Principles of Engineering — Falcon

Sprint Review 3!

Another recap of our two week progress so far! This review was in front of the class and professors again, and we got some good feedback. Here is the summary:

MVP: Create a three node, cable suspended camera system capable of ‘flying’ a powered gimbal in a room-sized…

Going Wireless

After experimenting with several wired communication protocols, namely serial and I2C, we explored further into wireless communication protocols. In our final product, a wired setup would introduce unnecessary physical limitations, while a wireless setup will allow us to set up the system much more…

Sprint Review 2!

It’s time for a recap of Falcon! On Friday, November 6th, we had our second sprint review, but the first major one in front of all of the other teams. Overall, I think it was a successful outing! Here is the summary:

Motors!

One of the first decisions we faced was what motors to use. This was a cross subsystem decision as the choice would impact many elements of the design. The motors we considered fell into two categories, steppers and servos. Steppers has the advantage of being easy to control to a precise location, but they are…

The Communication Predicament

Picture this. You have a Raspberry Pi. You have not one, not two, but THREE Arduinos you want to control. Don’t panic just yet, we’ve been there too, and I’m about to give you the inside scoop on how we solved this issue.

We Changed Our Name!

Skycam was clearly a registered name of the stadium-size cable-suspension robots.

So we changed it to better represent our avian spirit and tenacity.

Introducing: Falcon!

The logo is still temporary. Don’t worry

Turning Points into a Path

While work continues on controlling our newly arrived motors, we’re also developing the software and mathematics that will allow us to transform the user’s commands into direct controls for our Nodes (the modules that will be spooling in or reeling out the wire which holds our…

Sprint Review Time!

We only had about a week before our first spring review. But we made some progress! See pictures at the bottom. Here is a list of the sprint review topics we will be covering in class:

Learning Goals