Wireless Gimbaled Camera: Blimp Deployment

So, I have some success to report.

// THE RESULTS //



// INTRODUCTION //

I managed to get the AIAA blimp flying for UCLA Engineering Open House and Engineering Week this April. In case you don't recall, the blimp was planned to have a wirelessly controlled gimbaled camera platform mounted in it. A couple weeks ago, I reported a successful subsystem test of the wireless command transmission for the camera platform with the video transmission system.

// THE H-BRIDGE //

Since then, I had some success integrating the Pololu TReX dual motor controller into the blimp propulsion system. Unfortunately, with my setup, the current rating for the controller limits the performance of the motor. However, that might be a problem that can be remedied with an overhaul of the system (which is long overdue).

// PROBLEMS IN-FLIGHT //

The demo version of the blimp was somewhat janky, unfortunately. The wiring for the components was somewhat haphazard; after all, I simply dumped my breadboard along with some batteries in the blimp. In fact, during the E-Week session, the pitch servo signal connections failed; later in the day, the connections to the gimbal platform servos failed. Well, "failed" in the sense of "ceased to function." The video cable from the camera to the transmitter was also damaged during transit, and I had insufficient time to fix the problem.

In addition to that, the TV tuner I was borrowing had some problems being used out of the box. I was unable to work out the kinks with viewing in color before I was forced to start the recording session.

Despite all that, though, I managed to get some decent clips. In addition, some of the folks visiting for Kids' Day of E-Week were kind of enough to take photos and pass them along to me. All in all, it was a successful deployment of the system.

// THE NEXT STEP //

The next step? Clean up the wires. I'll probably solder some of the connections to a perf board for easy transport. In addition, I need to unify some of the power supplies--namely, I need to wire up a parallel connection from one of the batteries to the Arduino.

Beyond that, I've found that the blimp has a much larger lifting capacity than I originally anticipated. I can build a larger gondola, one capable of handling multiple missions, and mount additional electronics in it in the future.

// CONCLUSION //

So, there you have it: the culmination of many late nights of work and several years taken off my lifespan. (In fact, during E-Week, I slept only 10 hours or so out of the 5 days of that academic week.) It was worth it. I learned a lot about working with electronics, and I stand to learn more with the upgrades that I would like to make. Of course, first, I need to get more money to do that. But look forward to more news in the future!