A PROJECT REPORT

ON

“QUADCOPTER”

Bachelor of Technology
Electronics and Communication Engineering

BY

ROHIT KUMAR MEENA 2016KUEC2038

NAVEEN KUMAWAT 2016KUEC2039
KAMAL KANT BAIRWA 2016KUEC2040

UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF

DR. Anupam Kumar

project/images/download.png

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, KOTA

2016-2020
 DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the work reported in the B.Tech report entitled ”QUAD
COPTER ” submitted at Indian Institute of Information Technology , Kota is an
authentic record of our carried work under the supervision of Dr. Anupam Kumar. I
have not submitted this work elsewhere for this degree.

ROHIT KUMAR MEENA

2016KUEC2038

NAVEEN KUMAWAT
2016KUEC2039

KAMAL KANT BAIRWA

2016KUEC2040

Under the supervision of

Dr. Anupam Kumar

Department of Electronics and Communication

Indian Institute of Information Technology,Kota
 Acknowledgements

We are profoundly grateful to Dr. Anupam Kumar for his expert guidance and
continuous encouragement throughout to see that this project rights its target since
its commencement to its completion.His timely and efficient contribution helped
us shape our work into its final form and we express our sincerest gratitude for
his assistance in any way that we may have asked. We appreciate his guidance in
our project that has improved our project many folds,thanks for the comments and
advise.

ROHIT KUMAR MEENA

2016KUEC2038

NAVEEN KUMAWAT
2016KUEC2039

KAMAL KANT BAIRWA

2016KUEC2040
 ABSTRACT

The goal of our groups project is to design and build an autonomous

quadcopter.This means going through the process of researching pre-
vious models, performing calculations, purchasing individual parts,
testing those parts, designing the final product, and APM 2.8 based
controller, and finally fitting everything together.

After deciding how big we wanted our quadcopter to be and pur-

chasing the appropriate parts there were primary design steps on the
way to the final product. First we had to learn to control and program
the ESCs using an APM 2.8 controller.

Next we used a test setup to determine a displacement, and thereby

determined the relationship of the signal going into the ESC. Once
we felt comfortable with our ability to communicate with the ESC we
used another test setup comprised of a rotating.

They have countless applications like Aerial Photography and Real

estate photography and Mapping , Surveying and Asset Inspection and
Agriculture.
Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Quadcopter Essentials 2
2.1 Quadcopter Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.2 Motors and Propeller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.3 Speed Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.4 Battery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.5 Radio Receiver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.6 Flight Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.7 Telemetry .......................... . . . . . 9

3 Dynamic System Control 11

4 Implementation 11
4.1 Receiver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.2 Motor/Esc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.3 APM 2.8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.4 Initial Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

5 Hardware Diagram 16
5.1 Block diagram of quadcopter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.2 Quadcopter layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

6 Bill of Materials 18
7 Screenshots of Project 19

8 Conclusion and Future Scope 20

8.1 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
8.2 Future Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

9 References 22
List of Figures

2.1 Frame: F450 (including 2 PDB) 450mm(diagonal

length) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.2 Brushless motor (4): REES521000kv ”A2212/13T” 3
2.3 Propeller: REES52 10 4.5inches Clockwise (2), Anti
Clockwise (2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.4 ESC : Generic Folksrc 30A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.5 Battery 2200mah liPo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.6 Receiver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.7 Flight controller Board APM 2.8 . . . . . . . . . . 8
Telemetry kit . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.8
APM 2.8 controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.1
11
4.1 Received pwm signal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Brushless motor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.2
4.3 APM 2.8 board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

5.1 Quad copter block diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

17
5.2 Quadcopter layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
 Quadcopter

Chapter 1

Introduction

Our objective for this project was to design and build a quad-copter
aircraft that was capable of stable flight with manual radio control.
More specifically, our goal was to implement an APM microcontroller
as the quadcopters flight controller, and program this
About what makes quadcopter flight possible. The purpose of this
report is to describe results of the project and the steps that were neces-
sary to reach those results. We would like to thank JAMES DRYDEN
RYAN BARBACCIA . We would also like to thank Dr. Anupam Ku-
mar for teaching for sharing his knowledge of quadcopter with us, and
for all of the help in the that made this project possible us so much
throughout the semester..

