[Jeff] and his team completed this iPhone controlled rocket launcher as part of their final project at Georgia Tech. Two servos provide the rotation referenced by an onboard electronic compass, and elevation control for launch. These are interfaced with an eBox 2300 using a few Phidgets boards.
Check out the launch video below. It’s too bad that they went with a commercial solution for servo control rather than building it themselves (especially considering it is an embedded systems class). But it is a nice build none the less. Now they need to add some imaging equipment to the rockets and they’ll be in business.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4VHGxYqC7E]
it saddens me they also used an iPhone to film the video.
No they didn’t, at 0:14 you can see a reflection of the camera.
The inside of the case looks too cluttered.
It seems like an awful lot of electronics for what could be completed with a 3+ channel RC airplane remote for significantly less money.
I still appreciate the fact that there is no arduino involved.
holy over-engineering, batman!
Just like the hamster ball the other week, this was for a Georgia Tech class, ECE4180. Thus, using the eBox was part of the assignment. It may be overkill, but I think the benefit of completing the assignment correctly far outweighs pleasing hackaday readers.
While entertaining, I can’t help but agree with the above posteers… it’s waaaaaay to much engineering for something so simple, and I would expect something much more ground breaking from a University grade technical course on embedded systems.
I mean, they didn’t even build the good stuff themselves so wtf? Sigh. Lazy, just flipping lazy, and totally unworthy of Hack-a-Day status. We were doing stuff like this back in the days of Windows CE powered Casio pocket computers using Airplane radios and custom built controllers so this is just an easier implementation of that.
Just because it’s got an iPhone involved, or an Adruino (thankfully absent from this post), doesn’t make it Hack-worthy. Can we bump up the bar a notch? Thanks.
If those were realtime guided missiles, it’d be okay.
they should incorporate GPS guidance so the rockets always hit the person with the phone.
Phidgets < Arduino
This = lame. Appears more shiny and complicated looking than functional. Now that guy who made the tiny flight recorder a while back that measured 3 axis acceleration of a rocket. That’s bad ass.
it’s amazing the lengths at which man will go to make a simple button \/ery complicated. haha.
Heh. I built a launcher out of a radio shack RC tank in 6th grade. No iphone back then, but the little tank could roll about 200 ft away and fire its rocket.
hey anyone seen the Chuck episode about Jeff and Missile Command?