James Madison University Capstone Research Question

[James Garito]

Hi Modal Team,

I was told to make a post here after reaching out to the sales team.

My name is James Garito, and I am a senior in Integrated Science and Technology at James Madison University. My capstone partner, Colton Haney, and I are reaching out because we are building our senior capstone project around drone-based wind measurement, and your VOXL platform looks like a great fit for what we’re trying to do.

The idea is to use drones to measure and map how wind speed varies across a site by programming them to fly to specific stationary points in space and collecting wind data, using the data from the propellers to estimate wind speed and direction. This is meant to perform as a lower-cost alternative to traditional measurement tools like meteorological towers, LiDAR, and SODAR, or to be used in conjunction with them. We’re especially interested in VOXL 2 since it runs PX4 and can potentially estimate wind from flight dynamics.

We would love the chance to talk with someone on your team and ask a few questions to see if VOXL is the right platform to build on. Would you be open to a short call in the following weeks? You can reach out to me at either garitojn@dukes.jmu.edu, or jamesgarito1@gmail.com, my school email is preferred.

Thank you for your time,
James Garito & Colton Haney

[tom]

Hi @james-garito it's likely easiest if you dump your questions here so our whole team can get eyes on and address.

[James Garito]

Hi Tom, sorry for the delayed response. I just saw your reply, but thanks for getting back to me. We’re mainly trying to figure out if VOXL 2 is the right fit for our project, so a few questions:

• Would we be able to log and export flight telemetry like pitch, roll, yaw, and motor outputs, and what format would that data come in?
• Our method depends on being able to adjust how aggressively the drone holds its position. Is the flight controller tunable enough to let us do that?
• Would you recommend VOXL 2 for this, or something else like the Starling 2 Max?

[Eric Katzfey]

I can help with some of those questions. The VOXL 2 board runs both PX4 and ArduPilot flight controller software. So you can review the documentation for those and decide which one best fits your needs. They both have logging capabilities and both have parameters that can be used to tune the flight characteristics. VOXL 2 is the circuit board, and Starling 2 Max is our development drone that uses a VOXL 2 board.

[James Garito]

I went through the PX4 docs, and the logging and tuning both looked like what we need, but I also noticed we’d need the add-on GPS, since we need to tag where each measurement is taken.

Since we’re a student capstone team and don’t have time to assemble a full drone from the bare board, would you recommend the Starling 2 Max, or another drone, so the motors, radio, and wiring are already set up? Or is there a reason you’d recommend just the board?

[Eric Katzfey]

Normally our customers start with the Starling 2 Max. Once they are comfortable with how everything works they design a custom drone around the VOXL 2 board and then just buy the boards after that. Designing a custom drone is very difficult.

[James Garito]

That makes sense, we'll go with the Starling 2 Max. We were wondering, though, if you offer any academic or student pricing. I'm not entirely sure what our budget is, so I'd be happy to connect you with our capstone advisor if that would help.

[Eric Katzfey]

You can email sales@modalai.com to ask about that.