3D Puzzle all done....

Well here it is....

ISP Programer

Well Stew was busy on Saturday so i thought that I would jump right in and build my Atmel programmer. Was really easy to do and worked first time. Soon after that i was programing my first chip with it and got it blinking an LED in no time...

Cleaned out the work bench and setup for electronic work

This is my programer... Populated with the Atmel microprocesor ready for programing.....

Friday was Puzzle day...

Well after about 2 years of having this 3D puzzle that i got from Dubai, I thought it was time to build it and put it on my desk in my office...

Here a few pics of the build. Sorry there is no final pic from when i finished, but i forgot to take one :P but i will take one on Tuesday and post it up.

Build Day 2

Well we bought a few right angle clamps to keep the frame square, but after attaching the first one to the frame and then checking the other side with a tri square we bought.... things were not aligning. It turns out the expensive tri square we bought is not quite square....

We then cut the the 4 strengthening bars, drilled the holes for them and attached them to the frame.

We were going to rivet the bars to the frame but thought it would be best to bolt them on as we might want to use the same bolts for the landing gear or camera mount at a later stage.

Well now with the frame pretty much done and only weighing 296g things are looking good in the weight department. We hoping for a weight of not too much more that 1kg as we would like to hover at about half throttle. We have done some testing and it seems with the 4 motors we should get about 2.4kgs of thrust.

Mock up with right angle clamps.


Mock up of strengthening bars.


Mock up with holes drilled.


Final outcome after it had all been bolted together.


Just a pic to for us to keep track of weights...

Well now that most of the frame is done, we need to start working on some of the electronics. First thing we will be doing is getting the electronic speed controlers that power the 3 phaze motors, to run off our microcontrolers (Atmel Mega8's) we will be generating a PWM signal that will tell the speed controler at what speed to run the motor at...

quadcopter.org Project

Well myself and a mate stew have started work on a new project quadcopter.org

The aim is to build a 4 rotor helicopter with a autopilot system that we will write.
The Quadcopter will contain a few custom built components eg. computer controlled speed controllers, electronic compass, accelerometers, gyros, GPS, GSM module for long distance controling over the cellular network and a wifi module for the closer range controling.

It will also carry a long range camera so we can navigate or just look while the auto pilot is flying....

You can follow the build at www.quadcopter.org or here on my blog..


Here are a few pics from the first build night... we had a few planning nights befor this but this is the first "Build night"

Stew filing down edges after first frame cut.

Measurements with our new R200 steel rule for the first notch cut.

The plan is to make the frame as light as possible, so we used aluminium
for the bace of our frame.

My new work bench in my now very clean garage.
The door we using as the table top is a bit narrow so as soon
as we can get a new door we will replace it.

Filing down the noches in the 2 main struts to make them fit just right.

Well this is as far as we got the first night, reason being, as i was cutting the next bit i bumped our work light and blew the bulb so we had to call it quits for the night as we could not see a thing :(

Sunday

Hahahaha... Wez thought it would be a good idea to cut his hair on his own..


See what happens when u cant see the back of your head...

Weekend Full Of Fun

Well Friday started off with a bang...

We started at CoolRunnings where every one was looking a bit down from a long week at work... But the vibe soon picked up and we were all back on track for a great weekend..

After Cools we headed to Zeps...

Oh Ye and I had a hair cut on Friday too.. (Cuz Mandy refused to cut it for me)