We love the fall here at Hackaday. The nights are cooler, the leaves are changing, and our tip line starts lighting up with some of the craziest things we’ve ever seen. Something about terrifying children of all ages just really speaks to the hacker mindset. That sounds bad, but we’re sure there’s a positive message in there someplace if you care to look hard enough.
Today’s abomination is a truly horrifying human head quadcopter, which exists for literally no other reason than to freak people out. We love it. Created by [Josh] and a few friends, the “HeadOCopter” is built around a meticulously detailed 3D print of his own head. This thing is so purpose-built that they didn’t even put landing gear on it: there’s no point sitting on the ground when you’re in the business of terrorizing people from above.
Sure, you could do this project with a cheap plastic skull. But there’s no way it would have the same effect. [Josh] created this monstrosity by scanning his own head with the Microsoft Kinect, cleaning the model up in ZBrush, adding in mounts for hardware, and 3D printing the result. After doing some smoothing and filling, the head got passed off to artist [Lisa Svingos] for the final painting. He even thought to include an FPV camera where one of his eyes should be, giving a whole new meaning to the term.
As for the quadcopter hardware itself, it uses a BrainFPV RADIX flight controller (get it?) and 12×5 props on Sunnysky V3508 motors with 30A BLHELI ESCs. Measuring 1 meter (3.2 feet) from motor to motor, it’s an impressive piece of hardware itself; head or no head.
This project reminds us of the flying ghost we saw years back, but we have to admit, this raises the bar pretty high. We’re almost afraid to see what comes next.
id have done one of those flaming skull things from doom but thats just me.
Exactly my thought!
That’s a really good idea! maybe do the flames in transparent filament and add some LEDs… maybe I’ll start V2 sooner than I thought, lol
Or use some silk material with some yellow/orange/red or RGB leds underneath. Not sure how the wind would affect it mind you
it would induce some drag for sure, but at this scale the flight controller should have no issues with it if it has a good tune. I’ll fully admit the tune on this build was rough – we’ve had a lot of bad weather lately and I wanted this out before Halloween. It’s still in one piece though, so it may see some more airtime before winter comes
WE MADE THE BLOG! Awesome! Thanks for the write up on our silly little project, hope everyone gets a kick out of it!
Throw a wig on that thing! I bet it would look crazy.
Propellerhead
” Something about terrifying children of all ages just really speaks to the hacker mindset.”
Become the ghost of Christmas future, and show them their future as an adult. If that doesn’t scare them, nothing will.
Love the flying head and also the reply Some one made about the new version of the ghost if Christmas “future” past. Cool creation…thinking out if the box
Yes TJG you MUST do the lost soul from doom! I’ll dress up as a space marine for your next video.
okay… that was a really neat video introduction to this project. The style, the story, the name, the cheesy acting… it all fit’s perfectly. Great job!
you could do that with a mannequin head from a salon
Upgrade: Arrowheads and fletching on the ends of each frame arm…
Hilarious! Now all it needs is a servo-operated syringe of fake blood in the ‘neck’ to divebomb unsuspecting passers-by. :-D