Hayo, just listing things to work on and brainstorming. If anyone would be interested in one of these projects, it might motivate me to finish it.
I have a DIY quadcopter that I built using brushed dc 540 sized motors and 7x6 push/pull propellers, but for some reason the motor controller I built kept heating up during testing and I haven't yet tried to fix it... would like to get this working so I can post it on the site.
I have also built a miniature segbot using half of my MakeBlock kit that I bought. It has everything but an Arduino mounted to it and have not yet modified the Segbot code. It would ideally be controlled by remote to make it turn, and have a servo with a counter weight mounted to the top.
Also have an airplane that I built out of coroplast sign material. It uses standard brushless R/C motor, brushless motor-controller, lipo battery, and mini servos - all of which I had laying around, so the actual plane only cost about $10 to build, but I got it in the air and flew it for a bit. Would have ended more smoothly if it wasn't my first time flying an R/C airplane. The plane has now survived several crash landings because I don't yet know how to land, each time breaking a $1 plastic propeller (luckily I had several extras).
My office is nearly finished building a rep rap 3d printer which will be awesome.. will be posting some information on that when finished.
Have been thinking an aweful lot about playing with a hydraulic pump and reversible motors... would make for a beastly 60" deck Lawnbot. Anyone have any experience with hydraulics?
And need to get/make some mecanum wheels with 45 degree rollers. I hear from a knowledgeable roboticist that you can do some neat tricks with 3 omniwheels mounted in a row and spinning in opposite directions.
Hi John, +1 for the quadcopter I've been thinking about this for a long time and think it would be really interesting. What I would like to do is scale it up so a person can sit in it but will need loads of batteries or a generator to power the motors resulting in being to heavy. But this should be posible using 2 X 2X25 motor controlers and 250W 24V motors like my segay. Any ideas?
Another idea I have is a security system. Traditionally to install a hardwired security system you need to run cables to each detection device, eg PIR motion detectors , Door switch etc.. What I would like to do is something like:
It would be able to look through walls and detect if there is any movement, provided the microwave sensor has the range. This would also be able to look outside , so to prevent false alarms we would need some kind of mapping software to plot the floorplan of the house.
We are currently building a large quadcopter at work, much like you described complete with a lightweight generator made from a brushless motor and bridge rectifier. The ultimate goal is to carry a person, but the prototype will likely be too small for that.
I thought I had the code on github, but my quadcopter repo is empty... I will push it up later today.
1. We have not tested the motor that we are going to be using for the generator yet... but should have it in soon and I will let you know. But we did test the smaller brushless motor connected to a power drill to verify that we could reverse the brushless motor to use it as a generator.
2. We will ultimately be using a gas powered version of the typical nitro engine used on most r/c airplanes to power the generator.
3. Right now we are building a smaller proof-of-concept that uses some standard R/C brushless 35amp controllers, but ultimately not sure of what size controller will be necessary. Assumably the large brushless motors we are planning to buy (the size of a 350w brushed scooter motor) will have suggested controllers... we will just have to keep adding motors to each corner until it will lift what we need ;)
4. brushless all around for both drive and generator.
Here is a link to the motors we are planning on using for the large version:
here is the first quadcopter code I wrote, it only takes care of motors right now, not balancing yet.. I am going to incorporate the segbot code into this:
https://github.com/johndavid400/thirty-three/tree/master/quadcopter/code