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Thu, 13 Mar 2008
YARB 1.0 (Yet Another Robotic Blimp) - first untethered flight
In my never-ending quest to defy gravity with the SRV-1 Blackfin, I installed the camera board and radio on a 66-inch helium blimp (ordered without their motor controller for a $100 savings) - interfacing the H-bridge on the SRV-1 combo radio/motor board directly to the two prop motors and one of the Blackfin's timer channels to the servo which vectors the prop thrust.
Here's SRV1Console with some different buttons that control the vectoring of the props and invert the video (the Blackfin board is suspended upside-down from the blimp gondola).
Using SRV1Console's archiving feature, I captured the video feed while piloting the blimp around the hallway and front room from my office. The blimp is surprisingly easy to pilot - this was my first attempt, and I didn't break anything, though there were some close encounters. The camera's a bit out of focus in the following video and the afternoon light washes out the scene somewhat, but you get the general idea.
Next step is to add ultrasonic sensors and a compass in order to start programming some autonomous exploration. This promises to be a very interesting project.
Posted Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:01 | HTML Link | see additional stories ...