Not again

Not only did my script delete itself yet again. Yes again.
I hate google.

My presentation is gone.


I have nothing left to say.

Update

After rehearsing, timing, and refining our presentation, Pratik and I were ready to print out notecards and sleep.

My doc is gone again.

FML.

FML

Countdown

There are now just a hair over 24 hours until it is time to give my TED talk, and this is what I have.







For once, I actually made sure to do all of my work, and I planned my speech ahead of time. I had all of my points and ideas and important lines laid out, and I was ready to go. Today was supposed to be my day to practice and refine.

When I woke up this morning, there was no TED talk doc on google drive. In fact, according to my computer, I did not access google drive yesterday.
I spent two hours thinking through what I wanted to say, what lesson I wanted to impart. I planned out everything for my speech, from the set-up, to the breakdown. Everything.
And now it's gone.

In a rather cruel way, I suppose this is reminiscent of my entire project.
Sometimes in life, no matter how much you plan, life sucks. Or google.
But if there is one thing that I have learned from this project, it's that when life gives you s***, you ignore it. Because at the end of the day, it all has to get done.
So now, I have to start over again.
I suppose that this is just another support for the subject of my TED talk.
Given that I don't think anyone actually reads these posts (2 views on the last one, hooray), I suppose it's ok to explain what direction I'm heading in.

Throughout this project, I've been very emotional. At first I was amazingly happy, and ready to build an assume quadrotor. When my shipping issues began, well that was the true content of this project. It ceased to be about quadrotors and began to be more a dialogue on setbacks.
At first, I was convinced that my parts would get here. I figured "oh, it's a shipping error. I'm sure it'll be here soon." I quickly realized this wasn't the case.
For a while, I was just angry at the world. I just felt as if someone was out to get me, and I didn't understand why of all time, there had to be a paperwork error for my project.
After that, I decided that constant frustration wasn't healthy, and I moved on to reasoning with life. I did EVERYTHING I could in order to get those parts here by spring break. I wrote e-mail after e-mail, sent angry letters, contacted support centers; it didn't work.
Finally, when I realized on the 3rd day of spring break that my parts weren't ever getting here, I just felt sad. Sad because I had no parts. Sad because my project was a failure. Sad that my dream fell flat.

I was stuck there for a while, with a bit of all of those feelings swirling around me. I was always mad and sad and unhappy. And I realize now all it did was make me miserable and mean.

Where I am now, is the final stage: acceptance.
I guess I've accepted the truth, because there's nothing I can do about it.
From that, I see now that it isn't that big of a deal. I can still give a TED talk. I can still write blog posts. I won't have an amazing new quadrotor to fly for my presentation tomorrow, but someday I will.

That's the amazing thing about a goal. It never dies. The process I've shown you above, is known as the Kubler-Ross model. It's generally used to evaluate people grieving for terminally ill people. It's used to observe the effect of death.
But my goals have not died. I will build that quadcopter someday. Because the beauty of a dream, is that you get to try again.

Week 5: Contemplation

I'm not going to waste your time. There isn't much to be said.

Pratik and I received a couple parts in the mail, which we soldered together.

With these parts, we now have a complete flight control board, which is essentially the brains of the quadcopter. It contains the gyroscope, accelerometer, and processor.

It was fun to assemble. Fun meaning painful, since the pins were sharp and soldering irons are very hot.

Isn't she beautiful? Yes, the flight control board is a she.

Unfortunately, the actual parts of the quadcopter (meaning the parts that fly and whatnot) are... somewhere. To be honest, we have no idea where they are. 

Other than that, no progress. We still know how to build it and all of that jazz, but we can't.

There isn't much more we can learn. Which is how we arrive at the boring part.

This week, I've been thinking more about the project as a whole. About what I've learned from it.

What I've realized is that a lot of lessons can be taken from all of the frustrations we've had, and that these lessons aren't just relevant to quadcopters. They're relevant to everything.

This week, I've been reading about setbacks.

I'm going to go through the advice given by each of the resources that I've read, and see how I can apply it to my own project.

First, from Buzzle (nice name)

1) Focus on yourself.                  Yeah... check. No explanation needed there

2) Keep a Good Company.         The writer warns not to stay around people who constantly complain. In this case that'd be me. All I've done for the past few weeks is complain, so I guess that's something that I should change.

