Helium

From the site, the blimp is 52", but I'm not quite sure how many cubic feet that would be. I've found various sites online for companies near Walnut that supply Helium:

A1 Party Rentals
Balloon Haven
It's A Gas

These three places rent large helium tanks, roughly 200 cubic feet of helium for around $80-$100. That may be too much, although we may need it if the balloon leaks or is bigger than we think. Smaller tanks can be found at Party City for purchase I believe; they're about 30-40 cubic feet.

Looks Good

We probably should modify the timeline a bit to include time for assembling and testing the hardware.

I have worked with the Arduino environment quite a bit and it is easy to use. Take a look at
http://profmason.com/?p=539
Where I describe how to put an arduino on a breadboard.

For the blimp, we will be using a small surface mount version of the same chip. However for hardware testing, we should do everything on a breadboard.

Try to track down a place that will fill the envelope with helium for us for a reasonable fee.

Objectives

The Physics 99 course will be during Winter 09, therefore we will have 6 weeks to work on it. However, I would like to continue working on this during the school year, as we can make the vehicle do more complex maneuvers as we improve the coding or vehicle itself.

During the 6 weeks, we will start with basic programming. I believe Professor Mason was going to originally use Python to program, but the blimp comes with Arduino. The programming to be used is still undecided. The following is a general plan for the course, to be changed at whim.

1. First week: basic programming. Program motor control of vector thrusters, test sensors to see if they can recognize objects. Program to follow RC as well as autonomous directions
2. Second Week: Program the blimp to follow the commands of the computer, moving the 3-D plane autonomously.
3. Third Week: Object recognition and tracking. Place objects in front of the blimp and have the blimp rotate around tracking the object
4. Fourth Week: Object recognition and response. Pass object in front of the sensor and make the blimp maneuver about
5. Fifth Week: Autonomous flight. We should have the blimp be able to move down a hall way and maneuver around obstacles
6. Sixth Week: Targeting and following. We will designate the robot to find a specific target in a room and then follow it around the building.

The final objective may change by the end. As an on going project, I would like to attempt to modify the blimp to be able to do AUVSI Challenge. This competition pits universities around the world to build an autonomous drone that can station itself near a building three kilometers away, deploy a smaller autonomous robot that enters the building, navigate around obstacles, and find a panel on a wall and take pictures, which we be routed back to the main computer three kilometers away.

First Post!

Hi there! This blog was created to track the status of the flight project in MTSAC Winter Physics 99, under the direction of Professor Martin Mason.

This first blog will be to describe the apparatus we will be using. We will be using a BlimpDuino kit, supplied by Chris Anderson of DIY Drones. The biggest different for the blimp is the thrust/steering system. Most blimp kits use a system of three fans: a set of differential thrusters that turn the blimp, and a vertical fan to provide upward lift. The BlimpDuino utilizes a vectoring thrusters. These fans can rotate from their position to face upward or downward, so they control lift, thrust, and steering.



The board is a Arduino based board and comes with IR sensors, ultrasonic sensors, and motor controls.

More to come once we get the kit and start building things! Can't wait for January 9th!