Brandon and I have made some progress! Rather than delving into weeks upon weeks of theory and mathematical equations, we figured appealing to empiricism would accelerate the process, make the project more meaningful (being able to put something on the table sooner rather than later) and help facilitate an agile methodology of developing our RC plane--we're bound to make plenty of changes and spending weeks upon weeks of theoretical research only to end up changing or scrapping our plans won't feel that great.
Brandon's choice of material is cheap, sturdy, and somewhat versatile. Since the electronics components are a lot more cumbersome to purchase and configure, we thought it would be best for me to buy high-quality electronics components and try to adapt the airplane frame around them. I anticipate some leftover power from the high-quality components I purchased, so we can use that power for future improvements (faster plane, a camera, etc.).
After some research into RC planes and what is necessary, I purchased the following components:
- A brushless motor
- An Electronic Speed Controller (ESC)
- A 4S Lipo Battery
To be 100% honest, I have no idea why brushless motors are necessary and why they are used for RC applications--that'll be a great research question for a later day. Again, appealing more to an experimental rather than a theoretical approach to get something on the table requires skipping out on some fundamentals of RC plane component design as well as some research opportunities. As much as it would be a great learning opportunity to develop my own motor and ESC or to look into why ESC's and Lipo batteries are the standard for RC devices, it is, practically speaking, not in my best interest to spend hours upon hours developing something while having Brandon wait the equivalent time twiddling his thumbs waiting to improve something about the plane design.
Reading about different methodologies of engineering led me to this "bottom-up" approach--"The bottom up engineering method is essentially a 'start with a product and make it work' approach" (https://www.fastengineering.com.au/single_post.php?id=Top%20Down%20vs%20Bottom%20Up%20Engineering).
Essentially what I'm doing, then, is taking well-established products and engineering to just "make it work" with whatever Brandon and I make. However, I'll still have an opportunity to design my own component: the receiver.
Receivers and transmitters are rather expensive (some going as high as $100 on amazon with others costing $50). I've already spent a bit of money on the motor, ESC, and battery (which has made me slightly regret not planning more and doing more theory initially). Remember the other plane I lost? Well fortunately I still have the transmitter! I just need to engineer a way for that to work with my own Arduino. I have recently taken a class on electromagnetics and we briefly covered antennas--this will be a great opportunity to save money and practice some more low-level engineering while minimizing the time spent on other components and consequently, the amount of waiting Brandon will need to do.
The plan for now? Use an Arduino to simply trigger the motor to run for 3s to ensure that the plane will generate some lift. A transmitter and receiver aren't necessary at this stage. Brandon just needs some feedback to see if his design will work with my electronics skeleton as well as an estimate on the weight distribution.
Excited to engineer my own receiver and watch something fly!
