DRONE SWARM vErsion 3 Assembly:

Assembled FRAMES:

I assembled 4 identical drone frames, complete with motors and motor driver boards, so they are all ready for the version 3 boards. The frame in the top right is in the process of being built into a full version 3 drone. It has a control board already mounted.

Each of these frames is made completely out of off the shelf components bought from Banggood. This means that spare parts are readily available and I can focus on designing and improving the control and radio boards which is where everything happens for autonomous flight. The frame only serves as a platform which can be controlled by my hardware and software.

Control Board Assembly:

The control board had lots of components on the front and back sides, so I had to use a 3D printed jig (white plastic rectangle) to align everything because it would not sit flat in the table. I was also able to secure the jig to the table and the stencil to the jig to make the assembly process easier. (top left image)

On the bottom side of the board (top right image) the cutouts are visible for the components on the bottom, which have already been mounted.

The third board introduced in the version 3 design is this small adapter (bottom left image). It allows me to expand the densely packed pins in the header on the top of the board to a more usable spacing. It also attaches buttons to the reset lines for each micro controller so I can reach them easily while programming.

Here is the adapter board connected to the header on the control board (bottom right image).

RADIO Board Assembly:

Since the top only had one component (the GPS) this board was easy to assemble. The GPS was soldered on first using the oven. Next, the connector for the ribbon cable was soldered using the oven, because the pins were too close together to solder by hand. Finally, the rest of the components were added by hand. The mounting point for the xbee module was not populated at this point.

Assembled V3:

I built a completed version 3 drone on one of the frames, with a battery and all of my circuit boards, so it was ready to be programmed.