3) Visualize Positive factors:      I tried so so so hard to see the positives behind not having and of the resources I needed for my project. It was hard. But I guess I learned a few life lessons. More on those later.

4) Stop Procrastinating.               Let's NOT get into that... lots of issues there. But at least for this project, I didn't really procrastinate that much. I had nothing to procrastinate, except for these blog posts.

5) Share your feelings.                 I guess I have shared my feelings, to the 5 people a week who actually read this blog. Thanks for that. And I guess it makes me feel a little better to be able to see that what I'm thinking actually makes sense.

Next comes SparkPeople (sparknotes for people?)

1) Be objective                      Ok, I blame shipping/customs/the company for most of my trouble. But looking back, maybe if I had ordered the parts a day or two earlier, maybe there wouldn't have been a paperwork error and I wouldn't have all of these issues. And I suppose in the grand scheme of things, this isn't that big of a deal. In fact, even if the parts don't get here until well after this project ends --SPOILERS WHOOPS that will be covered in the end.

2) Bounce back                       Looking at the goals that I set at the beginning of this project, I realize that a lot of them should be edited. My original plan was to CAD and have all design done far before the start of construction, but in hindsight, I can't CAD something that doesn't yet exist. Additionally, I was naive to believe that I could completely program something as complex as a quadcopter. That honestly didn't belong in my goals. Finally, I probably shouldn't have picked this project in the first place; it was far too short of a time frame for me to realistically expect to finish the entire quadcopter. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.

3) Don't live with regrets       This is the hardest for me. I've always been a person to hold grudges: against other people, against myself, or just against life. But I guess it's true that I have to let go at some point. 

Finally, the producers of the ACT actually produced a guide for recovering from setbacks. (remind me not to take that test...)

1) Reframe the failure        I quote "Instead of a 'failure,' call it a life-learning experience" And I guess that's exactly what I'm trying to do. Without a product, this is also what my TED talk is going to be about for the most part.      As I've said twice now (if anyone's actually reading this :/ ) more on that later.

2) De-catastrophize           Interesting wording. Essentially, they recommend breaking down the catastrophe to see how bad it actually is. I'd say mine is decently bad in the context of this project. I kinda don't have a project...

3) Accept responsibility    This one is pretty similar to Be objective. I guess that to some extent, this could be my fault.

4) Acquire knowledge       What have I learned? Always be ready for unexpected setbacks. Order things WAY ahead of time. Don't trust US Customs.

5) Persevere                       I won't give up. This is only the beginning, you'll see

6) Join forces                     #Pratik

So after thinking it through, analyzing it, consulting experts (the internet), and just thinking about my quadcopter issues, this is what I truly can take away from this project.

Sometimes s*** happens. That's something I learned from Forrest Gump.

One of the best movies ever. And so true.

And it's so true. Unfortunate things happen in all parts of life. Nothing is perfect. But what truly defines us is how we respond. 

For me, I know what I'm going to do. I don't care when those parts get here, it could be next week, it could be next year. But when they do, I sure as hell will be working on my quadcopter.

Someday, I WILL watch as our quadcopter flies. Maybe it'll crash the first time. Maybe it'll explode and go down in flames. 

But that won't stop me. 

As John F Kennedy once said: "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

I don't have such an amazing goal, I'm not going to the moon. But for me, this is every bit as important.

Because building a quadcopter isn't just a project for a gifted class for me. Its something that I truly want to do. 

If it has done no other good, not getting my parts has made me more dedicated that I'll build that quadcopter someday.

Resources

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/

http://www.sparkpeople.com/

http://www.act.org/

Other blogs
http://sundrew.blogspot.com/
http://heylookiwroteabook.blogspot.com/
http://designsbyjennyd.blogspot.com/

My Vlog

Video 3 from Andrew Ge on Vimeo.

Week 4: Reading

I'm going to be perfectly honest, it's been 7 days, and this is what we have to show for it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: nothing

If you read my last blog post, you might know that I have been having some slight shipping issues.
Next week, I'll include a re-enactment of my feelings towards shipping...

Basically, I'm not happy that I don't have any parts, but enough about that.
Left with nothing to actually work on, Pratik and I have metamorphosed into something beyond novice engineers and hobbyists, we have evolved into... bookworms. Or should I say devolved...

We walked backwards. And I while I look snazzy
as a worm with a bowtie, I prefer being a person. 

