november 10th 2009

Electronics

The past month I've mainly been working on the electronics, the control software and building the engine pods. The model uses 2 Arduino-boards, a Futaba RC and a Bluetooth connection.

Documentation on the motors, servos and electronics can be found in Report D: Electronics.

october 4th 2009

Testing noseprop controls

A short video from a test flight last weekend:

september 22nd 2009

The Robot that Sharing Built

Just saw Bre Pettis, one of the guys building the Makerbot, speak at Gnomedex on their open-source 3D-printer. If you don't know their work, check it out. They are currently shipping version 7 of their printer as a kit for 750$ and it's fantastic. They have a basic

"What can you make with black ABS?" "Evil stuff"

september 10th 2009

Experimental setup

I'm currently rebuilding the control elements for the tail motion, and need to adapt a couple of other components too.
After the nocturne flights I've been thinking about redesigning the experimental setup though, using the self-righting momentum as a yard stick for pitching forces. So here's Report B: Experimental Setup.

august 24th 2009

Self-righting momentum

The experiments last sunday aimed to determine the self-righting momentum of the airship model. Report A: weight and static stability is published here.

august 13th 2009

Hacked servo for vertical trim

The steppers I installed for the vertical movement of the skeleton were a prime candidate for weight reduction. Steppers turn out to have a really low power-to-weight ratio. You're better of using a regulat DC-engine with gears, and do the position feedback externally.

I modified 2 servos to work as continuous rotational motors, by removing their potmeters and filing off the pin on the last gear. This saves me 120g per motor and has the added benefit of ony needing one voltage for both the vertical trim and the lateral steering (6V).

MAKE magazine has an excellent articleon how to hack a servo, written by Windell from evilmadscientist.com

NOTE: use a metal gear servo if you're interested in trying this. I used a servo wtih nyon gears for the second motor and failed miserably to attach an axle to the nylon cap on top of the servo.

Tandwiel servo, mèt pin

Tandwielkast servo, tandwiel zonder pin

august 13th 2009

Introduction

I'm starting this blog in the middle of building a 1/10th scale model of the aeromodeller2-project. As such, it will probably take some time before these pages start to make sense.

to the old news-page (Dutch)....