Worked on completely redoing the AI model connected to it. The original system flow for the AI model would be to use YOLOv8 for everything, including segmentation, identification, etc. However, I rewrote the code to instead just segment the area to identify where vegetation exists in the first place, and then just use pure HSV calculations to determine vegetation health. I saw the FPS rise from ~4 to up to 7 while keeping a huge amount of the quality and expanding the size of the pixels greatly!

Sorry, it’s been a while since the last devlog! Again, I’m on a bit of a time crunch here so i dont have a huge amount of time to dedicate to writing these devlogs (I’m also entering this into a local engineering fair, NOT for school though)

Let’s go through all of the changes that I’ve made so far!

1. Fabrication of the drone:
   I’ve begun to physically attach things such as motors, the battery, and the flight controller onto the drone body. Some things have been a trouble, especially figuring out how to get the ESP32 onto there, i honestly might just tape it… I’ve also 3d printed all of the parts in CAD and attached them onto the drone! However, as you can see in the video, one of the motors was found to be defective or broken or something upon the first test, so I was unable to do my first flight test, but my calculations should say that it works!! We’ll see.
2. CAD design
   I’ve designed longer legs (theres only 2 in the image there should be 4 lol), and a bigger container to contain the seeds. In addition, I also made a cap to contain the flight controller and ESC, with holes to allow for heat transfer from the overheating battery.

Sorry for the lack of devlogs recently! This project has been getting increasingly stressful as I have a deadline to finish this project before my family goes on vacation for a while + school is getting mega stressful

Here is a brief rundown of everything that I’ve done so far:

1. Completely revamped the CAD. The body is now thinner, more screws are used rather than just glue (Which is always smart), the motors are raised up higher to give more clearance for all of the other parts, and I’m currently prototyping a cap to attach on top of the drone.
2. In terms of physical work, I got a ton done. Aside from starting the 3d printing process with the main body, I’ve also completely soldered all four motors to the ESC and flight controller, although the wires are messy and I might have to do some more work there.
3. I’ve also gotten the ESP32 and OV5640 to reliably stream to my local IP network through a remote battery, although it is highly choppy and it looks like the soldering is not well done so I’ll redo that bit.

I made some issues about the frame and how to organize all of the electronic components, but overall it’s still salvagable. I’m currently working on a cap for all of the electronics in cad and a way to screw the electronics using an internal thread m3.

Worked on properly setting up the CLIP model for the AI model to identify objects! I don’t know too much python so this took a lot of troubleshooting but after a few tutorials I got something that I am kind of happy with! The ultimate goal of the AI model is to be able to identify areas of high and low vegetation and then see where the drone needs to go, but as of right now I made it detect my face and a monitor in order to just test it out.

In addition, the video feed is running a smooth ~10 fps right now I think, which I am happy with. The main bottleneck is the AI system so I’m gonna focus on optimizing that and adding multithreading.

A lot of changes in the CAD. I calculated the weight of this thing and I found out that the volume was way too high (~1120 cm^3, which in 40% infill nylon is almost 2 pounds). So, to solve this, I cut down on the total volume of the drone by a ton in order to reduce the weight of the chassis so that I’m actually able to have a payload. Here’s list of the changes made:

1. motor arms were made skinnier and more rounded as they didn’t need to be huge blocks. They’re also more elevated, not related to weight but it allows for more clearance for the battery
2. drone frame was made thinner in terms of both height and I cut off the sides and forced all of the components into an X shape, although I’m probably gonna change this later.
3. Landing legs are more practical (no more fancy curves) but I do think that I’ll try to keep on reducing their girth.

Note that in this design the seed holder is not implemented yet and neither are the motors, but right now the volume is ~700 cm^3, which is like a 38% decrease which I am happy with! Probably gonna go up to 800 cm^3 later but its alright

Worked on soldering the motors to the esc and also the battery and capacitor to the electronic speed controller. I also started working on connecting the C8 radar controller but I accidentally dropped it and it landed on the capacitor, which completely fried it. So, I ordered new ones!

Made the main body of the drone thicker to properly accommodate the battery and esp32, and then shifted some holes and components around accordingly in the CAD.

I also made the dropping component of the drone with a simple DC motor attached to a trapdoor, as well as a second DC motor that controls the direction of the camera. I purchased a new OV5640 which should provide higher quality video feed with a better FOV, but I am very worried about video stability, so I’ll probably get some kind of foam to help, and if it’s absolutely necessary I’ll get a separate camera.

Soldered the battery onto the FC and also one of the motors, and then connected the esc to the flight controller today. In addition, I also worked on implementing a newer camera with better image quality, which will be very useful for better AI image detection, but i am having a lot of issues with quality suddenly dropping.

