Friday, October 13, 2017

A Drone with Freakin' Lasers

It didn't take long flying our drone before we started thinking of fun things to do and add to it.  How about Freakin' LAZERS!


We had some caps 3D printed to fit and stay in place on several different drone cameras.  The plastic they are printed with is Glow-in-the-dark!  Of course, just having lasers wasn't enough - we wanted to remote control them, on-n-off, while flying.  The easiest way to do this is using the remote control's ability to turn the drone's LEDs on-n-off.  That way we get a farther range on the control.


Under settings, a simple switch turns them on for us.  easy peasy.

Two lasers are added, and the whole thing, including battery (rechargable) is under 1 oz.

 The tolerances on the 3D print weren't good... but some slight modifications were all that was needed.  for the Phantom 3's 4K camera, we also cut down the length of the cap to be less obtrusive.  There are tabs for a rubber band to secure the cap to the back of the camera, but with the radial force exerted by the cap itself, it stays in place very well.

Everything is installed quickly so we don't have it permanently on the drone.  One mod we did make to the drone was to drill into the LED cap and hot-glue the light sensor directly to the bird.  We are using this sensor for other control projects, and it is easy to attach to the laser's control when we put the cap on.  You can see how we secured the sensor's wire to the drone's leg to keep it in place, and keep the wires from flapping about.

If you are interested in buying a cap or a whole setup, shoot us an email!  we've made a few of them and can make more.

Some demo videos:
Laser control demo

No comments:

Post a Comment