Avionics kit¶

Avionics teams will be issued with kits that will enable them to create a minimum-working-example system. The core components of this are part of the University of Bristol Flight Lab's standard research hardware and software stack, and have been flown around the world including over volcanoes, for conservation and humanitarian projects, and for search and rescue missions.

Kits are signed out to your group and returned at the end of the unit in reusable order. The full contents are on the kit list; this page is what you do with the kit when you first get it.

Checking your kit¶

Do this at the bench, before anything is plugged into anything.

1. Empty each box in turn, and lay the contents out where you can see them all. The kit list is grouped by box, so work through it a box at a time.
2. Match every item to the list. The "what it looks like" column is there because several items are unlabelled and some look alike.
3. Look at each item as you go. Bent pins, split insulation, a connector missing its housing: easier to spot now than to explain later.
4. Say so straight away if anything is missing or damaged, and don't quietly swap parts with another group. Kits are numbered, and they come back as they went out.
5. Sign for the kit once it matches the list. One named person in your group is responsible for it.

Getting to know it¶

You'll be working with this hardware for the rest of the unit, so spend a few minutes on familiarisation before you start plugging things together. For each item, you want to be able to answer three questions:

• What is it? Its name, and which part of the system it belongs to: flight control, power, comms, sensing or actuation.
• What does it connect to? Most items have exactly one right counterpart. Connectors that look interchangeable often aren't.
• What would damage it? Wrong voltage, wrong polarity, pulling a cable by its wires, or forcing a plug the wrong way round.

You aren't expected to know the answers yet. The first workshop walks through the whole kit together, and the guide's next pages take each part in turn, starting with the Cube.

At the end of the unit¶

Pack the kit back into its boxes, check it against the kit list again, and return it complete. Anything missing or broken should be reported when you return it, not left for the next group to find.