Gerridae 190204, BrushFire 190210, Bonefish 190124

This week I continued working on three projects, Gerridae 190204, Brushfire 190210, and Bonefish 190124.

When working on the Gerridae 190204 project I started the week with a working differential thrust control system that had been pool tested the week before; on the autopilot side, I had a working compass but no GPS connection. I was able to rule out a hardware issue by swapping the Ublox module. I then was able to get the Ublox on Gerridae working by taking the parameters from BrushFire and saving a copy of them to Gerridae. Next week I will continue working on Gerridae by looking at Gerridae and BrushFire parameters side by side to consolidate the parameters to get Gerridae field ready.

When working on BrushFire 190210 I pulled the autopilot and control system off of a decommissioned hexacopter. I updated the firmware on the PixHawk Autopilot and went through initial setup and calibration. The system is now ready for testing. Next week I will be conducting test mapping missions on campus at AACC.

When working on Bonefish 190124 I assembled the kit, updated the firmware and reconnected the severed tether cable. At the beginning of the week, I was struggling with connecting the control system. The Pixhawk autopilot was not initializing; upon further troubleshooting, I had to reformat the Pixhawk and internal SD card then reflash all the firmware to get the Pixhawk to initialize. At the end of the week, I created a prototype for creating a quick disconnectable tether. Next week, I will be working on getting Bonefish 190124 pool ready for testing.