Next competition tentatively set for week of 18 April 2022

Rules

Current Approved Competition Rules

Goal details

Other Teams

Two teams that have been doing this for a while have shared their documented experience:

UCLA DTR Page: https://git.uclalemur.com/shahrulkamil98/blimp-autonomy

GMU DTR Page: https://sparxgmu.wixsite.com/sparx/get-started

GMU Summer Event details.

GMU Youtube Page

Current Parts List

Parts List for round one

Initial Work

Based on UCLA and GMU we have started some initial work. Which is being documented here. This is just an initial start and not necessarily the final/optimal approach.

October 20, 2021 Update

With initial test blimp built, work has progressed with more updates here

November 2021 DTR Event Complete

Detailed technical findings from the event are documented here.

Major takeaways are:

• Next event is scheduled for April 2022 at IU MESH again!
• Full autonomy that detects and captures a ball and takes it to the goal is really hard! No team was able to autonomously perform all actions. In most cases autonomy was used as station keeping while manual control was used to capture and score.
• Although the plan was to have all teams qualify the first day, one one team had qualified by Tuesday evening.
• Altogether only 3 of the 6 teams qualified. IU's team did not qualify.
• Our major design issue was the lack of control of altitude. The air currents in the highbay and our relatively low power motors prevented us from climbing or descending faster than approximately 10-15 secs/meter
• Design refinements throughout the week gave us much better tracking, yaw control, and balloon capture abilities
• By the end of the week, aside from issues with altitude control, our design was on par with other teams
• Red vs Blue Match between NRL (with the white capture frames) and GMU (carrying the pink tag). GMU eventually won with one goal.
• Our attempt to qualify: Part 1 Part2

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DLT - Networking

Good starting point for the pis

1. Install the raspbian image using pi installer.
2. apt update/upgrade
3. Upgrade to bullseye. https://lernentec.com/post/how-to-upgrade-raspian-buster-to-bullseye/
4. apt update/upgrade
5. Download badman-adv and batctl from https://www.open-mesh.org/projects/open-mesh/wiki/Download.
6. Try to make install.
7. Install kernel headers and any other packages that batman-adv claims to need.
8. apt install [kernel-headers etc...]
9. Actually make install.

Meshing with the Pi and badman-adv

https://github.com/binnes/WiFiMeshRaspberryPi/blob/master/part1/MESH.md

This is a bit older and uses older network configuration models. A modern solution would use networkd, but not necessarily netplan because it's not installed with the pi installer.

Pis as Access points

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Software_access_point

Can be selectively used to "just" create APs rather than the switchable stuff. https://www.raspberryconnect.com/projects/65-raspberrypi-hotspot-accesspoints/183-raspberry-pi-automatic-hotspot-and-static-hotspot-installer

Nice USB Dongles for the PI

https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi#ac580--ac600---usb-2---24-ghz-and-5-ghz-wifi-5

With antenna terminals https://www.alfa.com.tw/products/awus036acm?variant=36473965936712