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Showing posts from May, 2020

Tiny Quadcopter (Part 4)

I've got the two radios talking to each other, and I've written a trivial implementation of sumd, which I haven't tested yet. See https://github.com/davidji/rust-rc A bunch more stuff has arrived in the post, including: Tiny form factor NRF24L01+ modules, w/o LNA Combined Arduino Nano NRF24L01+ boards This is rather quicker than I expected, which makes me regret cobbling together an STM32F4 board, NRF24L01+ with LNA and buck boost converter. The trouble with the STM32F4 board is it's too long for the quadcopter frame. More annoyingly, so is the combined Arduino board. It's probably time to go back to the Arduino pro micro with Tiny NRF24L01+ module and LDO regulator. It would be interesting to know, when considering the energy efficiency of various things I might put on a quadcopter, how much power the quadcopter needs to hover and how that relates to it's weight. It's pretty likely that almost all the power goes to hovering, and weight is very

Tiny Quadcopter (Part 3)

I though the regulator on board the micro-controller would not be enough for the range extender, but it can actually output 300mA, so I think it is. Here's a bunch of reference information on the board , which may be useful in any case. The regulator is an AP7343 . It's drop-out voltage is only 310mV, but that still means I'd need 3.6V or so to still have regulated power, which is more than the LIPO will have at the end of it's discharge. At least when I plug in the USB, it can power the radio for testing. What can I do otherwise? The radio and the micro-controller can run on a voltage as low as 2V. I have adjustable regulators on hand, but they don't help much, because they have much higher drop out voltages. I have 2 Pololu S7V8F3 s  somewhere . They would be ideal if I could find them - they are pretty much designed for my purpose. What I actually found is an S7V8A, which I guess will do... Although I have the challenge of adjusting it before soldering it