Michael Holland

After practicing 3D scans with the Skydio S2+, our lab group decided to do a large, real-world scan. Our mission was to scan the Davis Ferry Park Bridge.  We started our process by going to the scan location and creating a hazard assessment.  Hazards at this site involved the water below the bridge, the power lines above the bridge, the thick metal pieces  of the bridge , and the trees and houses surrounding the bridge.  The Skydio S2+ has vision obstacle avoidance  but  it is still a good idea to be careful around thin objects like power lines that the cameras might not pick up. We also had to  be aware of  things like birds, airspace, and manned aircraft flight. One thing to note about this flight was that  it was hard to get   a nice  launch point and spot for a visual observer.  The bridge  was blocked  by wildlife and water, so we had to launch from a grassy area by the road and then fly over to the bridge to sca...

With this lab, we continued creating circuits using a breadboard and programming certain functions. This activity was valuable because I got to learn and critically think about how circuits should be wired and introduced to more programming. The first circuit I built and programmed was to read the value of a photoresistor and create an output with an LED. A photoresistor measures the amount of light. This means the more light the photoresistor measures, the brighter the LED will get. To do this, I set up two separate circuits. In the first one, the Arduino measures the value of the photoresistor with a resistor in series. The second creates another circuit with a separate pin as an output. I also coded a serial function to write in text what the value of the photoresistor was. I mapped the values to be between 0-255 so we can get precise adjustments of the LED. The second circuit was slightly more complicated. It was a similar setup except there were two inputs and two outputs. I used ...

Before this lab, I assembled my Arduino board by soldering the components via online instructions. Once the Arduino board was complete, I plugged it into my computer via a USB-C cable. From here we were able to write code to the Arduino. Hello World pt 1 The first thing I coded was for the Arduino board to print "Hello World" on the serial monitor. I also added comments to explain what each line did. The code for this is shown below. Hello World pt 2 The second thing we coded for the Arduino was to print "Hello World!" on a loop, printing on a new line every time. This utilized the "println" command so it would print on a new line. Blink I then built a circuit onto the Arduino using a breadboard, wire, LED light, and a resistor. The goal was to program the Arduino to make the LED light blink in a SOS pattern. This is three short blinks, three long blinks, and then three short blinks again. We can control when the LED turns on or off by controlling the volt...

 In this lab, we used a battery pack, breadboard, resistors, wires, and a Digital Multi Meter to test resistance, voltage, and amperage. We created a circuit on the breadboard and switched out resistors of different resistances.  We had 4x 1.5 Volt batteries powering the circuit. We could measure voltage in parallel with the circuit, meaning we could just touch the ends of the multi-meter to each side of the resistor. This would measure the voltage drop across that resistor. The voltage drop stayed constant in the circuit no matter what resistor we used. Increasing resistance would only decrease the current. We measured current by making the multi-meter a part of the circuit, and not putting it in parallel. The picture below shows my lab partner and I measuring the voltage in parallel across the resistor. The table below shows the measured values using different resistors. Resistor Resistance (R) Voltage (V) Current (I) Power (P) ...

 Michael Holland Introduction Remote ID is a technology that broadcasts the drone's location, altitude, and identity. This allows other people to see where the drone is. There are three methods for complying. The first method is Standard Remote ID, which is where the Remote ID is broadcast as a part of the drone's hardware and software. In other words, it is "built-in". The second method of compliance if you have a drone without Standard RID is to buy a separate module that you can attach to the drone. This is called a "broadcast module". The third method is for drones without Remote ID. You can operate one of these drones in an FAA- Recognized Identification Area, which is an area exempt from the Remote ID requirements. Verify DJI Mavic 2 Pro is RID Compliant The FAA has a Declaration of Compliance page with a list of all Remote ID aircraft that have been officially approved by the FAA. This list contained the Mavic 2 Pro which means the FAA has verified th...

  Pix4D Final Data Products Michael Holland Introduction              Throughout the Fall Semester of AT309, my lab partner, Saurav Dalvi, and I completed multiple 3D scans and mapping missions using both a Skydio S2+ and Mavic 2 Pro to engage in data collection. These 3D scans and mapping missions involved the drone flying in a predetermined path to collect individual images of the area we wanted to scan. After collecting these images, Saurav and I would save them to a personal external hard drive. From here, we were able to put them into a mapping software called Pix4Dmapper, which took our individual images and stitched them together to make one large 3D model. If our scan was a mapping mission, we could then use a software called ArcGIS Pro to turn out processed data into a cartographically correct map. While engaging in data collection, and processing, we were able to see the differences between platforms of the...