Wi-Fli Copter Broken? Harvest The Parts!

June 4, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

[Nick] was somewhat disappointed when the Wi-Fly helicopter he bought his son broke in less than 10 minutes. The main gear that turns the rotor split in half, rendering the copter WiFi enabled trash. [Nick] however decided that he didn’t want to waste an opportunity and harvested the receiver parts. To test them out, he wired them up to the controller for an R/C truck. This gave him a WiFi truck with a nifty android interface. It actually works pretty well, as you can see in the video below. [Nick] points out that, while this works fine, he could ultimately repurpose this fancy little WIFI controlled 3v switch to whatever he wants. He mentions garage doors and lights (and terminators), so this might be an opportunistic way for him to get into some fun home automation.

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Waterproofing An RC Plane

June 4, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 5 Comments

A few years ago, the EasyStar RC plane took the remote control community by storm, launching dozens of clone ready to fly planes that found their way onto many fields, rooftops, and trees. [hammydude] wanted to take his EasyStar with him while also playing around with his jetski, so he did the reasonable thing: he waterproofed his remote control plane.

The EasyStar is made of foam, but that doesn’t mean it’s ready to land on a lake. To prevent any damage to the electronics, servos, and pushrods, [hammy] slightly modified the fuselage of his plane and potted the electronics in silicone glue. Now this excellent RC plane is capable of landing on calm water with a slow self-destruction.

[hammy] has flown his EasyStar seaplane in salt water, but that is a terrible environment for the exposed brushless motor. Before packing it in for the day, [hammy] pours a bit of fresh water over the motor and throttles up for a minute or two. This seems to be good enough for the bearings in the motor; in the video after the break, you can see [hammy] submerge his plane in the water and take it for a short test flight. There’s some great in-flight shots taken from the EasyStar – surely an awesome way to enjoy a trip to the shore.

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Making Color Matched Perler Bead Art

June 1, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 7 Comments

You may remember Perler beads from first or second grade; these small plastic beads are placed into a peg board and then ironed to produce a solid multicolored piece of plastic. Recently, Perler beads have seen somewhat of a revival due to a few people creating 8 and 16-bit video game sprites in plastic, but there’s still the enormous effort of color matching beads to make a passable Sonic or Mega Man.

[Jon Wilson] sent in an awesome bead pattern generator that takes those color images of video game sprites – and just about any other picture – and translates them into Perler bead patterns. One awesome feature is color matching; [Jon] found the RGB values of every color of Perler beads and his program chooses the closest match from the original image.

[Jon] started on a GUI app for his bead pattern generator, but because his kids aren’t into beads anymore the GUI is still unfinished. There is a command line Python script that takes an image and shoots out a PDF of the bead pattern, which should be more than enough for all but the most complicated design.

BrainTap, Gaming With Arthritis In Mind

June 1, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 3 Comments

As a final project in their 3rd year of the University of Technology Sydney, [James] and a few classmates put together this interesting game. Called BrainTap, it is described as a game targeted at the baby boomers focusing on fine motor skills and memory.

The game plays similar to the common game “simon”. The box lights up a series of LEDs in a pattern, then you have to repeat the pattern back with the corresponding buttons in the glove. There is vibration feedback in the glove as well as the lights and sounds you see in the video. Though they do mention arthritis in their title, we don’t think our grandmas with arthritis would enjoy those hand motions much. We, however, might spend hours doing this instead of more important things.

We particularly like the visual construction of the game box. The case was designed in CAD, 3d printed, then sanded smooth and painted with automotive paint to get that perfect finish. Great job guys.

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Yet Another PCB Quadcopter

June 1, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

Like most people out there, we’re fascinated by these little buzzing and hovering quadrotors. We’ve really enjoyed the recent trend of miniaturizing them and using PCBs as the frame itself. As [scolton] points out in his instructible, his isn’t the first, the smallest, or the lightest, but he does have some great information and a few tricks up his sleeve that make this a fun project to check out. The 4pcb measures 6.5 inches from motor shaft to motor shaft diagonally. It weighs 138 grams and, with its current batteries,can fly for roughly 8 minutes.

A nice thing about the 4pcb is that it includes brushless motor drivers into the design. Apparently that isn’t very common. What we really like though is the massive amount of reference material [scolton] provides. Not only could you download everything necessary to recreate his work, he links to so many other projects and resources you could probably expand in any direction your heart desires. If you’re considering a quadcopter build in the near future, you might want to bookmark this one.

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Building Your Own Eye In The Sky

May 28, 2012 by Mike Szczys 22 Comments

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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Turning A Pedal-powered Tractor Into A Power Wheels

May 28, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 22 Comments

A while back, [Stefan] bought a pedal-powered tractor for his son. It was a fun toy, but what it really needed was an electric motor. After a fair bit of tinkering, [Stefan] turned a pedal-powered tractor into a battery-powered Power Wheels.

Before turning his son’s pedal tractor into a battery-powered ride, [Stefan] ordered a 250 Watt motor and a Pololu motor controller. After tearing out the pedal parts, the motor was attached to the tractor with a few bits of wood (giving the tractor running boards), and a bike chain was run between the rear axle and motor. A pair of small 12 Volt batteries provide all the power and a Hall effect sensor in the handlebars provides the throttle.

Right now, [Stefan] has his son’s new battery-powered tractor set to a top speed of 5 km/h, or just a little bit faster than walking speed. [Stefan] says the tractor has a top speed of about 15 km/h, or about 10 mph; much too fast for a kid’s toy. After the break there’s a video of the tractor rolling along, and [Stefan]’s son having a great time.

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