This four propellor helicopter – or quadcopter – is powered by an Arduino microcontroller. This was a project that I did for fun last year just to see if it was possible. The parts were chosen mostly from the suggestions of German sites (thank you, Google Translate). It features a lithium-polymer battery, an aluminum frame, a Seeeduino (I promise that spelling is correct) microcontroller, a five degree of freedom sensor, a secondary two-axis gyroscope, brushless motors, and an XBee radio.
The whole project was quite a learning process for me. I got to spend some time in the machine shop and even more time on Internet forums. I now have significant experience with interfacing microcontrollers to motors and sensors, XBee radio negotiation and communication, PID control loop theory, and miniature helicopter blade replacement. I also created a program for Mac OS X to receive the data from the XBee to display the quadcopter’s status in an easily readable format. Of course, that involved everyone’s favorite: socket programming.
After some hilarious, and some promising flights, I got the quadcopter to fly in a fairly stable manner. Unfortunately, I became too adventurous in my piloting and it currently has a broken front motor…
