Quad Squad

• 

  The broken copter

Inspiration

We wanted an interesting project to use a raspberry pi. The idea came up of building a drone or quad-copter, so we figured the best way to go about it was just jump straight in and started buying parts.

What it does

It "flies"...given user input. The quad-copter uses a set of four rotors that spin in sync to lift the copter off the ground.

How we built it

We came to the hackathon with a box of parts and a raspberry pi and just started putting everything together. The build was actually a complete mash up of taking the frame apart to solder something to the arms or find a place to mount the pi. Then in order to pilot the quad-copter we used an ssh connection set up off of a simple network hotspot.

Challenges we ran into

Literally everything. Starting with learning aeronautics, getting input from an accelerometer meant for an arduino, getting an ssh connection without a static ip or dns, getting the pi to communicate with the esc's, putting everything on the frame, motors not synchronizing, breaking the os of the pi, shattering all of the propellers...

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We came in with the goal of making something that gets off the ground. We made it happen after 30 sleepless hours straight of working on the copter.

What we learned

Notes: Tie the copter down before testing, so much aeronautics, and that we need to pace ourselves.

What's next for Quad Squad

We plan to make the copter more functional, with better user controls and semi-drone-like behavior.

Built With

• accelerometer
• esc
• motors
• propellers
• python
• raspberry-pi