[Eric Austin] is using a Canon 7D with this RC helicopter to capture some amazing HD video. His success has manifested itself in a company that is now manufacturing these platforms ready-to-use. Take a look at their blog to see some of the hardware they’re working on, such as a tricopter and hexacopter photo platforms. We’ve also embedded a video after the break of the unit seen above and the stunning shots it’s able to grab.
Cell phone chopper control
Control your tiny inexpensive helicopter with a Nokia N900. The chopper uses an infrared remote control, just like a television. Getting this to work was just a matter of figuring out the IR commands and writing an app for the phone to spit them out.
Fade to black; inconspicuously
Lost interest in your TV-B-Gone? Give it one last whirl by throwing it inside of an old iPod case. The dock connector hole is just about the right size for the LEDs and the kit fits nicely in the old 3G type iPods. With this kind of disguise it should be a lot harder to spot who’s messing with those TVs.
Surf your way to a cleaner house
This guy uses a roomba to clean his floors. The Wii balance board lets him lean forward and back to surf the little bot around the room. This seems a little more exciting than the exercise programs the board was originally designed for. [Thanks DXR]
G1 gamepad
[Tobias Weber] built a gamepad for the G1 Android phone. He used an old Atari control, cut out two buttons and the d-pad, and glued them in a housing to fit the G1 keyboard. Each presses a button on the phone’s keyboard which can be mapped through the emulator software.
Social power monitoring
Here you see a very small portion of the power meter installed in a Cafe at UC Berkeley. It shows the energy usage for the building, separated into categories such as lights, power outlets, and coffee machines. This lets students know how much juice they’re draining by plugging in their gadgets. The color bar uses 93 ShiftBrite modules controlled by an Arduino.
It hurts us to look at this quadcopter, agonizingly so when we watch the video after the break. That’s because we feel the unstoppable compulsion to build one. This four-rotor helicopter has a lot to be proud of; it features Gyro stabilization, Xbee remote control for very long distance operation, and computer interface for data graphing and calibration.
We like the quadcopter that we came across at CES but building one of our own is more fun than buying it ready-made. The pain we’re feeling is mostly in our pocketbook. To help ease the agony we scoured the parts list and the assembly instructions in order to get an estimate of what this might cost. We’re looking at around $415 plus shipping, not including transmitter and receiver for controlling it. Yep, that’s a sharp stabbing pain but we’re not sure we can just let it go.
This bit of nostalgia really caught our attention. A german hacker or “inventor” as we were called back then, came up with this interesting concept. He would project an image on to the moving blades of an Autogiro, relying on the POV effect to make it appear complete. While this is not the same system of utilizing POV that we currently use, it relies on the same principles. It looks like he’s hanging the projector or “magic lantern” from below the Autogiro, using the length of the rope to hang it as a focusing system. Were this to have actually gone into production, it probably would have really freaked people out. If only he had had access to something along the lines of the ceiling fan POV system.
[thanks itay]
[update: Why didn’t we look around for this earlier. It was brought up in the comments, there is in fact a POV system for R/C helis. http://www.nightgraphix.de (translated)]
We’ve all seen those little toy helicopters appearing everywhere. They’re getting cheaper and cheaper with some models getting down to roughly $30. The JRL team wanted to be able to control them with a PC, and figured the best way to do it was to build somewhat of a universal remote for them. The HeliControl module currently has several different types of copters programmed in, and they plan on adding more. Its not surprising to see the rise in popularity of these mini choppers, we’ve even seen some pretty extensive mods to the bodies and even mechanicals. Click around this forum to see what some people are doing to them.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMhrSwatSiE]
[Kiethrobot] built this six legged little helicopter. You can see that it is fairly mobile. You can also see that it doesn’t really make it off the ground really well. He must have gotten more power out of it though because he destroyed it in a crash the day after filming this. It is surprising how much character those six little legs add to the RC helicopter. This thing is almost as cute as something from crabfu.
[via BotJunkie]
Have you ever wondered how they inspect high voltage cables without taking them out of service? Check out this video which offers a glimpse into the life of a professional high voltage cable inspector. There are parts of the job you’d expect—namely perching on the cable like a bird, trying to not fall off—but the part of the job you wouldn’t expect is the suit. This suit is made of 75% Nomex, to prevent it from catching fire, and 25% stainless steel thread, turning the suit into a wearable Faraday cage. Of course, because he’s got a Faraday cage mere millimeters from his skin, the cable inspector spends his workday surrounded by half a million volts. To avoid electric shock, he equalizes the voltage potential between himself and the line before touching the cable.
Depending on your specific phobias, this video might make your job seem really dull… or really really safe.
[via Gizmodo]
