Black Friday, 2011. The boss comes in with a plastic bag. I'm the only one in the office--everyone else is out shopping.

"I've had an epiphany," he says.

That's never good.

He proceeds to dump out the bag. A small pile of tinkertoys, a couple of moustraps, and a thin cross-bar to a Christmas tree that probably hasn't seen St. Nick in 40 years.

"We need to be making these copters out of stuff ANYONE can get their hands on. Cheap and dirty and quick."

That's how the SMAP center students from UAHuntsville and Calhoun Community College in Huntsville, AL started the Tinkerbot build. We've been building multicopters for about a year, testing and building and flying and lots and lots of crashing, all in the name of research. We scrounged together enough parts...

We sawed the mousetraps in half and mounted some spare Robbe Roxxys to them, then glued--yes, glued--the mousetrap to a tinkertoy hub which fit right over the end of the tree stand (more glue here). Using only more tinkertoys and more hot glue, we created the chassis around the center of the stand and glued some spare ArduPilot guts to the middle. 

Then, on the only clear day in Alabama in the fall, we took the thing out to see if it would fly.... I hope you enjoy.