Drone Made of Lego Takes Flight

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Drone Made of Lego Takes Flight

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @06:40PM from the toys-from-toys dept.

TVmisGuided writes "People have made UAVs out of wood, aluminum, even 3D-printed plastic. But now comes the tale of C#/C++ developer Ed Scott who, after damaging his Gaui 330x, got the idea of designing and building a Lego quadcopter. And it worked! 'Most people go to their favorite hobby store to get parts for their UAV, I go to my kid's playroom.'"

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Conditioned Much? by Johann+Lau · 2012-12-19 18:53 · Score: 3, Insightful

Last millenium weq had RC planes and shit. Why call them drones now? Is that to give legitimacy to extrajudicial killings, or is it to derive coolness from them? It's one thing or the other, that's for fucking sure, so tell me. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is such a needy and funny thing to call it... you mean like a paper airplane? Or a helium balloon? WTF people. Oh, and this is bad enough without dragging your kid into it, btw. Just a thought. Now do your butthurt thingy where you mod me down as flamebait or troll, you know you wanna ^^
1. Re:Conditioned Much? by AllanNienhuis · 2012-12-19 19:00 · Score: 2
  
  I thought the difference between drone and RC planes was the ability to fly them out of line of site - drones have cameras and give the pilot some form of first-person view as they are flying. At least that's how I've always thought of the difference...
  
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2. Re:Conditioned Much? by mikael · 2012-12-20 00:26 · Score: 2
  
  They did use green - they had trees and stuff.
  Not that the color really mattered to a kid. With regular bricks, you could make a delta wing fighter plane from the jumbo-jet wing sections. A missile defence system could be built from those 4x4 rotating turntables and a hinge joint. Use a couple of 8x1's or 8x2's for the missile and the sloping 2x1's for the missile wings.
  As far as building tanks with Lego Technical kits, you could get the Technical Lego 856 Bulldozer. Strip the model down to a couple of long bars, axles, gears and the caterpillar treads, then add a couple of electric motors to drive each tread separately. Then with couple of battery packs, the whole tank could go at least 2 metres/second on carpet.
  
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3. Re:Conditioned Much? by gencodeinc · 2012-12-20 09:53 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Hi everyone, I am the dad in the video, I want to clear a couple things. !) It’s just an RC plane (Jonathan) Yes, in the beginning it 100% WAS but its not now, well more of a UAV than simple RC because of the FPV. Then about mid way we added the Arducoptor controller. Uploaded waypoints and it flew 100% on its own using a Mediatech GPS through 3 waypoints and back home so yes it’s a true drone now. It also can land on its own but right now it’s such a hard landing it broke the legs that’s why you see the blue tape in the back of one of the legs. It does take off on its own, but you must throw the throttle up a little to start it for safety. Once the stick is thrown even a little it takes up on its own, I asked my son to go a little over half way in case that something went wrong and I had to take manual control. A little over half way would guarantee that it’s still ascending and not crashing to earth. It is fully autonomous. 2) Its not 100% LEGOs. Well no, it not at all, and if you read the description on the YouTube you see I stated 100% LEGO Frame, that’s all. Mainly wanted to build a cheap strong frame with my kids. And I did and it was fun. 3) I used a CAD....um no, its LDD, LEGO Digital Designer, I guess its a kiddie CAD made by LEGO but its not AutoCad and actually the kids use it more than me. My son’s involvement was 100% build and about 100% helping with design of frame. Also oldest helped configure waypoints and flight plan. This is the autopilot system I used http://store.diydrones.com/APM_2_5_Assembled_p/br-apmpwrkt.htm [diydrones.com] You can get LDD here http://ldd.lego.com/ [lego.com] Hope this helps the confusion.
I made thing like the other things, but different by louaish88 · 2012-12-19 19:35 · Score: 2

Duurrrrrr, unlike those other people that made things out of other things, I made this thing out of Lego. See, completely different and newsworthy. It's not like I built a car out of steel then made a slightly different car out of carbon fiber. I took it another step. I used another thing for the thing instead. Get it? I used one thing in a place where you would not think the thing would be.
RTFA Much? by Dexter+Herbivore · 2012-12-19 19:37 · Score: 2

The website is a UAV/UAS enthusiasts website, so of course they're going to use the terminology of UAVs. As for the drone part, it was only in the headline so an editor or sub-editor chose it. You know, an editor from a group of DRONE ENTHUSIASTS. So I think that you've answered your own question, it's to derive coolness from them. These are people with a hobby that may seem esoteric and uninteresting to many but they like to think that what they do is cool, just like any other sort of geek. Same as a tabletop RPG geek would normally say a "D20" instead of a "20 sided dice". You appear to see something wrong with that, maybe the problem is not with this article but instead with your perception of it.
He must annoy his kids by ohnocitizen · 2012-12-19 19:42 · Score: 4, Funny

"Daaaaaaad, stop taking my legos!!!"
"Sorry champ, Daddy has dreams."
it's not to boil enthousiasm down, but... by Herve5 · 2012-12-19 21:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

... as far as I can see, the only thing Lego in this quadcopter is the plastic structure. Motors are not, batteries are not, control electronics are not, RF and presumably remote control are not, servomotors are not.
So are we discussing a "drone using some lego bricks for the structure"?
H.
now mod me down, but remember I'm 50: at home I have older bricks than you (in addition to the vast amount aggregated by three sons)

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Herve S.
1. Re:it's not to boil enthousiasm down, but... by Kyusaku+Natsume · 2012-12-19 22:41 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I think this is a neat hack in the best sense of "hack", since they already had the bricks and the quadcopter parts. Plus, since it was designed by the kids, I will cut them some slack. Still, I would like to see the next, stronger, lighter and not glued version using Lego Technic beams. There is too much room for improvement :).
  
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2. Re:it's not to boil enthousiasm down, but... by drinkypoo · 2012-12-20 00:36 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  now mod me down, but remember I'm 50: at home I have older bricks than you (in addition to the vast amount aggregated by three sons)
  Holy shit, I'm only 35 and I can use this insult all day, every day. Thanks.
  
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Re:That's... by ericloewe · 2012-12-19 22:59 · Score: 2

The true lego propellers I've seen would never be able to produce any thrust. The NXT + motors would be too heavy for it to fly, too.
Don't get me wrong, it'd be massively cool, but just sounds unfeasible using all Lego.
Re:That's... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-19 23:26 · Score: 2, Funny

Because it's female?
Re:That's... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-19 23:54 · Score: 4, Insightful

Why is his doing something like this with his grandkids pretty lame? Seriously - he wasn't doing it for your approval and for you to be insulting to him (its not like he asked to be on slashdot) is a bit rude. What emotion inside you drove you to make that comment?
I applaud his work with his grandkids..