Building Your Own Eye In The Sky

His goal of one post a week for a year has past, but [Dino] keeps bringing his skills to bear on new projects. This time around he’s adding a wireless camera to an RC helicopter.

These radio controlled fliers (there are cheap ones that use IR control which is much less reliable) can be found for around $30-60. [Dino] already had a wireless camera to use, but adding it and a 9V battery is just too much weight to lift. After some testing he established that 2oz of payload is the upper limit. He began removing parts from the helicopter to achieve enough savings to lift both the camera and its battery. Along the way he discovered that removing the weights from the fly bar added a lot of maneuverability at the cost of a small stability loss.

Check out his project video embedded after the break. It’s not anywhere near the results of professional multi-rotor camera mounts, but it is cheap and fun!

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OK, You Might Not Be Paranoid – Perhaps That Priority Mail Box IS Spying On You

rc-box-bot

[Thomas Renck] recently picked up a 1000mW wireless video transmitter that he ultimately planned to mount in an RC plane. Before he strapped it on a plane to potentially kiss it goodbye for good, he wanted to play with it a while to see what it was capable of.

After a friend helped him determine the camera’s maximum range (about 1900 feet on open ground), he thought it would be fun to strap it on his nitro R/C truck. That didn’t work out so well due to some vibration issues, so he constructed a makeshift R/C car from the shipping box the camera arrived in, along with some other odds and ends.

As you can see in the video below, the propeller-driven “Boxmobile” zips along quite nicely. The video feed from the camera is pretty impressive too, allowing him to easily guide the car while it’s well out of sight.

At nearly $350, the self-proclaimed “ghetto-bot” is certainly not cheap, though we hear body repairs are a piece of cake!

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Robotic Gardener Takes Its Cue From Bomb Disposal Bots

[Dave] posted some pictures and videos of his ‘Nuntius’ robot on the Propeller forums. From the pictures it’s an impressive build, but to really appreciate [Dave]’s skill, check out the Youtube demo.

The controller is a Propeller protoboard with bits of angle aluminum fastened together. Pots are positioned at the joints of the remote’s arm so the robot’s arm can mirror the shape of the remote. We usually see Armatron bots controlled via computer, or in the rare case of human control, a mouse. [Dave]’s build just might be one of the first remote manipulator builds we’ve seen on Hack A Day.

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