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DraganFly III Gyro-stabilized RC Helicopter

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the scare-the-cats dept.

Pronoun54 writes "It hovers! It spins! It spies! The Draganflyer III weighs just 17 ounces with its high-tech stabilization system. "As an eye in the sky, the Draganflyer III can be used indoors or out, up to a mile away, to take aerial views of real estate, promote products at trade shows, or give the guy in the next cube a close encounter he won't soon forget." "One more advantage of the Draganflyer III: if you're grounded by bad weather, you can still open the throttle and hover indoors." Their site has videos of this thing in action both indoors and out. Seems like it can move pretty fast at top speed." The Times has a piece talking about the piezo gyroscopes (including purty pictures) that the chopper uses to self-stabilize.

11 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. If you're interested.. by Mr2cents · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's a project on sourceforge (GPL'ed):

    autopilot

    --
    "It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
  2. Slashdotted, google cache by jonman_d · · Score: 3, Informative

    Of course, you won't get the purty pictures:

    http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:Zcv7fU8bM28C: www.rctoys.com/draganflyer3.php+&hl=en&ie=UTF- 8

    --

    --
    http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
  3. Re:Why NiCd? by dougmc · · Score: 5, Informative
    You must not do much R/C :)

    NiCd's tolerate high discharge rates better than NiMH batteries, and FAR better than Li-ion batteries. They can also be charged faster.

    You can discharge a SCR NiCd battery in four minutes and not damage it. Do that to a NiMH battery, and it'll be too hot to touch, and will be damaged. Try to do that to a Li-ion battery, and you'll ruin it the very first time.

    Also, the NiMH and Li-ion batteries have a higher internal resistance. Voltage drop == discharge rate * internal resistance, so as you draw more and more amps, you get fewer and fewer volts. Eventually, you get less total power from the NiMH and Li-ion batteries, even though they have higher capacities.

    I doubt these things will fly for much longer than ten minutes (if even that.) You're discharging the batteries at a high rate, so you need batteries that can handle it. And those batteries are NiCd's.

    Some park fliers can use Li-ion batteries, and they can stay up for 30-60 minutes at a time. But they fly very slowly and have very little power. Helicopters and other similar vehicles are not so efficient.

  4. Video by wiZd0m · · Score: 2, Informative

    Don't forget the VIDEO

    http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/technology/ 20 020808_HOWW_helicopter/cir_HOWW_heli_05.html

  5. Re:Why NiCd? by dougmc · · Score: 3, Informative
    I just checked the link -- they only fly for 5 minutes. Definately, they *need* NiCd's to handle that much current draw.

    If you were to use NiMH or Li-ion batteries, you'd need much larger ones -- they'd be so large that it couldn't fly with the additional weight.

    On the bright side, these NiCd's can probably be charged in 15 minutes. So, if you have four or five battery packs and a good charger, you should be able to keep flying with only short stops to swap out batteries -- the other battery packs will either be cooling or charging (charging hot batteries = bad idea -- great way to ruin them.)

  6. Wow... big heli for $700+ by Critical_ · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have been flying r/c gas-powered, gyro-stabilized helicopters for 8 years now. This is nothing new. Most people can buy a full fledged heli setup for $700 or so. Back about 5 years ago, solid state gyros (piezo gyros) came out and have made the old mechanical gyros seem slow and imprecise. For more info on "real" r/c helicopters here are some links:

    http://www.miniatureaircraftusa.com
    http://www. century.com
    http://www.heliproz.com
    http://www.h eli-world.com
    http://runryder.com
    http://www.fut aba-rc.com
    http://www.osengines.com

    I fly an X-Cell Graphite 60 size helicopter with a futaba 9zhs (9 channel) computer radio controller, futaba gy601 piezo gyro, OS .61 SX-H engine. Any questions, feel free to ask.

  7. Re:I want one too! by dougmc · · Score: 4, Informative
    You think that's expensive?

    Check out their Draganflyer X-Pro model.

    Here's the google cache.

    Only $4997! (no, I didn't miss a decimal point.)

  8. Re:Military Applications by Snarph · · Score: 2, Informative

    The Black Widow (.pdf only, sorry) by AeroVironment doesn't hover but it's designed for just such a purpose.

    I'd be happy to get either one for my birthday, thanks.

  9. Crashing by Critical_ · · Score: 2, Informative

    Crashing is a part of the learning experience. What many of us did is we take two long dowel and make an "X" out of them and attach it to the bottom of the heli. THis gives in a big footprint so if one was to come down the wrong way, the heli won't tip.

    Given the FMA co-pilot and heading hold gyro, the heli can fly on its owwn almost.

    link to FMA co-pilot: https://www.fmadirect.com/site/fma.htm?body=Produc ts&cat=20

  10. Re:Why NiCd? by bm_luethke · · Score: 2, Informative

    It depends on what type of rc maybe. At least in the car world NiMH rule the world. 3000 milli-amp sanyo 3000 HV are pretty much the top of line. Even where you can get NiMH and NiCD overlap (2400 milli-amp) to NiMH are the ones used. They have more "punch" and thier voltage discharge curve is better. When racing rc cars the NiCD tend the drop quickly at the beginning, then drop at a fairly even rate for the rest of the battery. Whereas NiMH drop off early but level off (same speed as the top end of the NiCD). They only dump right at the end of thier charge.

    And I would have to say I use some fairly hefty draw. the standard tamiya plugs (basically the tube type connectors - not sure their technical name) will melt and fuse the metal together. I either have to directly solder everything or use "zero resitence" plugs (the resistence is less than the equivilent length of wire - so they use some marketing crap) such as deans ultra plugs. For the 10'th scale rc cars some of the modified engines will drain a 3000 milliamp NiMH in around 5 minutes. If your taking more draw that a 9 turn single hand wound 540 engine in a small rc then you must be making it yourself.

    For lightweight motors look at something like a speed 280 bb - runs aprox 4000rpm/volt. I can run them in my HPI micro rs4 and get ~30000 rpm at the shaft (same as my larger stock engine for the 10'th scale touring car). I run it from a 6 sub aa 1100 pack and get ~15 mins runtime.

    I dunno, maybe in other types of rc this is not the case but for the extremely high draw engines only the NiMH are used - NiCD does not have the performance in a 10'th or 12'th scale vehicle.

    FYI I got my matched set of sanyo's out - the tag says 369 sec @ 1.143 volt - 30 amp - 3.2 mOhm internal. In rc car land matched batteries are batteries that someone (in this case team orion - or whoever they paid to do it) fully charges the batteries. They are next placed on a discharge tray and are given a draw of 30 amps. Things such as discharge time and internal resitence are checked and then the batteries are "matched" to all have fairly equal settings. They are sold in grades - the longest running/lowest resitence seel the highest with the sucky ones going into unmatched packs (eg radio shack specials). I do not have an older set of matched NiCD's to look at - but the NiMH perform much better here.

    --
    ------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
  11. Re:morons by Digital_Dreamer · · Score: 2, Informative

    Or, perhaps you need to read the given links.

    Draganfly comes from the inventor's name, Zenon Dragan.
    Clever, eh?

    regards,
    MAJ

    -Better it is to be thought of as a moron, than to type and remove all doubt.- :-)