Phase One: Figuring the Basics Out (Media: Autodesk Sketchbook and Powerpoint)
The above are the very first sketches we did in the month of May. We were focusing on choosing a method of mobility for our SNEK drone, deciding between using water pumps, central or multiple, or propellers, multiple in fixed positions or two with rotational abilities. On the left, there is a very primitive diagram of how a central water pump system would look like.
These are the second cleaner sketches done in the start of June, that shows our first attempts at separating the drone into modules for easier planning and the decision to use multiple small water pumps facing different directions for mobility. The first picture shows the X and M components. The M component would contain all the water pumps (shown as green rectangles) in a fixed frame that would be filled with water. The X component would be waterproof and contain all parts that needed to be dry, such as the cameras (in red), the battery (the brown rectangle) and switch (the purple rectangle).
The picture on the right shows the overall plan for connectivity, depicting an submarine unit that is the SNEK drone, the floating unit, and the base point. The submarine unit is connected to the floating unit physically by a LAN cable, and the floating unit contains a small router that through wireless connection conveys information to the base point that has a large router. In theory, the user would be able to remotely control the submarine unit from the base point by viewing the live-feed from the drone’s camera and conveying instructions through the wireless connection and LAN cable.
Phase 2: Modulisation
For the sake of simplicity, the SNEK drone design was altered such that the different parts were considered in separate modules within a frame rather than components. There were now two modules, compartment A that contained batteries and the switch that would connect to the Ethernet cable, and compartment B that contained all other circuitry such as the Electronic Speed Controller, Arduino board, MOSFET and Raspberry Pi. (However, it was not long after presenting this design that the Raspberry Pi was decided to be not useful as we could control the propellers right on the computer)
Our Final Prototype
The diagram of our final prototype:
The diagram below shows the overview of all the connections in SNEK:
Profile views of our final prototype (SNEK):
To view SNEK in action, please visit the links that can be found under the page “Media Links”. Thank you!