UTA Libraries’ Drone Club Takes Flight

U T A with star in the center, used when staff photo is unavailable

by Martin Wallace
April 5 2019

In February UTA Libraries began hosting its very own drone club. The Libraries supplied materials to construct two quadcopter drones and solicited the help of Thomas Perappadan, CSE undergraduate student and drone enthusiast, to facilitate a series of hands-on workshops where club members would learn to design, construct, program and pilot the drones.

Attendance at club meetings have ranged from five to twenty people. Students are encouraged to bring their own drones or drone kits to tinker with, or to help with the two kits supplied by the Libraries. Once completed, the two drones supplied by the Libraries will be available for check out by any student who is properly credentialed [pending UTA policy], undergoes a basic flight training session, and supplies their own microSD card.

So far we have successfully constructed and test flown one quadcopter by remote control. Technically, it is not considered a drone until we program it to fly on its own, and that will be the subject of the remaining meetings in the spring 2019 semester.

The second quadcopter is not yet ready to fly. We have run into several problems including 3D printed parts that fail, motor malfunctions, a defective battery, and a Raspberry Pi with a faulty Wi-Fi chip. Ultimately we decided to use all the good parts, plus a store-bought frame, to assemble one working quadcopter instead of having two non-functioning units.

We will continue the club in Fall 2019, where we will finish the second quadcopter. The Libraries will also supply at least one more kit to build from scratch. In the meantime, we still have two more official meetings this semester, April 15 and 22, from 7-9 PM in the FabLab in Central Library. That being said, the group is beginning to gel, having created a Discord server channel for communication; several students are interested in continuing work on the drones over the summer and a few are looking into forming an official student organization to begin in the fall.

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <button> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.