What was accomplished

●       The hardware team wired the 12S power system on last year's drone, connecting the four 6S 25,000mAh semi-solid LiPo batteries in series and parallel through XT90 connectors.

●       The Tarot 12S 480A power distribution board was installed and wired to distribute power to all six ESCs, with Pixhawk UBEC power monitor module.

●       A full power-on bench test was carried out, confirming stable voltage delivery across all six motor channels with no voltage sag under simulated load.

Challenges and solutions

The main challenge was safely handling the high-voltage 12S configuration during initial testing, since a wiring error at this voltage could damage the ESCs or the flight controller. The team mitigated this by testing incrementally — first verifying voltage at the battery leads, then at the PDB output, then at each ESC input — before ever connecting the full system live.

Next steps plan

Install the flight controller and GPS module on last year's drone and complete full sensor calibration.