My Senior Design Project

INTRODUCTION

The essence of the study of Avionics and Telecommunication is to combine the concepts of avionics, electronics and telecommunication engineering to create a product, which is a reliable and economical system.

The aviation industry has seen tremendous leaps in commercial airliners as well as in the military such as the Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV) and RC Planes which serve the military needs. Recent developments in high-tech aviation sensors and flight control systems have enabled yet more outstanding results. But with more and more advancements there are even more problems to be tackled as the technologies mature.

 Aim and objectives

•  Aim

To make a “Fire Fighter” RC plane with the capability of live video and measuring weather parameters.

• Objectives

·         Design RF based RC lane.

·         Adding an onboard PIC based controlled water chamber.

·         Interfacing sensors with onboard PIC.

·         To transmit and receive parameters between plane and base station using XBee.

·         To transmit live video through RF transmitter.

·         To use PC as a base station and display the parameters at GUI.

Problem Analysis

Many RC planes are available in the Market in different price ranges but they are mostly used for flying purposes and they cannot be specified for a certain task as they are not designed. So, we are trying to design an RC plane which can perform multiple tasks along with its normal flight.

As our RC plane is mainly a fire fighter so the problem that we came up with was to make it efficient and effective enough to put off the fire during its flight as it will be the main purpose of this plane and for this the designing became the soul part as the water chamber is to be designed in the fuselage of the plane and is to be controlled manually. Secondly video transmission also became important so the user can see the output (if the fire is extinguished or not)

As these kind of planes are also not common in market so our project must be attractive enough as far as its features are concerned and also user friendly so a common man who is not so familiar with these kind of technologies can use it. It must be ahead of other similar RC planes and for that we are making it cost effective, more efficient, will be requiring less man power, user friendly and most importantly a multi-tasked RC plane i.e. it cannot be specified for just firefighting purpose but it can also be used for surveillance purposes, for measuring temperature, humidity in air and also the air speed during its flight.

Assumptions

 Assumptions Made:

The following are some assumptions that are used in development of the project:

Ø  Weather conditions will be assumed to be optimum for flight (i.e. bright Sunny day for visibility, no Rainy weather, No Fog, No heavy Winds).

Ø  Communication between aircraft and ground will be of line-of-sight.

Ø  The battery power is supposed to be always maximum during flight time.

Ø  The area of flight and flight path will contain no obstacles.  

Ø  No frequency interruption for data transmission and RC flight.

Ø  Temperature does not affect the functionality of the system.  

Usage of System under these Assumptions:

Since optimal weathering conditions are assumed the flight would be more stable, and less power will be consumed. Under any distortion in communication signals, the video signals may be affected, and weaken. Thus, assuming good weather conditions and stronger communication, the real-time images sent will be clear and more focused to the object. Also, with good communication between the aircraft and the ground station, the transfer data rate will be faster, moreover, controlling of the aircraft will be reliable.

So we can say that under the above stated assumptions the PARAGON will be able to following functions:

Ø  Stable flight with a radio control.

Ø  Efficient real time video transmission.

Ø  Spraying over the field (for firefighting).

Ø  Positioning and direction of an aircraft during flight.

Block Diagram

Schematics

On board

Ground Station

Simulation

PCB's

Ground Station

On Board

Cost Analysis

     

PARTS	PRICE	TOTAL PRICE
2 Xbee Module	Rs. 5,000/each	Rs. 10,000
2 Micro Controller	Rs. 300/each	Rs. 600
4 Sensors	Rs. 3,000/each	Rs. 12,000
Foam	Rs 1,000	Rs 1,000
PCB Boards,Res,Cap and IC	Rs. 1,500	Rs. 1,500
5 Futaba sss3003 Servo motors	Rs. 3,000/each	Rs. 15,000
RC Aircraft Transceiver	Rs. 25,000	Rs. 25,000
1 OS46 Engine	Rs. 10,000/each	Rs. 10,000
Balsa/Ply Wood	Rs. 8,000	Rs. 8,000
Video camera	Rs. 4,000	Rs, 4,000
Video transmitter	Rs. 3000	Rs. 3,000
Tv tuner card	Rs. 3,000	Rs. 3,000
Usb connectors	Rs. 500	Rs. 500

The above-mentioned cost estimation total comes to about Rs. 93,600 and approximately the project will cost us around Rs 95,000. The final cost may vary with a change of economic situation and the circuit parameters during project development.