Thorondor

The Avionics is responsible for controlling and powering all actuators on the aircraft as well as recieving radio commands from the pilot. Power from the batteris is stepped down by the ESC's for use by the microcontroller and servos. The ESC's Buck converters have a far higher efficency compared to a linear regulator when stepping down from 14.8V battery power to 5Vs. A Rasbeery Pi-Pico microcontroller is responsible for filtering sensor data and running the flight controller. We chose a Pico due to it's superior preformance compared to an At-Mega powered MCU, and it's low price in comparison to other premium microcontrollers such as the teensy. In retrospect a more power microcontroller should have been selected to ensure higher loop rates.

Initially a breadboard was used to prototype the electrical systems. This allowed for rapid debugging, and iteration. While not the prettiest, it served as a quick and dirty prototype to verify all electrical systems. It also allowed for us to experiment with adjusting the COM of the aircraft while on the test stand.

For the Flight Vehicle the electronics were moved to sit on a breadboard. This signifigantly reduced the amount of connections to troubleshoot as well as the mass and footprint of the avionics. All of the routing is on the back of the perboard. This increased the robustness of the wiring during testing, while still allowing for debugging and modification.