DIY Night Blades in progress

[WildWake]

Sounds Good,,
Way too technical elec trickery for me.

[nobbycopter]

Thanks, Tye. The project seems to be going great. The only thing I would be thinking of, and I wouldn't necessarily expect anyone else to think of it, would be battery-less. Say, some coils mounted on the rotating parts and som stationary magnets positioned so the coils rush past them generating electrickery. Diode, smoothing cap. Something to experiment with. Nothing wrong with a battery though

I had 2 thoughts when looking at this, the 1st was to have 2 rings of copper round the top part of the swash (+ve & -ve) and attach via wires to the blades, then having 2 brushes on the bottom of the swash connected to a battery. 2nd was like you thinking of having the coils wound on the outside of the top part of the swash and magnets on the ball links....but not as electrickery minded as you Vikki so wasn't quite sure as to the diode and smoothing cap bit Could warrant further investigation if a spare 5 minutes ever happens......

[dani_r]

Probably needs further discussion from some of the electrically minded, but what about something similar to the Nitro governor setup? They use magnets in the main gear across a sensor. Not sure how it would be wired, but the basic theory is there

[miniadventure]

Really good information on the night blades here, got most of the parts through and gave it a go on the mcpx blades just for the fun of it, not the cleanest job but only took half an hour. The LED's were a lot smaller than I expected but they are bright for the size
DSCF1147.jpg

[dani_r]

Really good information on the night blades here, got most of the parts through and gave it a go on the mcpx blades just for the fun of it, not the cleanest job but only took half an hour. The LED's were a lot smaller than I expected but they are bright for the size
[ATTACH=CONFIG]48993[/ATTACH]

How did you power the LEDs on such small blades?

[miniadventure]

How did you power the LEDs on such small blades?

I used a cr2032 button cell on each blade, there may be better cells to use but i got a pack of these for less than a quid.

[kroozing]

I know nothing about electrics but i can solder so i was wondering if anyone can explain how to determine if i need resistors and how to choose the right one?

Cheers

[ghost2212]

I know nothing about electrics but i can solder so i was wondering if anyone can explain how to determine if i need resistors and how to choose the right one?

Cheers

Just use V=IR

Each LED will have a datasheet with a recommended safe current on it. If you know the input voltage and the current then V/I=R

Hope This helps

Brett

[kroozing]

Thanks for that, but i don't understand it.
My voltage will be single cell so 3.7v, and i have a led that is 2.2v with 30mA how would i go about working this out.
Sorry about this but thank you for your help

[ghost2212]

Thanks for that, but i don't understand it.
My voltage will be single cell so 3.7v, and i have a led that is 2.2v with 30mA how would i go about working this out.
Sorry about this but thank you for your help

The voltage will likely be higher because the lipo will be fully charged so V=~4.2v I=30ma =0.03A

So V=IR becomes R=V/I R=4.2/0.03= 140ohms

Let someone else check it first but I'm pretty sure that's correct. Have a look in the internet for LED calculators as well

[kroozing]

Cracking!!!! now i understand. Thank you

[moyesboy]

Latest on the blades is another piulot flew with them and wiped the track off at the tip in the grass - but that was easily repaired.
The blades are still going strong and looking the business.

I think the stationary design on rotating blades is more the project to do, batteries in the blades work just fine and all the induction power and slip ring ideas discussed are needless complication. The strobe LEDs on the blades synchronised by a hal and magnet, or a UV led and photodiode pickup is the more interesting and spectacular thing to develop. Need a lot of independantly wired LEDs though! The commercial systems have a slot int he blade with the same row of leds lighting both sides, then fixed LEDS in the tip area with differeing colours for top and bottom.
It would be possible to develop a stick on FPC solution - but tooling for FPC is expensive and numbers required to make them cheap sort of blows the idea away. (FPC = flexible printed circuit).

By ther way the HAL device(pickup on a governor) is a switch, switched each time the magnet goes past. No power is generated by it.

[franky975]

Latest on the blades is another piulot flew with them and wiped the track off at the tip in the grass - but that was easily repaired.
The blades are still going strong and looking the business.

I think the stationary design on rotating blades is more the project to do, batteries in the blades work just fine and all the induction power and slip ring ideas discussed are needless complication. The strobe LEDs on the blades synchronised by a hal and magnet, or a UV led and photodiode pickup is the more interesting and spectacular thing to develop. Need a lot of independantly wired LEDs though! The commercial systems have a slot int he blade with the same row of leds lighting both sides, then fixed LEDS in the tip area with differeing colours for top and bottom.
It would be possible to develop a stick on FPC solution - but tooling for FPC is expensive and numbers required to make them cheap sort of blows the idea away. (FPC = flexible printed circuit).

By ther way the HAL device(pickup on a governor) is a switch, switched each time the magnet goes past. No power is generated by it.

Hi to all.

I have thinking a while about to make me own night blades. Did a lot of researches then i found a relative easy to make POV blade design here: HeliPOV « Mike Ziwisky's Place to Write Stuff.
I would make some changes as would use FPC as moyesboy mentioned. I would stick the FPC on the blade then would solder the conponents on it incuding the led's. I haven't got the knowledge to use the cad software to make the necessary changes in the design but should not be a big deal to someone else who used to it then the design could be stretched to fit on various sized blades.

Cheers. Franky.

Btw i am new here as to helis as well.

[franky975]

It would be possible to develop a stick on FPC solution

That's what i was thinking. I found this POV heli blade design: HeliPOV « Mike Ziwisky's Place to Write Stuff
It use a double sided pcb but i would change it to single sided FPC with all the traces for the led's on it. It would stick onto the blade and solder the parts and led's on it on the blade. I'm stuck with lack of knowledge in CAD to modify the pcb design but someone who used to it could do the necessary changes in the design then it could be stretched or shrinked to fit on any sized blades.

Cheers. Franky.

[moyesboy]

BLADES.jpg

Here's a dioagram of how I arranged my latest blades to help one of the members on here who is making some now.