UNESCO London International Youth Science Forum (LIYSF) 2019

LIYSF Drones Masterclass 26th July 2019

We did another Drones Masterclass this week for the UNESCO London International Youth Science Forum. This time around, though, we changed the flying format a bit. The venue was the same as the April masterclass, with a designated flying area and one student flying at a time. What I thought this time was that we could try out a multi-protocol module in a Taranis transmitter and use a second Taranis transmitter for the students. This meant using my own Taranis QX7S, along with the CASA Taranis X9D connected via an audio cable.

The photo below shows the equipment used, minus the other Taranis X9D.

That which survives... only three of the frames were wrecked, and we used a fraction of the props and motors that we normally go through. Definitely a lot less destructive.

Right in the middle of the photo you can see a yellow dragonfly. I finally managed to create an acceptable dragonfly quadcopter that actually looks like a dragonfly. I'm quite proud of this, but it took about 6 months of work in the Fusion 360 CAD package to design it. And, some of the post 3D printing work involves filing a bit of the model off as I just can't get the CAD to remove it.

This is the first Dragonfly 3D prototype to fly - the day before the workshop! I have video of the event, but it's a beast. Very light and very manoeuvrable.

Getting back to the flying, I'm seriously impressed with the iRangeX IRX4 module that I got from FlyingTech. They were one of the few people that I could source this from in the UK, but it worked perfectly. I'll have to do a follow-up post on how to configure it in a trainer setup, as there are some issues with the Taranis that are not obvious, but the module itself is very simple. I used it in PPM mode, which meant that I could just set the rotary switch on the back to position 3 and the Taranis would bind and fly using the HubSan protocol. Fantastic! This meant that, when the students crashed, or even slightly before, I could drop the trainer switch on my radio and take over completely. This just shows that you do a LOT less damage if you shut the throttle off when you crash. In all the workshops before we've had them crashing and keeping the throttle open until I can reach it to turn it off. This was causing us to go through props and motors like crazy.

I spent almost the whole of the three hours flying again, which meant relying on the helpers to assist with the building.



There were a few interestingly weird builds this time around:

Eugh! Duct tape on the flight controller!

One group stuck the flight controller down with duct tape as the double sided sticky pads wouldn't stick. I have no idea how they got hold of the duct tape, as it was in the pack with the nets and never intended for use with the quadcopter building. Anyway, that's a new one. For the record I don't think it works as well as the foam pad as it didn't stick the flight controller down well enough. Those foam pads are really sticky.

Then, with the first group ready to fly, it turned out that they had put the metal prop removal tool underneath the flight controller. I'm really glad I have all the batteries, because if they had connected that up then the large piece of metal was shorting out all the connections on the underside of the PCB. They would have blown the LiPo up. That's one for the safety briefing, but, then, that's exactly why we do it the way that we do.

Other than that, we had all the usual backwards, swapped connections, incorrect prop and cables all over the place. Actually, this time they were really bad at tying the cables down, leaving things free to catch in the props. None of them took the obvious path and tied the cables flat onto the frame with velcro where they would be nice and neat and out of the way.

We finished up by showing them the FPV drone, and they took quite a lot of pictures with me just hanging it there in the middle of the room, although I did crash it when somebody walked in front of me and I couldn't see anything. This is one of the advantages of using the 40g micro drones as they're fundamentally safe. The students were interested in the difference between the more advanced one that I was flying using an EVO3 flight controller running CleanFlight and the cheaper HubSans that they were flying. Touching a drone while it's flying is definitely not to be tried with anything bigger, but it does demonstrate how their stability system works.

Thank you to everyone who helped - Diane, Elpida, Valerio and Farzaneh.

All in all it was a really good workshop, but now we have to repair and reset all the kit ready for the next one in four days time at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. This is the fastest turnaround we've ever had to do, so I need to get busy.

And thank you to @UCLEngEdu for inviting us.