immediate interest: but there were also a few interesting stands on drones, 3D printing and the stand of the Italian version (and partner) of Ponoko.

VirtualRobotix

VirtualRobotix is a community of people using and developing multicopters centered around a closed source microcontroller but that uses the same Arducopter firmware as the APM2 used by the diydrones community. They showed their copters, the new microcontroller, the VR Brain (which differs from the APM mainly because it has much more memory on board and have more hardware encoded filters and not just the ones in the firmware).

LUSA

LUSA stands for Low-cost Unmanned Solar Aircraft which is a park-flyer with more than 2 meters of wingspan and with the wings totally covered by solar cells. In the test they did, in a sunny day, the glider can fly on the power coming from the solar cells alone. Pretty impressive.

PowerWasp 3D printer

There were many 3D printers on show at the expo: makerbots, Repraps and various variations of the latter. But the one that more impressed is an all-Italian designed and built PowerWasp: the main difference with the other printers is that this one is a modular printer. It’s built on a very solid 3 axis structure, with an interchangeable  tool bay, that can host the standard plastic extruder, but can also host Dremel or any other rotary tool thus making it a CNC mill. And it’s in the works and almost ready a needle that allows printing on clay.

Even cooler is their vision: they want to build a gigantic printer that can be used to “print” houses directly in clay (the adobe houses)

Vectorealism

I also passed by the stand of the local partner of Ponoko, called Vectorealism: we discussed a bit about the problems I encountered with cutting the OpenROV lasercut layouts and they they gave me some good tips on how to adapt the design to have a better fit in the nodes. And we also discussed about the possibility of making the OpenROV layouts available directly on their “verified” gallery of open designs.

Innovation happens here

I had the impression that it’s among the community of makers that innovation seems to happen, as well as innovation in software happens in co-working spaces and small companies of “geeks”. Not in the forums for innovation funded by governments with hundreds of thousands of Euros of taxpayers money. It’s an exciting time to be a maker… now let’s build something!

Today I had the honor and pleasure to present OpenROV at the Node.js Conference Italy: I presented how the OpenROV software works, especially focusing on the the Node.js part of it.

The Node.js Conference Italy

The conference was amazing, with almost 200 people attending, and a lot standing because there was a very low drop rate and the room was, with many speakers coming from the big players on Node.js.

It was a great experience, and I got great feedback from the attendees, which liked the idea of having the an underwater robot running on an embedded linux and Node.js… “finally something new and different from the usual multicopters” (cit.)

Useful links

A lot of people liked the idea of the treasure hunting in the underwater cave: here you have a detailed report on the legend of Hall City Cave, a report of a preliminary exploration, and a video of a presentation in which Eric and David talk about that legend (and also how the OpenROV project got started).

Some more links:

• All the plans are on GitHub: software, electronics and body.
• The SerialPort library for node.js – https://github.com/voodootikigod/node-serialport
• The slides of the talk are available, both as javascript presentation and on SlideShare.

How my BeagleBone got burnt

I little story behind the preparation of the presentation: as usual I was preparing the demos just a few days before the conference, and, while trying to connect the beaglebone to the arduino, something when wrong, and my beaglebone died. And just 4hrs before catching the flight to Milano, I had to drove to my usual supplier of electronics (from which I buy stuff online), near Ghent, to buy a new BeagleBone (actually I bought 2 of them, just to play safe).

Finding the right cutting parameters

But before doing the real cuts, since the last time I cut stuff I had a few problems with the laser settings, I decided to do a test run to try and find out the best power and speed settings for my type of plexiglass. To do this I took inspiration from this nice pattern generator that automatically creates lots of pattern with a range of different speed and power settings.

I created 30 circles and I cut them in a grid, testing values of speed from 10 to 30 mm/s and of power, from 50% to 75% (of a 130W laser cutter). As you can see from the picture, only the first 2 rows (cut at 10 and 15mm/s) are really cut through: in particular, in the first row the pieces felt down on their own, while on the second row I had to push a bit.

At the end I decided to cut using 10 mm/s and 50% of power (which means 65W) which is a lot less than 10 mm/s and 80% as I used the last time: and this time the cut came out less burnt.

The new EChassis

And then I cut the part for the new EChassis plus some spare parts for the main shell.

And after cutting I tried assembling the EChassis, without glue, just to see if everything was cut correctly and all pieces fit.

The various joins are a bit loose but not as much as the other time: so reducing the power helped here. Next time I’ll try raising the speed or lowering the power even more to see if that helps a bit.

This new chassis looks a bit less solid than the other one, but has much more room for the ESCs and the BeagleBone and all the cables that have to fit into the chassis.

I also like the idea of having a removable front plate that is only attached to the main body via a metal clip: this way if you have a different webcam, or what to add something else you only have to redesign this bit and you don’t even have to rebuild the whole chassis.

Next step will be, trying to setup the BeagleBone with all that is needed and start playing with the software.

