Slashdot Mirror
World's Smallest Homebrew RC Unit
MC68040 writes "I assume you've seen the mini-helicopters and airplanes that are becoming increasingly popular as office toys out there. Well this guy decided the market wasn't filled enough, luckily =)
He's built the by far simplest and most functional mini Remote Controlled unit. It weighs under 7 grams, is made of carbon fiber and it's smaller than your thumb (or a hamster, as the author seems to prefer to compare).
Go check it, it's truly a amazing feat."
IF IT'S TOO SMALL TO USE!?
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
Now all he has to worry about is the toy going out of his sight range, not the radio range.
Since the technology has been patented, full details should now be available in the patent application itself. Despite the company trying to require him to keep the technology secret, since it's in the patent, it can no longer be secret. Seems that legally the most the company could do is require him to license the technology to them exclusively. But to force him to keep it secret is quite absurd.
If it's patented can't you look it up?
That was just dawning on me, thanks for the shove, but after re-reading this:
A patent was filed early 2001. The 'problem' is that soon after that, a company took a license on this technology, and required to keep confidentiality. it sounds like he filed, but went the "trade secret" route instead, if that is applicable and IANAPL.
If patent filings are searchable then it would blow away that confidentiality business, but if he withdrew the application it *might not* be open to the general public. If someone knows for sure that patent applications are searchable, without a patent granted, please post?
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
This patent has not been granted yet.
So they are keeping it a secret.
If the patent is denied, they can have an advantage by rolling it out earlier.
If it is granted, you can go look it up.
You know, i haven't seen anything on how long the battery lasts in this thing. This article says it has a 45 mAh lithium-polymer cell, which would last about 5 seconds on a regular RC copter.
I'd give the pixelito a generous estimate of lasting 90 seconds.
68.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Use a small RC-controlled helicopter, outfitted with a wireless camera pointing downwards. Fly in a criss-cross pattern over the area you want a photograph of. Use software mentioned on /. couple days ago for generating a high-resolution aerial photograph of the area. Could be also useful for espionage.
Improvements: Use a fleet of microcopters with infrared uncooled bolometer cameras for patrolling over an area when eg. searching for a missing person or guarding a space. Load other instruments on board for eg. environmental monitoring, eg. taking air samples from the immediate vicinity of eg. factory chimneys - useful for eg. underground ecology groups without much funding.
Speculative idea: Could it be possible to put some helium-filled balloons to the sides of the copter? That could offset the weight of the additional onboard equipment, and could serve as cushioning for expensive instruments in case of crash-landing (or as floating bags for crash-landing into water). It'd be a cross of a helicopter and a blimp/dirigible, though. But would make it possible to have a quite large frame with balloons and multiple rotors, capable of carrying considerable amount of equipment. Could also be pretty stable in flight.
...and a very nice unit it is, too. However, the device mentioned in the in the header also includes the weight of the surrounding helicopter.
:)
With cell.