Tricopter: Lights!

I recently built a copy of David Windstals awesome tricopter. As a newbie to flight I was alway lost midair, where the heck ist the front?

I decided to give it some lighting. Like a real aicraft the tail needs to be white, the right arm green blinking and the left in red.

A LED strip from Adafruit consists of 60 individial adressable RGB- LEDs which I think is a good way to start. Together with the lightest Arduino I had lying around this is good mix.
With 60 LEDs to waste I thought it might be a good idea to give the Tricoper two orange eyes to give it bit more personality.

And it does:

The LED string is cut into pieces and re-connected by extra servo wire. 10 LED were left on ground as spare which turned out to be wise. the white backlight burned out at startup, probably the BEC had a glitch at startup. The brightness at the back is reduced to reduce the risk of a burnout.

The extra 30 LEDs give a nice bright video lighting for fpv flying at night! At least when my flying skills match up. One spare channel is used to switch the lights on and off.

I used the following setup:

• 7 LEDs for each position lights at the front arms
• 5 for the white tail light
• 3 in the front
• 14 at each arm as a video light

  HW connection:

• The power supply for the LED string is attached solely to one of the BECs
• The Arduino is powered via the receiver
• One Data bus is fed through all parts of the string

Some more pics:

Processor

Tail light

Left arm.

The HW:
Lightweight Arduino
LED String by Adafruit

The SW:

Tricopter Lights Arduino sketch

Give me a comment if you think something should be more clear. Lots of stuff may be added easyly (Anybody knows knight rider?)

Happy hacking