Basically, since we can't actually work on our quadcopter, we've been doing all of the reading that we possibly can, so that if and when the parts ever get here, we can get the world record for fastest quadcopter assembly ever. (not really. But yes really).

We have been focusing our research into two areas: assembling the quadcopter, and the physics of flying.

I'll start with the physics.
As a professor of physics at the G Institute of Legitimacy, I can tell you with absolute certainty that airplanes and helicopters are much easier to fly than quadcopters.

Basically, and airplane has one vector (it goes in pretty much a straight line.)

Except this one. I don't know what direction that is.

Helicopters get a little more complex, as they have two propellors. The top rotor produces a vertical lift vector (it goes up and down) and the back rotor counteracts the torque of the main rotor (it no go spinny spin).
Then we have the tricopter, which is never used because its kinda ridiculous (*cough useless cough*)
And finally, we have the quadcopter.
With 4 different propellers, the quadcopter can go up, down, left, right, forward, backward, 1° right, 97° southwest, cartwheel, backwards in time, into the tenth dimension, you get the point.
There are a lot of different ways that it can fly, all of which require perfect balance among all 4 of the blades. Otherwise someone may end up missing a finger. Or a head.

There are 4 basic directions for quadcopter movement: nick (a popular name), roll(good with butter or jelly), yaw(n), and throttle(what I'd like to do to shipping companies).

Nick, also known as pitch, is the angle in relation to the tail of an aircraft.
Roll is the angle at which the aircraft turns, relative to the wings.
This, in a quadcopter, can be confusing. Since all 4 sides are the same, you have no idea which one is which. That should be fun to fly.
Then we have throttle, which is basically where the quadcopter goes up and down.
Finally, we have yaw. Yaw is the simplest of the 4: it's basically turning from side to side.
Use this word if you want to sound fancy when driving. Warning: may cause confusion?
"Should I turn left?"
"Yaw right!"
"No, turn right!"
"But you said ya right! Should I turn left here?"
"Yaw right!"
"Oh, I'm right?"
*turns left*
"You're never driving again"
"You suck at giving directions"
"I said yaw right!"
"JUST SAY TURN OR I WILL YAW RIGHT INTO YOUR HOUSE"

You may have noticed there's no "forward" direction. That's because there isn't. Instead, you tilt to one side, and basically glide downwards in that direction while throttling upwards. Confusing, right?

This was my reaction too

The trick to doing each of these actions is balancing different pairs of rotors.
We'll start with the basics:

Hovering: All 4 rotors are spinning in perfect harmony. Like a Dwayne Wade alley-oop to LeBron James, all of the flight controls are n sync, ready for an amazing slam du-- i mean hover.
Similarly, to go up or down, all 4 motors either accelerate or decelerate.

Dwayne Wade not pictured.
Can I have this instead of a quadcopter?

Tilting: In order to pitch (nick) or roll, two rotors on the same axis are manipulated. One is accelerated, while the other is decelerated. This causes the quadcopter to rotate around the other axis.
Basically, imagine that you have an x. Put a propeller on both sides of one stick. If one goes faster, it lifts that side up.

Yaw: turning is the most confusing of the movements.
Quadcopters are always set up with two propellers turning clockwise, and two turning counterclockwise. Otherwise, it would constantly spin in circles.

These propellers create opposing torque, so that the quadcopter stays put. Each propeller essentially acts like the tail rotor of a helicopter.
So, if we speed up the two motors turning clockwise, and slow down the two motors turning counter-clockwise, then the torque will make the quadrotor turn clockwise. Et voila.

With the combination of these 4 angles of turning,
the quadcopter has 6 degrees of freedom (CHI-SQUARE THAT I DARE YOU)
Yeah, it's that awesome.

Summary: physics are confusing, shipping still sucks.
To see the research we did on constructing the quadcopter, see Pratik's blog: quadrotorgeniusproject.blogspot.com/

More interesting blogs to follow:
brookesknitting.blogspot.com/
ccphotograph.blogspot.com/
iphonefanboyblog.blogspot.com/

Resources: All of the stuff I learned was an amalgamation of various sources, so I couldn't really accredit each section with a particular source as I usually do. But thanks to all of these websites!
qdrone.jimdo.com/project/flight-physics/
www.thomasteisberg.com/quadcopter/
www.rcheliwiki.com/Roll,_pitch_and_yaw
my.opera.com/operacopter/blog/2012/01/20/quadcopter-physics-part-1-why-so-interesting
theboredengineers.com/2012/05/the-quadcopter-basics/

Week 3: UPS Needs to get their "stuff" together

Alright, I'm going to put this as succinctly as I can.
I hate shipping.