During that week we learned how to use the various tools available (3D printer, lasercutter and CNC mill) and we had time to work on our personal projects, and of course I worked on the OpenROV.

Using a laser cutter for the first time

Using the laser cutter is not as easy as it might look at first sight: one thing that needs to really be taken care of is the cutting settings. Too low power and the part will not be cut through, too high power and the size of the cut will be too much and your pieces will be between 0,1 and 0,3mm smaller (or larger, depends on how you look at them) and will not match perfectly when you have joints that relies only on one part fitting inside the other one. Also, since power is a combination of the actual wattage and the speed of the beam, you can achieve the same result with a low speed and low wattage or a higher speed and high wattage. But of course higher speed also means less precision when cutting curved parts, but lower speed also means longer cutting time (and, depending on how the fablab is setup, higher cost of usage).

Another thing to keep in mind is that the same settings will not work the same on the whole surface of the cutter due to attenuation of the beam power: close to the laser source it will cut more than when the plotter is on the other side of the cutting surface. So cutting the whole ROV on just one run was not a good idea because I had some parts cut through, and other that I had to force a lot out of the sheet (and a few times breaking them).

At the end I had all parts cut through, even if not with the best precision (at the end I over-powered the beam to make sure I would cut the pieces, so I bit over-burnt the edges): it’s ok as first attempt at cutting, and when I assemble with glue I’ll try to make sure the pieces stay in the right position.

Alternative method of bending

Once I cut everything, since I don’t have a wire-plastic bender, I experimented a bit with a nice solution someone at the workshop found out: it’s based on the project of a flexible box cut from one piece of acrylic.

Basically a honeycomb pattern is cut into the part of acrylic you want to bend, so that it becomes flexible. I made some tests, and it works well with boxes, but in the ROV than I would need to make it rigid again as otherwise it might start wiggling too much once in water. But I’ll experiment with that solution in the future.

Below here are some of the pics of the various pieces as they were coming out of the laser cutter.

I also tried assembling the impeller to the motor shaft, but doesn’t look like it’s going to work with the parts I have.

As you can see from pictures below the shaft has a small hole on the side for a small hex screw (but not part of the package) and a small hole for a screw on the top. Probably a correctly shaped cap would be needed, but it was not part of the package either. Also the shaft is just long enough for the base of the propeller, but not enough to get to the cone. At this point I really don’t know how I could fix the impeller to the motor’s shaft without it slipping. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment.

Together with the motors and ESCs I also received the servo that tilts the electronics chassis: this always impresses me. I know its dimensions (23mm) but I didn’t realize it would have been that small. Look at the picture above, it’s smaller than a USB plug.

Next step is trying to play with an Arduino and try to control the ESCs and the motor from the BeagleBone. And if you have suggestions on how to fix the impeller, my comment form is free for everyone.

Rubber and parts for batteries’ tube

For the O-Rings I couldn’t find silicone, but in this case sizes were exactly the same: I got 2.62mm width (with the original US size was 0.103″=2.618mm).

Also I couldn’t find the a nylon tube, so I bought a PVC tube, of 32mm OD and 1.8mm thickness, which is more or less the same size of the tube in the BOM. Too bad I had to buy 4 meters of it… I guess I’ll have enough for 6 ROVs

I also found, in the same shop I found the O-Rings (shop is called Rubber Center) the end caps for the batteries’ tube.

Acrylics

I also passed by the local UPS to pick the 7kg parcel with all the plastics I ordered. The shipping was pretty quick, and everything very well packed and protected from accidents.

Now I just have to wait for the iMal FabLab to cut the pieces out of the big sheets. I just realized I ordered double the size of everything but the clear white sheet: I hope this is not going to be the one I need to replace immediately.

Now the only thing missing is the package from HobbyKing with motors, ESCs and propellers, and then I can start experimenting with the propulsion section of the ROV.

Today OpenROV got funded on Kickstarter. As you can see from the screenshot above, it received 111622 USD of pledges (more than 5 times the funding needed to start the project).

By the end of September 118 persons will receive either a fully assembled OpenROV or a complete kit: it will be exciting to see what all these new users will do with their new underwater vehicle.

Since I’m trying to build it on my own, sourcing all parts myself, I didn’t pledge for the complete kit: I pledged instead for the 100USD reward which is a red beanie with the OpenROV logo on it.

On another news, I’ve ordered all the propulsion system and the acrylics, and they should arrive end of this week or next week. I’ll keep you posted

Electronics

I got everything I needed except a strange resistor of 720Ohm which apparently doesn’t exist.

I didn’t find the LED with integrated driver circuit, but I found a LED driver circuit that is pretty small and allows powering four 1W LED: I’ve only got 2 of them, so should be ok.

Hardware

At Brico I found the threaded rod with the nuts and hex and the epoxy clue (not Loctite but Pattex two compounds epoxy glue with dispenser).

