Hey everyone,



I haven't been on the site in a while and I am amazed at what is/has come out of this community in the past 8 months.



Anyway, I made a blimp last year for a class at RISD taught by Paul Badger. The blimp follows people. Its based around the arduino, a pyroelectric sensor, and an ultrasound sensor. The code is quite simple: it scans for heat (IR at ~ human frequency) and once it finds a maximum above threshold, it moves towards the location of heat and… Continue

Hey everybody...

what batteries do you use to power your blimps? From searching around here, I see that Li Pol or AAA are two common choices. Chris mentioned something about having capacity for only about 300mAh with such a system. Is this generally agreed upon? What stops anyone from using 4 or more AAA in series. They seem to be pretty light, 7.6 g per energizer lithium, and… Continue

after much thought, i'm copping out of creating a UAV with video tracking.



now the plan is to mount a decent video camera in a controlled environment in order to track infrared signals.

blimps will have IR emitters on top, emitting some sort of modulated signal. with some fourier transform and the computing power of my mac, i can then locate and identify a given number of blimps in view.



i'm trying to identify true (x,y,z) position of each blimp. i'm thinking of using… Continue

in case this hasn't made the rounds:
damage tolerance

I'm trying to create a blimp with ~50" envelope that can follow a moving target (a person) in a large open area with presumedly standing air conditions.



going to plan this around the arduino board



Initial worries are:

-the velocity of the target (this can be controlled to some degree, ie: area has distractions)

-lag time of blimp will play a big part. Am thinking of integrating a buffer zone around target.

-tracking system. I'd like to use active RFID (… Continue