12/14/12

Today, I really got down to a working prototype. I had a glitch in the code from the night before that I had fixed during the day, so I uploaded it when I got home and got cracking. After a change which made it easier to keep the copter steady, I was really flying. Since this is still more than a little rough around the edges, it's a challenge to fly. I was bumping into walls a lot of the time, and every time the helicopter hit a wall, it fell. Finally, I run out of charge, so I take a break to charge back up. When I come back, I turn on my camera to document the working prototype when I realize my back rotor is not completely on. It had come off while it was spinning and hitting the wall at the same time. Luckily, every S107 comes with a spare one of these small rotors, so I grabbed mine, slapped it on, and tested it with the regular controller to make sure it was on correctly. When I was back to video documenting the project, I realize how hard it is to capture both the copter and me in the same frame with a homemade tripod (really just my walled in the front, and my Kelvin.23 in the back with my Bloggie in the middle). I did get a few good shots, but they were all at most 15 seconds long. If I want this to be a good controller, flights should be at least a minute and a half long. Now that I know that everything is basically functioning, I have two main goals:

1. Add stability to the controller
   • make it easier to control throttle (joystick maybe?)
2. Add range to the controller
   • the range is better with the super-bright LEDs, but still not good. I don't know if wiring more LEDs in parallel would help, but in one of the articles I read about the S107 it said that transistor switching would enlarge the range.
     • do research on transistor switching and how they relate to LEDs.