This is what I do when I think of shipping.
Not really. My desk is against a wall.
But you get the idea.

I really, really, really hate shipping.

Because it's slow, and annoying, and seems to be acting for the sole purpose of infuriating me.

Now, I don't know if its UPS, or USPS, or Fedex, or whatever. But whoever is shipping my parts, please HURRY UP!

If any of you read my first blog, you'll remember that I said I enjoy building things. I really do.

Unfortunately, a house cannot be built without bricks (translation, I need those parts because I'm getting antsy from "not building a quadcopter syndrome")

Even better, the website I ordered from has no way of tracking my order. It just says "shipped". So helpful. My packages could be in Hong Kong, or 20 minutes away from my doorstep. Maybe they're in Paris, taking in the sights. For all I know, they're buried under a pile of plastic bags in the great pacific garbage patch. I don't know. All I DO know is that they aren't here.

If I have to go swimming in this mess to get my parts, then goshdarnit I will.

On the brighter side, computers aren't quite so stupid and complicated. They make much more sense. 

(Translation: yay technology! Humans suck)

(Sub-translation: CAD model is coming together)

Basically, the CAD model of the quadcopter is moving along quite nicely. We have almost all of the individual parts mocked up. Admittedly, since we are newbies to CAD, there are some things a little (*COUGH A LOT COUGH*) more complicated than we can manage. So Pratik and I have had to substitute some "minor" parts with simplified objects. 

Only one small issue remains. We can't actually figure out how all of the parts fit together, until we HAVE THE G#%*!#*&!#%!#!*@#&!#*$&!*@!& PARTS. (Excuse my language. Or lack thereof)

So while we have the individual parts, as well as the frame, we can't quite assemble things in the computer model.

Getting as far as we have however, was not such an easy task. As Pratik and I are both novices, we spent a lot of time learning how to CAD, rather than actually doing anything with a tangible product.

The Autodesk Inventor website (the software we are using), has been invaluable in helping us with our model. They have a very helpful set of tutorial files (which, be warned, have a a huge file size).

In addition, a very long series of youtube videos from a couple different users have aided us greatly.

At the end of the day, we can produce some very nice objects, such as this one.

Precious....... my precious

I'm gonna be honest here, that piece was Pratik. He understands CAD much better than I do.

I usually just spend an hour looking up various errors, before I flip a table over in rage.

Hopefully I'll be able to contribute more to the actual building part of the project. Once the 

!@#*&%$!#@$!*&**&%$@$$@ parts get here. (I abuse grawlix, I know.)

So in summary: shipping sucks, reading up on how to CAD, CAD is hard, shipping still sucks.

Exciting week right?

Sources used:

usa.autodesk.com/

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL428287FEFDCCAE1D

Also see: (they don't suck, unlike shipping)

brycesong.blogspot.com/

wissahickoncompliments.blogspot.com/

theartofwarsc2.blogspot.com/

Week ?: The Anticipation (And the Math) is Killing Me

There has been a bit of confusion as to how far along in the project we currently are, time-wise. I thought that Week 2 was drawing to a close, but looking at the calendar, it would appear there is less time than I had anticipated. Guess who's not going anywhere for spring break!

April Fools'! But no really, your project is due.

But before I start to detail the more unfortunate circumstances of our project, let's start with an update on what I've been doing: Reading.

My first resource has been a website selling the "heli-chair", a product which apparently emulates flying a helicopter... from a chair (on the ground). I didn't really get it either. But it sounds really cool.

For those of us too scared to fly, heli-chair won't let you die!

Unless you fly it into your face or something stupid like that 

Regardless of that, I'm not here to advertise RC helicopters. But they did have a very helpful guide on their website detailing exactly how to calculate the lift capacity of a helicopter. From this, I was able to calculate the approximate lift force of our quadrotor (once it's complete).

