Progress

We have successfully completed the complete circuit diagrams for the UAV:

Here you can see the three motors connected to the two h-bridges which are in turn connected to the Arduino UNO, this also has the sonar attachment and has a voltage supplied to it.

The start of the laboratory session began by using a track cutter and testing the h-bridge soldered last week. We soon discovered it wasn't working and presumed we blew the h-bridge by attempting to test it without the tracks cut last week. Therefore we needed to solder a new h-bridge, this was quickly done and tested, working correctly with the motors on patchboard. Once we were sure of it working a second was produced.

Code also got developed, a blog post containing the current code will be posted shortly. The sonar/ultrasound code was tested using a green and red LED[1]:

Holes were placed into film canisters to house the motor, with one hole for the wires and one for the shaft of the motor[2]. Our plan is to recreate waterproofing recommended on several hobby websites, an example video is below. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIcCz5m9LwQ

After tweaking the code and switching the h-bridges and motors from the patchboard to a DC power supply we tested the circuit all together:

Tasks for next meeting:

Complete testing of the circuit

Start waterproofing motors

Implement solution to propeller/shaft connections

Use an external supply (9v) batteries

Think about buoyancy.


References:
[1]Arduino and HC-SR04 Example, http://www.instructables.com/id/Simple-Arduino-and-HC-SR04-Example/, Feb 2014
[2]MIT Sea Pearch Construction Manual, http://seaperch.mit.edu/docs/seaperch-build-october2011.pdf, Feb 2014