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
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