A = Pi * r^2 = 121pi/144      [ft^2]  (Now convert it to radians! Jk. No more math jokes)

A= 2.880 (Hope I got my sig figs right! That was a science joke)

PL=Power/A

OH WAIT! I don't know the power rating of my motors noooo. Calculations=chalked

So then I realized that my the listing for the motors we intended to use did not include the horsepower produced. Sigh... if only I could convert rpm to horsepower.

DO NOT WORRY, WISC SAVES THE DAY! 

WISC being the online database of the Wisconsin Technical College System.

They have some very convenient presentations about torque, horsepower, and rpm.

(Adds to list of reach schools).

So,

2pi(torque)*(RPM)/33000=horsepower

2pi(r*force)*(750rpm/v)/33000=horsepower

2pi(5.5*force)*(750rpm/v)/33000=horsepower

2pi(5.5*@#$*& I DON'T KNOW THE FORCE)*(750rpm/v)/33000=horsepower

And once again I don't have all of the information I need. But can I calculate the force?

According the the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (or International Bureau of Weight and Measures, for us Americans), force in newtons is calculated as:

kg*m*s^-2 (more math? ugh #algebra2skillz)

N=kg*(m/s^2)

N=.01725*(acceleration)

N=.01725*(OMGWTFBBQNOTAGAIN)

Needless to say, I didn't have the figure for acceleration either...

According to engineeringtoolbox.com, centripetal acceleration is calculated as:

ac = (V^2/r)
ac = (2*pi*r*rps)^2/r  <-woot linear velocity
ac = (2*pi*0.1397*8250/60)^2/0.1397 WAIT I ACTUALLY HAVE ALL OF THE NUMBERS? HALLELUJAH
ac=104270 m/s^2

Who knew pre-calc would actually teach me something applicable?

I'm going to take a second to sigh in happiness that I don't need any more equations.

Now then.

V = (2pi*r*rps)    

V = (2pi*0.1397*137.5)

V = 120.692

Ac = (V^2/r)

Ac = (120.692^2/0.1397)

Ac = 104270 m/s^2

N = kg*(m/s^2)

N = 0.01725*(104270)

N = 1798.6575

T = N/1.35581794833

T = 1326.6217 ft/lbs

HP = 2*pi*T*RPM/33000

HP = 2*pi*1326.6217*(750*11)/33000

HP = 2083.8525

A = 2.880

PL = (85%)*Power/A

PL = (.85)*723.560

PL = 615.0259

TL=8.6859*PL^(-0.3107)

TL=8.6859*615.0259^(-0.3107)

TL=1.1812

Total=1.1812*4 motors

Total=4.7248 pounds of thrust

Total=2143.13 grams of thrust

Our quadrotor is projected to weight around 1800 grams at this point. 

Woah, so you mean this might work!? Hooray!!!

And that's all folks--

Wait I have to talk about stuff, right.

So anyway, things aren't going too well.

We have indeed ordered almost all of our parts (WHICH COST A BOATLOAD OF $$$)

Not quite a boatload, but still a lot.
IM ON A BOAT AND, no

So those are in the mail, but unfortunately most of the parts are shipping from Hong Kong... which means they won't be here for at least 10 days :o eep!

I have learned that I am a very impatient person. VERY impatient. Like, counting the seconds until my parts arrive... 863998... 863997... 863996...

We have started hacking out a CAD model, but it's very slow going... neither Pratik nor I has any significant experience in using AutoDesk (a drafting program) which means that it is a process that involves lots of trial and error, and constantly combing the internet for answers.

Probably used these 500000 times

Hopefully once the parts get here we will be able to assemble it in a week or two, and from there we'll move on to programming. Until then, our CAD model and research comprise the majority of our time. 19.999% of it, in fact.

So basically this week I've been trying computer modelling, and reading a poop-load of formulas and physics texts. And angrily staring at my shipping status report.

If anyone has actually made it this far, through the impassable desert of equations, leave a comment!

G$

Resources

Wikipedia (of course)

Google (I can't find my graphing calculator, so this will have to do)

Hobbyking (for most of our parts and technical specs)

Heli-chair (thrust calculations)

BIPM (newtons, and not the fig kind)

Engineering toolbox (centripetal force and acceleration)

WISC (Torque and horsepower)

Pratik (last name expunged)

Shoutout to Mr. Hill for teaching linear and angular velocity

For more ROFLs 

heylookiwroteabook.blogspot.com (especially this one)

sundrew.blogspot.com

anniedrawspeople.blogspot.com