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 1

 Quadcopter

Chapter 2

Quadcopter Essentials

2.1 Quadcopter Frame

The frame of the quadcopter provides the physical structure for the entire aircraft.
It joins the motors to the rest of the aircraft and houses all of the other components.
The frame must be large enough to allow all four propellers to spin without collision,
but must not be too large and therefore too heavy for the motors. For our quadcopter
we chose a Hobbyking SK450 frame as seen in Figure 2.1, which measures at 450mm
across opposite motors..

project/images/frame.png

Figure 2.1: Frame: F450 (including 2 PDB) 450mm(diagonal length)

Reference : https://www.electronics.com.bd

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 2

 Quadcopter

2.2 Motors and Propellers

The motors spin the propellers to provide the quadcopter with lifting thrust. Quad-
copters almost exclusively use brushless DC motors, as they provide thrust-to-weight
ratios superior to brushed DC motors. However, they require more complex speed
controllers.

Hobby motors are typically given two ratings: Kv ratings and current ratings.
The Kv rating indicates how fast the motor will spin (RPM) for 1 V of applied
voltage. The current rating indicates the max current that the motor may safely
draw. For our project, we selected 1000Kv, 15A max NTM motors from Hobbyking.
Propellers come in many sizes and materials. They are measured by their diameter
and their pitch, in the format (diameter) x (pitch). Pitch is a measurement of how
far a propeller will travel in one revolution. Prop selection is important to yield
appropriate thrust while not overheating the motors. For our project, we selected
9x4.7 carbon fiber props (Figure 2.2), which yield 1.4lbs of max thrust while drawing
10.2A. With four motors, the max thrust for the quad is approximately 5.5 lbs. Figure
2.3: 9x4.7 Carbon Fiber Props Our quad has an all-up-weight of 2.0 lbs (925 g),
resulting in an overall thrust-to-weight ratio of 2.75. This allows the quad to hover
just below half-throttle.

project/images/motor.png

.
Figure 2.2: Brushless motor (4): REES521000kv ”A2212/13T”

Reference : https://www.electronics.com.bd

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 3

 Quadcopter

project/images/propellers.png

Figure 2.3: Propeller: REES52 10 4.5inches Clockwise (2), Anti Clockwise (2)

Reference : https://www.electronics.com.bd/index.php?route=common/home

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 4

 Quadcopter

2.3 Speed Controllers

Every motor needs an individual electronic speed controller (ESC). These speed
controllers accept commands in the form of PWM signals and output the appropri-
ate motor speed accordingly. Every ESC has a current rating, which indicated the
maximum current that it may provide the motor without overheating. Appropriate
ESCs must be chosen to ensure that they can provide enough current for the motors.
We selected 20A ESC for our project (Figure 2.4), as they are well reviewed
for use with quadcopters and have a sufficient current rating.

project/images/esc.png

Figure 2.4: ESC : Generic Folksrc 30A

Reference : https://www.electronics.com.bd

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 5

 Quadcopter

2.4 Battery

The battery provides electrical power to the motors and all electronic components
of the aircraft. Lithium Polymer (LiPo) batteries are used almost exclusively, be-
cause they have high specific energy. Hobby LiPo batteries have a capacity rating
and discharge rating. The capacity rating, in milliamp-hours (mAh) indicates how
much current the battery may output for one hour. Discharge rating, indicated by
the letter C, show how fast the battery may be safely discharged. To determine max
allowed current, multiply the C value with the capacity. For this project, we selected
Turnigy 2200mAh 2C batteries, seen in Figure.

project/images/battery.png

Figure 2.5: Battery 2200MAH liPo

Reference : https://www.electronics.com.bd

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 6

 Quadcopter

2.5 Radio Receiver

The radio receiver (Rx) receives radio signals from an RC transmitter and converts
them into control signals for each control channel (throttle, yaw, roll pitch). Mod-
ern RC receivers operate on a 2.4 GHz radio frequency, while older Rx units often
used 72 MHz frequencies. Rx units may have as few as 4 channels, but many have
more channels for additional control options. We selected a Hobbyking OrangeRx 6
Channel Receiver for this project, seen in Figure.

project/images/receiver.jpg

Figure 2.6: Receiver

Reference : https://www.electronics.com.bd

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 7

 Quadcopter

2.6 Flight Controller

The flight controller is the brain of the quadcopter, and performs the necessary
operations to keep the quadcopter stable and controllable. It accepts user control
commands from the Rx, combines them with readings from the attitude sensor(s),
and calculates the necessary motor output. For most hobby quadcopters, one would
select a purpose-made flight controller board. These boards often have integrated
attitude sensors,and compass and provide well-tested flight control software. For our
project however, we used an APM 2.8 (seen in Figure 2.7) as the flight controller, as
we intended to program the flight control software ourselves..

project/images/apm.png

Figure 2.7: Flight controller Board APM 2.8

Reference : https://www.electronics.com.bd

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 8

 Quadcopter

2.7 TELEMETRY

We can use telemetry to monitor information from a variety of sensors that we

install on our aircraft. This allows the pilot to keep track of the aircraft, monitor
external things around the quad, and have real-time information on key components
of the multirotor, such as battery levels.

