How To Build Your Own Quadcopter, Step By Step

July 27, 2011 by Mike Nathan 54 Comments

DIY-er [Russell] wanted a quadcopter, and like many people out there, he knew the satisfaction that would come from building it himself. Rather than purchase a kit or follow a set of online instructions, he spent a lot of time researching quadcopters, and eventually put together a thorough tutorial himself.

His Arduino-based quadcopter is named Scout and runs about $1,000 to $1,200 depending on which parts you choose to buy. [Russell] has a complete parts list available on his site, including plenty of alternate component choices for builders on a budget.

He covers the construction process in great detail, discussing frame fabrication and component placement as well as how to program the Arduino for the copter’s first flight. He also takes the time to break down his component list item by item to explain how each piece is part of the greater puzzle, which is great for first time builders.

We love seeing this level of detail when discussing a build process, and as you can see by the video embedded below, his quadcopter looks great!

[Thanks, Willow]

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Purdue IEEE ROV

July 26, 2011 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

Purdue University’s IEEE branch participated in this year’s Marine Advanced Technology Education Center Competition, taking second place for the Hybris ROV seen above. The competition included several compulsory functions, including the ability to cap an underwater oil well, collect biological samples, and take water samples at depth.

What they came up with is a quick and agile watercraft that easily overcomes a lot of the hardware hangups that typically plague ROV builds. There are eight thrusters, four for vertical motion and the other four take care of horizontal movement. The gripper mechanism can be clearly seen on the front of the craft, with two cylindrical containers housing the electrical components.

Don’t miss out on the project definition page. Each challenge is discusses in detail, along with the team’s solution. We were impressed by the amount of information they have posted, including overview of each electrical component as well as design files and source code. If you want to see how the first run of the competition went, click through the break to find embedded video.

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Singing Robot

July 25, 2011 by Kevin Dady 19 Comments

The 4DOF CXN-I anthropomorphic robot arm in the Mechatronics Lab at FICES-UNSL (Engineering faculty, San Luis National University, Argentina) was built from scratch, and it is still a work in progress to teach and learn about mechatronics , in order to build another, more robust and precise arm in the future. When one of the students working with the device thought “hey, these motors are quite noisy, aren’t they? let’s put them to work towards something more useful”.

Armed with some guitar tabs, a robot and some noisy servos, [Guille] got the robotic arm to sing a little song raised a couple of octaves, and included it in the introduction video. Because hey, whipping a metal arm around like that is pretty mechanically strenuous, and its not all that great for the servos either.

Join us after the break for a quick video, the singing starts about 58 seconds into the show.

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Robot Vacuum Makes Cleaning Into A Game

July 25, 2011 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

This is not a Roomba hack, but a ground-up vacuum cleaner robot build. It’s the result of a class project from six students at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. There’s a slew of information available in their paper, but fair warning that it’s an 8.6 MB PDF file that we couldn’t get Google to translate. We were able to skim the PDF and cut and paste to translate the interesting bits we found.

Unlike a Roomba, which just uses a little sweeper to pick up debris, this robot actually includes a vacuum. The image above shows that the cylindrical body is wrapped in an LED matrix, with an ultrasonic sensor on the front for obstacle avoidance. The robot uses a CAN bus to control the various modules inside. We don’t think there’s any autonomous function, but that’s made up for by the remote control. It communicates via a ZigBee module, and includes a d-pad, touch screen, and accelerometer.We’re a little bit hazy on how the games are played, but there are at least two interactive version: one called ball, and another modeled after the classic game of missile command.

You can check out the source code for the project in their repository, or join us after the break for two demo videos.

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Cypherbot Uses Older UC And Retro-controller

July 23, 2011 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

[PJ Allen] has been working on a little robot which he calls Cypherbot. The control circuitry is quite familiar; a Board of Education which features the Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller. This is an older and slower microprocessor, but it works quite well for this application since there’s no need for speed or heavy number crunching. The wheels of the bot are made out of plastic lids (we’re thinking peanut butter jars) with rubber bands for traction that are each driven by a servo motor. The third wheel is tiny and swivels as needed.

The front of the bot has a PING ultrasonic sensor mounted on a servo motor which lets the bot scan back and forth for a wider obstacle avoidance angle. In addition to the autonomous mode there’s an Xbee remote control. [PJ] picked up an Atari keyboard and is using that as the user input. Check out the little guy driving around the house in the video after the break.

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Beefy Rover Looks Like Tons Of Fun

July 22, 2011 by Mike Nathan 11 Comments

mantis_six_wheeled_remote_control_robot

[Eric] and the crew over at The Tech Junkies, just put the finishing touches on a pretty powerful robot that they call “Mantis”.

The six wheel, chain-driven robot is pretty impressive at first glance. The robot is centered around a Netduino, which controls four 60 amp speed controllers. The speed controllers are tasked with driving four beefy CIM motors, which propel the robot along at a pretty decent tick.

For the project, the team designed their own controller application called IPGamepad, which allows the robot to be controlled by any Android device. The interface is pretty simple as you can see in the video below, making it quite easy to control the bot.

While the Mantis was not a cheap production by any means, it does look like a ton of fun to drive. The crew will be taking this robot along with 2 others out to Maker Faire Detroit, so be sure to swing by and say hello if you’re in the area.

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Modded Wall-E Becomes A Real Robot

July 22, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

[DJ Sures] got his hands on a plastic Wall-E toy and decided to build a robot that includes a camera, voice recognition, and object tracking. The result is adorable so we’re putting this video before the break:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJiMUzJHYFk&w=470]

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