In addition, I also connected Betaflight to my flight controller and tested some of the controls.

started working on soldering the motors and the battery to the flight controller. It was going smoothly until my incredibly powerful battery short circuited after the wire slipped. It was genuinely terrifying because of how loud and bright it was but im totally fine.

In terms of the ai, I have the vision working but the detection is not.

Worked on adding the container and then the motor to hold the seeds and then drop them. I do not have an easy way to hold the motor in place now so the plan is just hot glue and tape, but give nthat it doesn’t have to be perfect its just prototype, it should be fine.

In addition, I’ve also worked on wirelessly connecting the ESP32 to my computer with an external battery source and then streaming the live video feed, which will be important to feed to the ai to get responses back.

Scouted out for more parts that are necessary for the drone to function. A lot of these components were incredibly expensive due to tariffs which I was a little unhappy with but whatever…

In terms of the actual CAD design, I worked on the landing gear sweep which was quite fun. I also secured it with m3 bolts and made sure to add extra stability to the wings with four bolts per wing.

VERY IMPORTANT CHANGE

I’ve decided to shift the focus of my project. The waterproofed O-Ring seal failed horribly on the fish project and some electronic components have been damaged. In addition, I’m having trouble justifying the true impact of this project, because not only does my current approach not solve the issue that I want to fix (Shape of the body is not as important as noise of the motors to do the purpose of helping minimize short-term ecological impact on coral reef ecosystems), but also because water-sealing stuff is hard and risky.

So, I’ve decided to transform this project into something different: a seed bombing drone meant to be an alternative to the highly expensive and closed source ones that companies like Airseed uses. Their drones have really good capacity and are good quality, but this also means that their drones are extremely expensive and hard to distribute, so this will be a cheaper alternative with intuitive digital ui to allow for anyone to use it, democratizing drone technology and allowing underserved communities take matters of vegetation propogation into their own hands.

To start off this design, I made the drone chassis and motor arms, and made an m3 hole to allow for a screw and hex bolt to secure each of the motor arms in place. In the main body I also have an area to attach the landing gear. I also scouted out motors, flight controllers, and batteries that would be appropriate for this project.

1. Started working on adjusting the body size in order to fit all of the electronics into the cad
2. Set up the camera function directly to my computer, incredibly low quality but it’ll do for now for a demonstration
3. Tested watertightness of the O-Ring, it works for <3 minutes which is all I was brave enough to go for, but that is good.
4. Made a little back connection area and printed that out, increased size of pectoral fins

Tested the press fit after 3d print

Due to my poor soldering the motors did not work anymore, so I need to get those working. I ordered new all-metal motors with stronger torque because that is more important for his project + less easy to get water inside the parts.

I’m also purchasing the final things that I’ll need for the project, they should be arriving soon!

Redesigned body and pectoral fins in cad with an area to fit a silicone o-ring to ensure water-tightness.

Vision is going to be done with an underwater endoscope through that little hole in the front.

I’m going to print this out and then find a way to actually work the motor area in the back

LEARNED HOW TO SOLDER STUFF

Took ~6 hours and ended up ruining 3 of my drv8833 drivers, but I finally got one working and the motor spinning! I also found out that the polarity on my battery was switched so I had to flip that around.

In terms of CAD, I redesigned the fish fin to be more flexible by making the bridges snappable, and made a simple program to make the motor spin back and forth. I’m going to test if it has enough torque soon. Then i’ll test waterproofing and the camera.

Created a mold design and 3d printed it, its going to be made out of silicone resin and use phase lag to create the wiggling effect rather than actuators. Ribcage inside meant to stabilize it

Set up the 3D printer that had appeared from under the tree for some reason…

I’ve decided to use a non connected rib system with a thickness gradient inside a silicone mold rather than using hinges because that was stupid and the silicone rubber would probably get into the hinges so hopefully something like this works

Redrew tail fin, organized structure through a flow chart for how I want the fish to operate in figma, and started working on basic code for the buoy movement in VS (even though i dont even have it yet)

still waiting for those parts and the 3D printer to come in, when that time comes I’ll be happy and that means that I can actually start building the thing and testing it out

There’s about ~30 minutes of time in here that was supposed to be for a different project (My raylib mandelbrot set viewer) but I forgot to open a new workspace in my ide or something so now all of the time is allocated here… whatever… :(

Made a rough draft for a back fin for the fish which is going to be a silicone mold rather than a 3D printed hard part, also made a quick thing for the pectoral fins, still waiting for the parts to come so I can test out their movement

Making the fins are really hard because im buns at making things look smoothy, I’m not going to try too hard on the fins I just need to make sure it doesnt sink in the water