project/images/tele.jpg

Figure 2.8: Telemetry kit

Reference : https://www.electronics.com.bd

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 9

 Quadcopter

Chapter 3

Dynamic System Control

A quadcopter is inherently a very unstable system. Anyone attempting to control a

quadcopter with manual inputs only and no attitude sensor integration would quickly
find that balancing the aircraft is very nearly impossible. So, to make the quadcopter
a stable system, it is important to integrate an attitude sensor and a set of dynamic
system controllers. For our quadcopter, we chose to use PID controllers due to their
relative simplicity and good performance..

project/images/orient.png

Figure 3.1: kk 2.15 controller

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 10

 Quadcopter

Chapter 4

Implementation

While the concepts of how a quadcopter operates are simple, implementing each
subsystem requires quite a bit of attention to detail in order for the aircraft to function
properly. This section will discuss the details of how each system works and what
was necessary to implement it..

4.1 Receiver

The RC receiver accepts radio signals from an RC transmitter and translates it into
separate channels of control. The receiver in our quadcopter is capable of outputting
6 channels of control, including throttle, yaw, roll, pitch, and 2 auxiliary channels
(controlled by toggle switches on the transmitter). RC signals are a form of special-
ized PWM, in which the length of the HIGH pulse contains the output information,
as seen in Figure 4.1. Each HIGH pulse varies from approximately 1 ms to 2 ms,
with a period of 20 ms.

project/images/rec1.png

Figure 4.1: Received pwm signal

In order to read this signal into the APM flight controller, the APM needs to
measure the length in microseconds of the HIGH pulse. The simplest way to do so
is to use the pulseIn() function, which measures pulse lengths on a pin.

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 11

 Quadcopter

4.2 Motor/Esc

To control the speed of the motors on the quadcopter, the flight controller sends
signals to each speed controller (ESC), and the ESC spins the motors according to
that signal. The signal that is sent to the ESCs is similar to the RC receiver signal.
The motor speed is determined by the length of the high pulse, but the period of the
signal does not have to be 20 ms. Some ESCs are compatible with update rates up
to 490 Hz, including the ESCs that we chose for this project. The faster the update
rate of the ESCs, the more precisely the speed of the motors can be controlled by
the flight controller. If fast update rate is not critical, the control signals may be sent
to the ESCs using the servo library. Servo signals follow the same format as ESC
signals, but are limited to an update rate of 50 Hz. One advantage of using the servo
library, is that any IO pin on the APM 2.8 may be used to send the signal. Because
we wanted the fastest possible update rate, we used the hardware PWM capabilities
of the APM 2.8 has six PWM capable IO pins, whose frequencies are controlled by
three different timers: timer 0, timer 1, and timer 2. The pin assignment and

project/images/motor.png

Figure 4.2: Brushless motor

Reference : https://www.electronics.com.bd

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 12

 Quadcopter

Timer 0 operates at too fast of a frequency for ESC control. While this frequency
may be changed, timer 0 is used for the millis and micros functions on the APM 2.8,
and changing timer 0 would disrupt their
ESCs. The analogWrite function may be used to output PWM to the speed
controllers, and is the simplest way to do so. However, for the sake of efficiency,
the PWM outputs may be controlled by directly accessing the PWM hardware regis-
ters. These PWM output values must be 8-bit numbers representing the HIGH pulse
length. In our program, motor speed was calculated in values between 1000 and
2000. Therefore to write these values to the PWM registers, they had to be divided
by eight, to scale the numbers to 125 to 250. These values correspond to the correct
PWM duty cycle. Because the numbers are being divided by eight, the division may
be performed using bit shifting, which is performed faster by the APM board..

4.3 APM 2.8

APM 2.8 Multi-Rotor controller manages the flight of (mostly) multirotor Air-
craft (Tri copters, Quadcopters, Hex copters etc.). Its purpose is to stabilize the
aircraft during flight and to do this, it takes signals from on-board gyroscopes (roll,
pitch and yaw) and passes these signals to the Atmega324PA processor, which in-
turn processes signals according the users selected firmware (e.g. Quadcopter) and
passes the control signals to the installed Electronic Speed Controllers (ESCs) and
the combination of these signals instructs the ESCs to make fine adjustments to the
motors rotational speeds which in-turn stabilizes the craft. The APM 2.8 Multi-
Rotor control board also uses signals from your radio system via a receiver (Rx) and
passes these signals together with stabilization signals to the Atmega324PA IC via
the user demand inputs. Once processed, this information is sent to the ESCs which
in turn adjust the rotational speed of each motor to control flight orientation (up,
down, backwards, forwards, left, right, yaw)

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 13

 Quadcopter

project/images/apm.png

Figure 4.3: APM 2.8 board

4.4 Initial Setup

• STEP-1

Mount the FlghtController on the frame with the forward facing front and
the output facing back. And input button in top and output button on back and
right side is gps and left is external buttons for telemetary craft.

