Its the last week of our 4 weeks of Easter break! This is Edwin giving an update of past week's progress:

The latest news on the carbon fibre plates for our quadcopter mainframe is that delivery will be delayed for yet another week (WHAT!? *&#%@$*!!!). But its ok. Good stuff are worth waiting for.

Angus and I were instructed to build a simple protective structure for our Quadcopter. I proposed to use PVC pipes (those that they use for water plumbing) instead of carbon rods because their fittings are readily available. This cage took me slightly more than 1 hour to build, and it is HUGE! (see figure below)

It measures 1.25 metres in width. Thankfully the pipe's OD fits the carbon fibre tube's ID (18 mm), so installation and fitting is easy. The only disadvantage is its heavy weight. I'm planning to drill a lot of holes on the pipes to reduce its weight. It is meant to reduce impact during crash (to protect propeller/motor and external objects), thus as long as its rigid enough to hold its shape, the number holes on the pipes should not matter. The cage is built elevated to the same level as the propeller (see Figure below).

Still on the subject of cage, Bing Zhi has been making progress with his prototype fabrication. Due to budget constraints, he is planning to downsize and use 12 mm diameter carbon (longitudinal direction) rods to build his prototype. It should take at least another week for him get the raw materials and build it before we get to see the real physical cage. The figures below shows his customised part (3-D printed). It will be used to connect the big cage onto carbon fibre tubes that are attached onto the Quadcopter's centre frame.

Another cage we've been experimenting and testing is Leonard's terrestrial drive cage. He has been trying to assemble everything together for the past 2-3 weeks (God knows how much time he spent 3-D printing the modular parts). Land movement wise, it was quite successful. JD managed to control and get it moving easily (see picture below). Angus was so excited he wanted to try flying it straight away. However, there were some difficulty in flying due to the lack of rigidity in the printed parts.

Nevertheless, we can say it achieved the primary objective of  rolling on the ground with the small Quadcopter. Here is another picture of the cage (slightly reinforced with styrofoam).

(Yeah it was dark; this picture was taken quite late. You can see how hardworking our guys were!)

Jeremy has been working on programming for his battery loader. The electronics stuff have been bought. All he needs to do now is to fix everything together and make it to work! (see figure below).

We all have 3 reports to be submitted in the coming week and everyone is working extra/double/triple/very hard for officially the last month of our University student life. It has been a long (and sometimes agonising) wait to see our final product. But i strongly urge everyone to stay tuned and be patient. Like what I've mentioned, good stuff are worth waiting for! We will make our Quadcopter fly with everything else working!