Thinking @ Speed of Light

 Here go a few updates on the quadcopter (CPUV) project. As mentioned in my previous post I will be using the Wii Motion Plus and  Wii Nunchuck for the IMU of the quadcopter to keep it stable.I ordered both of them recently from eBay and they just got delivered. Also i needed a micro-controller to manage the quadcopter's movements so i ordered an ATMEGA328 with an Arduino bootloader on it, again from eBay. I also ordered a spare battery , and a Hobby-King 6-Channel 2.4GHz FHSS Transmitter and Receiver from RCHobbyAddict. I shall explain i detail all these component choices in detail once i get the quadcopter to fly and write a complete build log along with the schematics and components. Now that i have purchased almost all the major components required for the quadcopter i just wanted to give the estimated cost of the entire project for someone looking to build one: Item Price/Piece Quantity Price Brushless DC Motors - EMAX 2822 505 4 2020 Brushless ESC - EMAX 1

Here is the design of the automatic paintball gun that i'll be putting up on the quadcopter.

In the previous post i mentioned that i needed gyroscopic sensors and accelerometers to stabilize the quadrocopter.For more detail on these sensors visit  Gyroscope  and  Accelerometer . Basically what i'll be doing is using these sensors find out the orientation of the quadrocopter relative to the ground. With this data i can adjust the speed of the various motors (using something called as PID Controller ) to stabilize the quadrocopter in a particular orientation. Now to move the quadrocopter in any direction you adjust the speed of any one (or all) the motors so as to get the proper direction of motion. For more info on how a quadrocopter actually flys go  here. There are two ways (that i have thought of) to obtain these sensors:                1) Buy it off the self                2) Salvage it from any commercially available product that already has these sensors (such as the PS3 Move, Nintendo Wii, iPod Touch, your new touchscreen phone,etc. Both ways have their advanta

First of all the name. I've decided to go with CPUV (or Chatur-Pankh-Udaan-Vastu). Thanks Anshuman for suggesting that name. In the last post i mentioned that i was going to do a test flight and put up a video so here they are: For the test we (me and my roommate mudit ) initially decided to use a RF link to control the quadcopter but due to some technical difficulties (i.e laziness, unwillingness to work and a general lack of interest in actually doing so) we could not actually use that so we put a small program on an ATMEGA16 that initializes the motors and then gradually increases the speed of the motors till it reaches a maximum and then to minimum rather quickly and then repeats the process over and over again. Now the quadrocopter does not have any gyros or accelerometers as of now to stabilize it (More in part 4) therefore i had to tie it down to a table or else it would have taken off, spun out of control and probably crashed. Links to  part 1  &  part

Renders of iPhone 4 made in 3DS Max 2011 using mental ray textures. 

Ok i got a bit further with the qua, drocopter ( link to part 1 ) project. I've finished the wiring for the motors and added a few LED's. I've also mounted the propellers and decided on the the design of the landing gear. As far as the stuff still left to do the list goes as below: Flight Computer Gyros and Accelerometer for stabilization  Radio Control System software for monitoring telemetry I'm hoping ill have everything done by the middle of may. Will upload all schematics and code then. After that i'll try to add some more gadgetry to the quadrocopter such as: GPS Automatic Paintball gun Camera Mount with Pan-Tilt As far as the Accelerometers and Gyros i was thinking of going for the sensors on either the Nintendo Wii Motion Plus or the Sony PS3 Move controllers because they are way cheaper than buying off the shelf parts and will involve some sort of hacking. Now my roommate is  also building a quadrocopter and he decided to use the Nintendo Wii so

I was getting a bit annoyed trying to explain a few people (you know who you are) that the iPhone camera is not different from their phone cameras (also having a 5MP sensor) and that with just a bit of hard-work they can also get HDR pictures. All u need is an app that does that for you ... Ok fine for all the people who do not want to install an app on their phone or want to create HDR using a normal "Digi-cam" there is another way. You can use Photoshop (or GIMP for you Open Source freaks) and make yourself a an HDR image. The process is fairly simple but this post is just for the above mentioned people and for all the others who are oblivious to the fact that this can actually be done. So is what u need :              1) A camera that has adjustable exposure settings               2) Photoshop or GIMP (why did they have to name it that?)             3) A tripod or a stand of some sort that you can put the camera on. (Not really necessary if you have very steady hands)

The first time i heard about a quadrocopter was when i saw a video on how the special effects in spiderman 2 were done (the scene  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NLgY6f60CA  at 1:45 was shot using a quadrocopter).I was amazed at the maneuverability of this machine.I wanted one but buying one was out of the question mainly because of the cost of a ready-made product. Also personally i would be happier if i built one instead of buying it. So about about 2 weeks ago i though i would go ahead and build one. I still have no idea what i will do with it when i'm done but who cares. I ordered all the mechanical parts i would need (details later) , bought a drill   and got to work on fabricating the body of the quadrocopter.  The design is fairly simple(as is the case with most quadrocopters). It is basically an X shaped system (built with aluminium rods, acrylic sheets and bolts) with a with a brushless motor connected to a propeller at each end. The electronics, batteries, and the &q

I am building a quadrocopter and was making the frame for it (post on this to follow soon). For building that in needed a drill so i thought i would buy one. As i just wanted to drill holes in aluminium i decided to go for a cordless drill because is will serve my purpose and just feels cooler. Therefore about 4 days ago i bought a cordless drill/screwdriver form Vasuki machine tools,Udupi (if you are the owner of the shop i need a discount next time). Work was going on smoothly until one of us started to feel hungry. Now all we had at home were eggs so we decided to make an omelette. That is when this insane idea struck us that we should use the drill to make the omelette. Don't believe me? See for your self After all this i started to work on my quadrocopter and in an a glue gun accident burnt my finger so we needed ice. The problem was that we had no ice in the fridge but for the past few days the fridge was acting up and had a lot of frost so we decided to to kill (or d