DRONE SWARM (Version 1):

The purpose of this project is to design and build micro drones that can be manufactured easily and cheaply to form a swarm similar to the one made by Intel. The basic functionality of each drone involves following a predetermined flight path, communicating with the other drones or being controlled remotely from a base station. Each drone also includes an expansion port where a number of accessories can be attached, such as a camera for search and rescue, or a LED for light shows. This means it can serve as an open source platform for all kinds of swarm projects.

This was the first iteration of the design, where I focused on fitting all the necessary control electronics on the boards. This was the simplest version, with one circuit board handling everything: hosting the main processor, sensors, LEDs, motor drivers. Only the commercially available GPS and Radio module would be separate.

As a testbed, these boards were never meant to fly an actual drone, so they included extra functionality such as a battery charging circuit. In the final design I plan to split the board in to two parts. The first part will be the actual flying drone, with only the bare minimum: controller, sensors, radio, LEDs and motors. Everything else will be moved to a breakout board that will plug into the first board. This includes the battery charging circuit, all of the circuitry for programming, and headers to allow connection to all of the other pins on the microcontroller, if I need them.

Here is an interactive 3d model of the board: (Left click to rotate, right click to pan, scroll to zoom)

Schematic Version 3

Updated IMU and altitude sensors to their newer counterparts - MPU9250 and BMP280

Schematic Version 2

First revision with STM32F103C8 Microcontroller - this micro controller is much more powerful than the one in the previous iteration, running at multiple times the frequency and operating in 32 vs 8 bits. This means it is better suited for the task of maintaining steady flight while simultaneously using the radio to communicate and changing the LED color.

Schematic Version 1

This was the first version of the schematic, which was too complex to reasonably fit on a small lightweight drone. For example, it included a chip (IC2) to convert signals between different interfaces which was to make up for a limitation of the processor. This was fixed in later iterations by switching to a more capable processor.