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?