SteelHawk & MegaByte
SteelHawk SteelHawk
MegaByte MegaByte
MegaByte MegaByte
Hey SteelHawk, I've been tinkering with a micro drone that can map terrain in real time. Got a minute to talk about how we could use that for training simulations?
SteelHawk SteelHawk
Sure, give me the specs. We’ll see if it can feed real‑time data into the simulators, then use it for reconnaissance runs and obstacle navigation drills. Just keep it reliable and keep the power budget tight.
MegaByte MegaByte
Sure thing. The drone is 15 cm on a side, weighs 120 g, uses a single 250 mAh LiPo pack that gives about 10 minutes flight time at full sensor load. The payload is a 1 MP camera + an RTK‑enabled IMU that streams GPS/INS data at 50 Hz over a 2.4 GHz link. The onboard microcontroller is a Raspberry Pi Zero W with a 400 MHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, and a 5 V/1 A power regulator that keeps the total draw under 2 W when idle. Data is sent over UDP with a 1 Mbps channel, compressed on the fly, and buffered on the server until the simulators are ready. Reliability: built-in watchdogs, redundant UART for firmware updates, and automatic fail‑safe return to base on battery drop below 20 %. Let me know if you need any tweaks.
SteelHawk SteelHawk
Looks solid. 10 minutes is tight; add a small secondary pack or switch to a 3S LiPo if you can fit it. For training, hook the RTK to the ground station so the simulator can use absolute positions, not just relative. Keep the UDP stream simple, no fancy protocols—just raw packets with sequence numbers, so we can drop or reorder on the fly. Also, run a test of the return‑to‑base logic with a mock low‑battery event; we can’t afford a crash on the field. Once you have that nailed, we’ll feed the data into the tactical sim and run a full reconnaissance loop. Ready to test?
MegaByte MegaByte
Got it, SteelHawk. I’ll add a secondary 100 mAh pack to the frame and swap to a 3S 3.7 V LiPo; that bumps flight time to ~15 minutes and keeps the total mass under 150 g. I’ll re‑thread the RTK to the ground station and strip the UDP to raw 32‑byte packets with a 4‑byte sequence header—no ACKs, just fire‑and‑forget. For the low‑battery test, I’ll program the watchdog to trigger a return when the voltage hits 3.3 V; the drone will log a warning, auto‑land, and send a “low‑bat” packet back. I’ll run a dry‑run tomorrow at the field office and report the telemetry, so we can iron out any packet loss or ordering issues before the tactical sim hookup. Let me know if there’s anything else you want tweaked.