#pixhawk

My semester is starting to wind down (or wind up depending on how you want to look at it) and I am beyond ready to finish up my junior year of engineering school. Everyone tells you how hard engineering school is, no one tells you how hard junior year is going to be.

Most of this semester has been spent living in the ATRC (our study space for engineering students) to the point where Maps has literally suggested I change my home address (SOS), and helping out with the Rocketry Team wherever I can.

This past weekend, we went up to Argonia, Kansas to compete in our first ever rocketry competition, and holy hell we actually won the damn thing! So follow along for an awesome story involving blown out wheel bearings, dead car batteries, campfire stories, smooshed quadcopters, and the winning golf ball.

The team met up at the Design Manufacturing Lab (DML) at 9pm on Friday night to finish up some preparations for our competition.

We stayed until 2:00am working on the rocket, drilling holes in the fiberglass body tubes and sanding down the insides as seen above (sorry Nick for the terrible picture of you). I crawled into bed around 3:00am after packing up for my first ever weekend camping, and was up again at 6:00am to load up the cooler and throw all my gear in my teeny tiny hatchback.

Squad formed up at the DML at 7:00am and we were on our way. We had eight cars between us, which was a tad ridiculous, but hey, what are you gonna do.

On the way, one of the cars (a big red truck named Clifford) threw out a wheel bearing. Andrew, Nic, Zhong, Lucas, and Bret were the unlucky bunch that got to fix the minor issue (that just so happened to take 5 hours and 3 trips into town to set right), but they got Clifford safely back to the launch pasture.

While they were stranded on the side of the road, the rest of the team was at the launch site just outside of Argonia, KS getting ready for our first launch of the weekend.

We couldn’t do much in terms of our launch for the Argonia Cup, but we went ahead and did three certification flights for a couple of the guys on our team. Gerald successfully completed his Level 1, and Justin his Level 2 (good job guys)!

Five hours later, when Lucas and co. joined the team at the pasture, we started getting ready for our first launch of the Argonia Cup. However, our quadcopter that we had been working on all semester was having some issues. So, instead of launching It Depends, Nick headed back to Stillwater to sort out the quad, about half of the Saturday team headed back home, and those that remained set up camp, and then ran away to Wichita to grab some dinner.

When we returned to the launch pasture for the night, those in charge of the Argonia Cup (and the Tripoli chapter in general) were settled in around a campfire, telling stories about past launches and the stupid stuff they’ve seen and done over the years.

I finally called it quits just before 1:00am and trudged my way back across the dark field to my tent. I crawled inside and settled myself in for a night under the stars and the clouds, and oh my word was it perfect.

The next morning, Nic treated us to a breakfast of bacon and pancakes, and Nick came back from Stillwater with a quadcopter that was working perfectly. After two more hours of getting everything squared away, we were ready to go. Excitement mounted, and we got the rocket out to the launch pad.

The countdown started. “Launching in 5...4...3...2...1...” and It Depends was away. We quickly lost sight of the eight foot rocket and resorted to tracking the quad via Mission Planner on the laptop. Our recovery team had eyes on the rocket, and we had eyes on the quad.

Unfortunately, they happened to be the same things.

The altimeter that we placed on board the rocket somehow malfunctioned, preventing the main parachute from deploying, and thus keeping the quadcopter from deploying from the body tube of the rocket. Unfortunately, this means that we were unable to test our quadcopter (but hey, I’m still super confident in it, and I can’t wait to see what we end up doing with it one day).

Anyways, our poor rocket ended up in the middle of a muddy wheat field, filled with six inches of soil, but undamaged with regards to everything but the nose cone buried fourteen inches below ground.

After some quick deliberation, and weighing some pros and cons (also being told that our launch was disqualified from the competition), we decided to dig the mud out of the rocket and wash off the surface, attach a new nose cone, and attempt our launch again.

There were only 3 teams competing in the competition, so our thought process was okay, get the rocket as light as possible, ensure we hit 8000′ in altitude, and guarantee ourselves at least 3rd place. So we threw the golf ball payload inside the body tube of the rocket and tried again.

Once again we lost sight of the rocket, but found it again just above the horizon, with a deployed parachute.

Excitement ensued, the recovery team was screaming into the radio, telling us that they saw it, that the ‘chute deployed, and that they were on their way to the landing site. Once the recovery team got to the rocket, we discovered that not only did we actually pass the 8000′ mark, but we were in fact the CLOSEST to the target with our golf ball, snagging the win for Cowboy Rocketworks in our first ever rocketry competition!

Now, with the semester winding down, the team is focusing on our entry into the Spaceport America Cup in June, and our final launch at the end of this month.

