First and foremost, Funds have been released! Second, I apologize for missing last weeks "Weekly State of the Quadcopter". I didn't have much time to work on the quadcopter, until this last week.

What's the status of the quadcopter? (this gets technical)

I have tested all the components except the power supply on a breadboard. This saves me the expense of assembling a board to find a defect after spending several hundred dollars putting it together. This has cost me about $100 in extra breadboarding expenses, but it was worth doing. The Xbee Wifi was the most challenging since it requires an extensive software stack to parse the protocol used, but I was able to do an active scan (find all the Wifi access points in the area), and connect to a WPA2 encrypted network and obtain an IP Address. More work will happen in this area in the near future.

As a result, unfortunately, I noticed a design flaw on a prototype board I had made. One of the pins for the Xbee WiFi is being pulled to ground where it should be connected to the main microcontroller.This pin is responsible for forcing the Xbee into SPI mode. Fortunately, this is an easy fix, but it does mean I need to respin the board. This lets me make some changes to the design before I assemble the board for the first time.

Many requests have come in regarding the need of redundant IMUs, and after experimentation, this is an unnecessary  feature with significantly added costs. As a result, the second IMU will be removed. By removing the second IMU, it gives me more board space to experiment with more features such as ultrasonic distance sensors, and potentially a camera. I will keep everyone up to date as to which features are feasible and run a poll as to which feature is the most wanted.

What has been the expenses for the last two weeks?

The following has been purchased since the funds were released:

• Hot Air Gun with Vacuum Pickup Tool
• Magnifying Headwear
• DC Power Supply
• "Thank You" cards for donors receiving something by mail.
• Propeller Sample, I have picked a 2.5" propeller set as a result.

Taking a Vacation... to work on the MicroFly

I will be taking a week vacation from Work for the week of July 21st to go back to Tennessee and will be spending most of this time working on the MicroFly. I will be posting updates every other day that week with my accomplishments. My goal is to spend this week assembling the first prototypes.

Thanks for your support,
Mike Ortman