AERO Avionics Stack

The AERO Avionics Stack is made up of 4 Parts, three of which are shown. The On Board Computer (OBC), the Power Management Board (PMB),the Radio Carrier Board (RCB), and the Camera Gimbal Master (CGM). The Stack was designed to be modular and rugged, using common connectors it can provide power and data lines through each PCB in the stack.

The OBC is a Raspberry Pi 3, with the simple purpose of taking image data from our cameras and sending them out of a USB 2.4GHz antenna. The Antenna was low gain, but the Antenna Tracker on the receiving end had a high gain dish to make up for it.

The PMB takes power from the Li-Po battery and through a series of DC-DC buck converters it distributes power to the rest of the PCBs in the stack using a common header.

The RCB’s job is to connect the telemetry radio and the pixhawk autopilot together, and to the rest of the stack. The RCB has stand alone functionality for use on the ground with the other telemetry radio, this allows it to be powered by a separate Li-Po and has a FTDI IC for communication to a PC through a serial terminal.

Lastly the CGM controls two Camera Gimbal Axis boards which are used to direct the camera to a position and keep it steady during flight. I expanded the functionality of this board to include stepper motor and DC motor connections for use in a pickup/dropoff mechanism, but it wasn’t completed while I was on the team.