Its first runs were without panels. The previous version had a controller tuned much hotter, and with its improved gearboxes, it needed to be toned down:

That stick in the back holds the GPS module. its back there to try to reduce interference with other parts of the rover (motors etc.). Without it, it doesn't know where it is!

Note that the gears are not fully enclosed: this orange cover allows grass to get in. that's not ideal!!

But it continued! the outline of its periodic 8-shaped journey around the field began to make itself visible.

It also began to accumulate slugs whenever it stopped to charge. if any of them were unlucky enough to lie on the gear teeth when the battery level of the rover rose to drivable levels, they became lubrication. poor things!

Daniel left the rover to its own devices for some time. here's an image of it in the center of the field, showing the pattern it formed in the grass:

On the 28th, it had its first failure:

The back wheel had stopped spinning! and we get to take a look inside the gearboxes.

So much debris had accumulated in the gearboxes that mycelium started growing in them. wild!!

The rover stopped driving because one of its gears had fused itself to the walls of its gearbox.

With upgraded gears and gearbox covers, the rover was placed back into the field. Each wheel hub eventually broke and were replaced by versions with more material around the shaft.

When the days were sunny and clear, the rover never stopped driving. It kept its batteries full and continued its march around the field. It kept moving as long as it could!

When suddenly, one day:

The GPS mount was severely damaged, and the GPS vanished! the rover made its way to the edge of the field, far away from the mission, and had been damaged. The rover's ESCs were sounding, so it hadn't been driving for a while. Very strange!

The next day, with a new GPS and mast, it was up and running again.

The rover continued to follow the mission for quite some time. Here's an image from August:

The rover's battery was upgraded to keep it a little safer.

As the earth moved around its home star, the rover began to receive less sunlight each day, causing it to drive less often. The sun moved lower and lower in the sky until, on the 29th of September, Daniel thought of a plan.

"I'll give you a hint; it involves ailerons."

The next day, Daniel added some more area to the rover's solar panels with his old solar plane's wings. Janky as hell! but it seemed to work! The rover was now collecting much more power. Daniel hoped that this would allow the rover to "drive through a lot of the night now."

But, on the next day:

It somehow got off course?? Daniel hypothesized that it could have been because of the increased GPS position error due to the current solar storm. Interesting stuff!

After it was freed, it continued its circular journey.

The days flew by with some events. Sometimes the rover would get itself stuck in the grass. The gearboxes would get louder, but would always quiet down after some time. The trailer fell off, but the rover kept on going. Only when plants got stuck in the machine did the rover stop moving forward.

Its trail through the field became more and more defined:

But the days kept getting shorter, and the days more full of weather events. The trailer, being made from literal wings, did succumb to the wind a few times.

On the 18th, the trailer was cut loose, as the wind had damaged its wires after it had been flipped over. But it kept on going!

The days got gloomier. The rover's battery was manually charged a few times to keep it moving.

Hilariously, the rover's path it had engraved into the field had also been engraved into the imagery of Bing maps, as displayed on Daniel's Herelink:

Absolutely beautiful.

As time went on, the rover's battery needed to be swapped constantly; the sun wasn't high enough in the sky to keep it at a high enough voltage to keep it moving.

The waypoint mission had slowly been drifting towards the south. Mission Planner, a program used to view Ardupilot telemetry, showed that the rover's heading in software was different than its heading in hardware, which may have contributed to this trend.

And thats where the mission was cut short. By December 11th, the rover had driven this mission for months, and all the motors were still running, but without an ability to run with regular power from the sun, its goal wasn't being met.

"I feel like I just euthanized my dog."

The rover had been through the ringer and came out mostly unscathed. It didn't end up completely destroyed, it could have kept on driving! what a glorious machine.

He then opened up the gearboxes and assessed the damage. I won't post a string of images about it, watch from time 30:03. There's grass growing on the thing!

I love this video so much. I grew attached to this wonderful little thing as it continued to drive itself in circles with its brightly colored wheels and rusty steel frame, GPS haphazardly stuck on its rear. It just kept on going, all on its own. It needed some help, but it always seemed to try its best, even when the compass lied to the autopilot, the wind blew off the trailer, the brambles grasped it and held it down, the GPS was torn off, and the sun drew lower in the sky. It kept on driving as far as it could through the day and night and as Daniel's other projects took flight and were made into their own videos. I love that rover so much, its so fucking adorable!!!

This is what made me purchase my own autopilot and slap it on my old RC car. It could drive wherever I pointed on the map, just like rctestflight's rover. When I can get my hands on another autopilot-enabled craft, I'll be exceedingly happy. because look at that thing. its so cool. look at him!!!