Low Noise/Visibility Drone (LNVD)

The Low Noise/Visibility Drone (LNVD) is a drone with the intended ability to reduce its visual and audio profile. The system can be used by wedding photographers or other sensitive event photographers to provide their clients with high-quality aerial shots without creating the large noise and visual profile otherwise associated with photography drones. The project used a DE10-Lite FPGA and an Atmega 16A4U to control the audio and visual system respectively. The power electronics use a set of buck converters designed around TI's LM61495 integrated circuit. These converters step-down the battery's 24 volts to 5 volts and 3.3 volts respectively. The main challenge with the project was getting the audio camouflage to work; we were unable to meet our requirement of -4dB of attenuation. Something that future iterations of this project can work to improve is to decrease the noise in our power system, finalize the relay between camera and visual display, and provide an additional hardware feedback to the audio algorithm. Furthermore, future iterations can work to consolidate individual PCBs to reduce the weight and form factor of the drone as well as reduce cross-talk amongst IO.

5 Lifts 

Awards

Artifacts

Name Description
Project Poster This is the project poster which was used for presentation at the College of Engineering Senior Design Expo.   Download
Executive Summary A one-page summary describing what the project is about and why it matters.   Download
Project Document The project document is a comprehensive report describing all things about this project.   Download
Project Summary Video Video summarizing the LNVD project over the 2023-2024 school year.   Link
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