• STEP-2

Connect the receiver outputs to the corresponding inputs pin and output pins
to corresponding esc’s
Ensure the negative (black or brown) is orientated so that it is on the pin that is
nearest to the edge of the Flight Controller Board, so looking at the board the
color sequence will be Black, Red and Orange. The channels are connected as
follows from the front of the board towards the push buttons.

• STEP-3

Connect the ESCs to the right side of the Flight Controller Board and esc’s is
connected to the 4 motors. In esc’s are three wires which are signal and positive

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 14

 Quadcopter

and negative and these are deside propellers to clock wise move and anti clock
wise move Do not mount thr propellers at this stage for saftey The completed
Receiver and Motor wiring (for a QUAD Copter) looks like this: The Flight
Controller Board must always have a source of +5v from an ESC, either one of
the motors ESC or from a separate unit feeding the Receiver.

• STEP-4

Set up a new model on your transmitter and use a normal airplane profile
and bind the Receiver to the Transmitter. And we use here a mission planner
software to install farmware into Apm 2.8 and bind with compass and set the
mode of thrust , roll, pitch and yaw . Using the mission planner we can draw a
path to fly our quadcopter in a particular path and we are using here a telematery
kit to control our quadcopter without using the transmitter

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 15

 Quadcopter

Chapter 5

Hardware Diagram

5.1 Block diagram of quadcopter

project/images/DRONE1.png

Figure 5.1: Quad copter block diagram

Reference : https://www.google.com/search?q=block+diagram+of+quadcopter

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 16

 Quadcopter

5.2 Quadcopter layout

project/images/DRONE3.png

Figure 5.2: Quadcopter layout

Reference : https://www.google.com/search?quadcopter+layoutoq=quadcopter+layout

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 17

 Quadcopter

Chapter 6

Bill of Materials

Purchased for Project

No. Item Qty Individual Sum

1 APM 2.8 1 Rs 1200 Rs 2500
2 Lipo-battery 1 Rs 1200 Rs 1200
3 Charger 1 Rs 350 Rs 350
4 Propellers 2 Rs 100 Rs 200
5 Frame 1 Rs 650 Rs 650
6 Esc 4 Rs 325 Rs 1300
7 Brushless motor 4 Rs 325 Rs 1300
8 Transmitter 1 Rs 2500 Rs 2500
receiver
9 GPS 1 Rs 1300 Rs 1300
10 Telemetry 1 Rs 1700 Rs 1700
11 Sum Rs 13000

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 18

 Quadcopter

Chapter 7

Screenshots of Project

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 19

 Quadcopter

Chapter 8

Conclusion and Future Scope

8.1 Conclusion

Overall the project was a success. During the project we learned how to
use electronic and communication study and make a new project.Everything
we learned from class and from doing research on this project helped us dis-
cover so many things we did not know before about electronics and computer
programming methods. The project taught us more than just how to apply elec-
tronic systems to micro-controllers.During the project we learned how to use a
transmitter to control a unstable device and how to use throttle yaw and pitch
input signals. We would like to thank Dr. Anupam Kumar sir who encourage
the whole semester to work hard and complete the project.

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 20

 Quadcopter

8.2 Future Scope

– Personal Transport
– Expanding Internet Access
– Food Delivery

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 21

 Quadcopter

Chapter 9

References

– -[1] International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Engineering

Technology (IJARCET) Volume 7, Issue 4, April 2018, ISSN: 22781323
Autonomous Quadcopter for Surveillance and Monitoring by J.Dani Reagn
Vivak , Mariappan.M, Micheal Jesus Rickson.M
– -[2]Implementation And Evaluation Of Apm 2.6 - Controlled Quadcopter-
With Aerial Imagery As A Case Study Article in Journal ofEngineering
and Applied Sciences October 2016 DOI:10.5281/zenodo.161243
– -[3]Quadcopter Design Project ME 445 FINAL REPORT JAMESDRY-
DEN RYAN BARBACCIA
– -[4]Instructables workshop by bhaskar p6 apm quadcopter steps
– -[5] Apm open source Autopilot avilable : Available (http://ardupilot.org/planner)
accessed 20/5/2019

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIIT KOTA, Jaipur 22