For as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to mount a camera to a remote controlled helicopter, fly it around and record aerial shots. Cindy told me I've been talking about it for years, and it was a great surprise a couple of weeks ago when she came home with an early Christmas gift!

A Syma 300 Schweizer RC helicopter!


http://www.raidentech.com/sy300elrarec.html

Didn't take us long to find an inexpensive wireless color camera:

http://www.raidentech.com/miwicocaspyc.html

While we waited for the camera, we took a few test flights off the front driveway and barely managed to keep the thing out of the trees!

Finally, the camera arrived and we headed over to Dave and Amy's house to take the first test flight.



I'll post more flights soon..

Lots of lessons learned. This was a great first experiment, but there's lots of work to do if we're going to get good quality aerial video.

1) We're going to need a bigger chopper

The camera plus 9 volt battery were VERY light, but even the small weight gave the schweizer some trouble. We managed to get it up about 5 feet in the air with the camera and battery mounted. (Without, the thing soars to 50+ feet).

2) Better maneuverability

More sophisticated helicopters yield greater maneuverability. We need to be able to reliably hold the chopper in position, strafe, pitch, yaw and roll.

3) Better quality camera

Not going to be worth the hassle if all we get back is garbled or poor quality video signals. Also longer range transmissions will be required if we are going to get shots that are more than 100 feet away.

4) Independently controlled gimble mount for camera

This would allow a second person to operate the camera pitch and yaw independent of the chopper.

5) Longer fly time

Gasoline powered?

6) GPS or other means of finding downed choppers

We almost lost this chopper over the creek near Dave and Amy's.. Especially with longer flight times and higher altitudes, finding a downed chopper will be tough without some means of electronically locating it.

When we were preparing for Lila's arrival, a product called the "Twilight Turtle" caught our eye:

http://www.sleepsheepandfriends.com/turtle.html

It was a cute turtle whose box promised to "project a complete starry night sky onto the walls and ceiling of any room." Sounded great. The price was steep at $40, but we figured it was a small price to pay for "a complete starry night sky".

Inevitably when we got home and tried it, it was a huge disappointment. The thing was lit but three wimpy LEDs that projected super dim smudges on the ceiling. You got three color choices - blue, green, and something that was supposed to be yellow but was just weak sauce..

Concluding that no child of ours would be subjected to such celestial lameness, we set out to build a better twilight turtle.

We stumbled on a set of projects by Toon Beerten which he dubbed "LED Mood lamps".

http://tobe.nimio.info/led_mood_lamp.php

It was inspiring what he was able to pull off, and best of all - his design was controlled by a really cheap ($2) programmable chip. Having had the lingering "get back into electronics" on Sean's list of things to do before he turns 40, we couldn't resist. The idea that we could built it, and then modify and extend it was super inspiring so we set off to build it.

First we ordered a highly recommended book on electronics basics called "Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics" by Stan Gibilisco.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071459332

Sean managed to choke down the first 6 chapters, but got impatient and went ahead and ordered all the necessary parts.

Stuff we used/found:

PIC Programmer (Hardware): USB PIC Programmer from Futurlec
(USB made it super easy. Be sure to get the In-Circuit Programming Adapter (18 Pin) as this allows you mounting the PIC directly on your project board which saves you from having to move the chip back-and-forth when testing. Trust me, its worth every penny of the $4.95!)

PIC Programmer (Software): PICKit2
(Came with the PIC Programmer)

JAL Compiler: jal-0.4.60.win32
(Toon's recommendation)

3W RGB LED: Prolight RGB LED
(The LED was a bitch to find!)

All other parts: Futurlec, Fry's
(Don't forget solder, flux and plenty of wire!)

After a couple of weeks of waiting for packages from Hong Kong and Thailand, we got it all working tonight and we're totally stoked by the results!



Check out a quick video to show our results:



Next steps:

1) Build a bunch for Christmas gifts this year! Who wants one?
2) Buy a used Twilight Turtle and replace the guts with what we built (way brighter, cool color cross fading), or build our own creature projector housing.
3) Extend the mood lamp hardware/code.. Hook up light, sound, temperature detectors and phase the colors based on these inputs.. RF receiver to remotely control colors from a computer (change colors based on a host of external data -- weather, stock market, Sean's mood)

Other Ideas:

1) Saw this image in the latest wired that sparked an idea to build a mood lamp with all its guts exposed. Connected wires form something more like a piece of art with the LED suspended in the center.
















We've been spinning on lots of other ways to extend it. If you've got something cool, let us know!

Sean & Cindy

Labels: electronics, led, mood lamp, pic

Cindy and I have been working on lots of fun personal projects lately and we wanted a way to store and share all the cool stuff happening at Casa Ardilla.

Enjoy!