I also bought an heat gun that I’ll use for bending the outer shell once cut. Unfortunately the O-Rings needed are too big for a normal bricolage store, so I think I’ll need to go to a more specialized store. Looking around on the next I found a store near Brussels that sells only rubber, called Rubber Center. There they should the O-Rings and maybe also the nylon tube with caps for the batteries.

Now I just need to wait for the components to start trying and build the ArduSwimmer BB cape for OpenROV.

• The BeagleBone card hosts a webserver running a Node.js application
• The browser interacts with node.js app to watch the video feed and to control the ROV
• The Node.js app talks to an Arduino to drive motors and in the future reading sensor’s values.

But a standard Arduino is too big to fit, doesn’t have the connectors for the BeagleBone, so what they built is a BeagleBone cape, with on top an ATMega 328, some power circuitry both for the ATMega and the BeagleBone, the filtered and protect connection to the BeagleBone’s pins and finally the output pins for the motors and servos and AUX output (Leds)

The schematic is a bit difficult to read (maybe just for me because I don’t have a lot of knowledge in electronics) and even more difficult is the board layout. But with a bit of time I got to understand everything and made a list of the components needed to build the cape.

Over the weekend I’ll try getting assembling the components on a solderless breadboard before trying my luck at building it on a protoboard.

The usual Imperial vs SI problem

Lucky the designs of the OpenROV are in in mm, not in inches and fractions of inches, but there is still a little problem: not all parts of the body are cut to size. All the tubes are bought in standard sizes, and being the designers in the US, of course, they only had standard sizes in inches. Unfortunately in Europe the standard sizes are in mm and obviously the 2 standards don’t match.

Electronics tube

The electronics tube is 4″ OD/ 3″-3/4 ID which is 101,6 mm OD – 95,2 mm ID converted to SI. Obviously nobody is that crazy to make a standard size that is such a weird number, so the EU size is 100 mm OD - 94 mm ID. It wouldn’t be such a problem if nothing had to go inside and fit to the mm. Unfortunately the tube has to be sealed with the caps, that have to fit perfectly in the tube. And these caps are exactly 94mm of diameter, and I think this might be a bit tight. But I’ll cut to the right size and then see if this is a problem: otherwise I’ll slightly reduce the size of the caps.

Props shrouds

The same problem is for the shrouds of the propellers: original specs are  3″-1/4 – 3″ (82,5 mm – 76,2 mm) while the standard size is 80 mm – 74 mm. This has 2 problems:

• the propeller is exactly 3″ (76,2), so it won’t fit inside the 74 mm guard.
• The shroud has to be glued to a arc guide whose radius is 41,25mm, so the 40mm radius of the tube won’t fit perfectly.

To overcome the first problem I’ll buy a smaller prop. And for the matching with the brace, I’ll see when I assemble everything: maybe a bit of epoxy might do the trick. Or if not I’ll modify the laser cutting pattern.

Ordering acrylics

The standard of acrylics sheets sold in US are as well in inches, and come in fixed sizes. Here in Germany I found a producer that sells Plexiglas sheets cut to exact size. So I don’t need to buy standard sizes and pay twice to plastic I don’t need.

So, here are the types and sizes of acrylic I’m going to buy:

• Blue, Length: 610 mm Width: 460 mm, 20,86€
• Clear, Length: 480 mm Width: 200 mm, 11,38€
• White, Length: 200 mm Width: 240 mm, 9,89€
• Electronics Tube 100mm OD x 94mm ID, 180mm Length, 14,23€
• Shrouds Tube 80mm OD x 74mm ID, 150mm Length, 7,93€

A European Bill of Materials

To help other makers that would like to source all parts themselves from Europe, I forked the original BOM and made one with EU suppliers (or suppliers that ship to EU at least): OpenROV 2.3 – EU suppliers.

As you can see from the picture, the modules are super small.

I’ve had been following their progress lately, but it looked like they were stuck, or stopped the effort. Most likely they were just doing things not totally in the open, and the Kickstarter is explaining their lack of communication: probably they were busy doing “marketing” instead of doing coding. The project reminds me a lot of ArduPilot of the first days, with still lots of things untested, and big visions.

Definitely got hooked into this: underwater expoloration has always been in my dreams. I read most of the books by Clive Cussler and I love his passion for shipwrecks, and even though I never scuba dived,  the underwater world always excited me: did you know we (as human scientists) know more of what lies on the surface of Mars and other planets than what is beneath below the sea?

Given my experience (at least knowledge as I haven’t really started building my air drone yet) with RC and similar stuff, I decided that I fund the project but just to give them money, not to buy any kit: this time I’ll self source all materials and try build it myself. I’ll cut the acrylic at the iMAL FabLab, and will build all the electronics myself (I’m becoming more and more expert).

So when I’ll be back from my 2 weeks of holidays I’ll start ordering parts and will keep updated with the development of my building.