In my last post about the MCE Remote relay I was working on, I prototyped up the circuit and finalized the schematic in Eagle.  After doing that, I worked on a PCB layout ( all related file can be found here ).  It was a bit of a trick getting a suitable layout sorted out in Eagle, but I got it done.  From there, I was able to generate transfers for the top layer (silkscreen), and the bottom layer (etch).  They appear below;

Well, it’s done!  Last night I completed the last of the wiring, spun up all the motors, ran through the pre-flight checklists, and this morning I set the quad going in the carport.  It took off, no major issues.  Leans to the right, but I think that’s because of the angle of the carport’s concrete.  I only brought it about a foot off the ground 🙂

Did some more optimizations on my Microserver to improve performance and reduce the write I/O going to the USB flash.

On Wednesday, I received my $199 (!!!) HP Microserver.  This little beauty is a low-cost, low-power solution for anyone who wants a tiny NAS or otherwise always-on box.

Well, I got the frame assembled (mostly)!  Still need to do a few bits (and all the cabling), but the frame’s put together and it fits like the plans said it would.  Great feeling when that pans out.

Finalized what I’m going to do with the frame design last night.  Frame design can be found at this link (Visio document).  This frame is intended to be fairly small, but still robust and very easy (and cheap!) to construct replacement parts for.  M2M distance is ~475mm, which is around the 18.7 inch mark.  This frame is intended for use with 10 inch props (a 10 inch prop will just avoid the baseplate getting into the prop wash).