Shout out something you’ve done lately you’re proud of. I spent most of last week building 10 new “soil boxes” for the vegetable portion of my small farm’s crops. Fully fenced in, basic irrigation setup and everything in the ground growing or ready to grow.
I am building something that in theory could be an RC plane/drone with an autopilot. And that would be a pretty cool end result. But for now I just refer to it as the autopilot module.
When in range, my RC radio can steer a bunch of servos manually, as per normal RC operations (I had a Futaba 7C with receiver laying around). When no input from the radio is detected within a set interval, the autopilot takes over, controlling its putch/yaw/roll based on sensors that read the same axises.
It also has a GPS module, so it knows its own position. It also had a barometer and temp sensors, so it knows its pressure adjusted altitude. It also has a LTE modem, so it connects a VPN tunnel to my own server. It also has a camera, and if the LTE connection is good enough I’ll be able to stream live video from the rig. If signal strength is low, it’ll cut streaming and send lower and lower resolution pictures as far as bandwidth permits; reading data from the server has a higher priority than sending video. This is how I can send navigational waypoints. If it loses all comes, namely no cell network and no RC radio, it will automatically revert within a set interval to backtrack-mode, which basically sends it back home, hoping to regain signal.
I’ve built, programmed, and tested the electronics successfully. The reason why I’m hesitant to call it a plane is because I’m going to have to spend a significant sum on the batteries and powerplant, and there are a few more steps before I’m willing to make that step. Testing a glider made from balse and 3D printed ABS worked pretty well, though.