IR airplane equipment test help

[audioguru]

I received my free helicopter (promo from Energizer battery company) about a week ago.
What a riot!
It uses IR remote control for up, down, left and right.
It speeds up when turning right and slows down when turning left so it is tricky to make it hover.

It is more convenient than my RC airplane because it flies in the house and in the yard in the evenings when the wind is low. It flies for about 6 minutes per charge. It cools for 10 minutes after a flight then charges for 20 minutes.

It is a Spinmaster Air Hogs Havoc Heli available at Wal-Mart. It is made in China so it is very inexpensive.
I bought one for my son. It was dead but Wal-Mart replaced it for a good one.

 

[Omar.M]

AG,
Those are always great fun. I managed to find an inexpensive (used) Air Hogs Aerosoar (which isn't the best micro plane, unlike the Aero Ace which is quite excellent) and I plan to use the parts in my own scratch-built planes.

You should see some of the stuff people have designed using Air Hogs parts!

-Omar

 

[atferrari]

Any links?

AG,
You should see some of the stuff people have designed using Air Hogs parts! Omar

Any links, Omar?

 

[jeremygaughan]

That's an awesome little chopper. I got a set of two that have IR leds on them and you can shoot the other chopper and it's tail will stop working for about 3 seconds. It's a lot of fun for 5 minutes. I got another one and that is what I'm destroying to take the battery and motor. Here is a picture of my test setup it's pretty disgusting. I've got the guts of a playstation controller hooked to a pic and some IR leds then hooked to the second board with the receiver and a mosfet and motor just to suck all the power form a USB wire. There are wires connecting them but it's just for power. It's been a lot of fun to put it together.

 

[audioguru]

At a hobby show I saw the home-made indoor gym airplanes controlled with the parts from those cheap micro RC cars.

The Air Hogs airplanes are flying on the edge of a stall with the nose pointing up. They are probably extremely fragile since you can't pick them up without reading the warnings in the instructions.

My helicopter is strong. It has crashed into the ceiling, walls, furniture, my wife, other things, my son's helicopter, my car. the driveway, a couple of trees and the eavestrough on my home. It is still like new.

 

[Omar.M]

Any links, Omar?

Sure, there are tons on RC Groups, a rather popular RC forum (check the micro section).

Here is a link to a thread regarding building with Aeroace (Air Hogs) guts:
https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=535921

One favourite micro plane that is the standard beginner plane is the "BUMP"-- RCG has the plans up in the sticky. Once I get my Aerosoar (and I convert the battery to a smaller LiPo), I'll build a BUMP.

Another fun design is the traditional IFO plane(shaped like a tiny flying disk-- really fun to fly!)

-Omar

 

[audioguru]

My son bought 3 no-name-brand helicopters because he couldn't find a Wal-Mart store that had the Air Hogs one. They were all defective.

The Wal-Mart store near me had about 30 of the Air-Hogs one. Maybe half of them work properly.

 

[Omar.M]

At a hobby show I saw the home-made indoor gym airplanes controlled with the parts from those cheap micro RC cars.

Oh yeah, at RCGroups, you can find pages upon pages of discussion regarding the "Bit Char-G" conversions (or something of the like... name slips me).
The conversion requires a range increase and some sort of gearbox but otherwise it is quite possible.

Ah yes, midway through this reply I went through my old favourites and here is the website:
**broken link removed**

-Omar

 

[jeremygaughan]

I've seen those airplanes built form small cars. They can be fun but the control is what we can "bang bang" full on or full off for the left and right rudder. Like you said they are so fragile that it's more frustrating than fun (for me) to fly them. What I'm trying to do now is build an airplane that you can slam like a airhogs chopper.

I had the same problem with the choppers not working it was my third one that finally worked well.

For me the carbon butterfly design for microflyers is the toughest micro. However it's a little expensive to buy the carbon.

 

[audioguru]

My son found a hobby store where the owner was flying an RC "butterfly" airplane inside. It was $120.00.
My much bigger and faster Chinese RC airplane was $70.00.
My Air Hogs was free but Wal-Mart sells them for $29.92.

 

[jeremygaughan]

So here is the latest update in the IR receiver. I think the transmitter is good. It sends consistent signals almost 100% of the time. I checked it with the pickit analyzer. The receiver is wasting too much time reading the IR signal so I get a small pause in the pwm that causes the motor to pulse. The solution is to turn on the pins of all the PWM channels using TMR0 interrupt. Then throughout the program call a small subroutine that does an addwf of the TMR0 to the value of each channel and checks the flag. If the flag is tripped then turn that channel off. this allows me to constantly read the IR input signal with almost no interruption. It is working smoothly with leds, which I suppose will be even smoother with DC motors. This program is on a circuit with a pot and two leds, nothing more. So now I have to adapt this method to the actual IR receiver program and scrap my old receiver program.

;learning to do pwm with tmro 12f675




	list P=12f675
#include <p12f675.inc>
	__config _INTRC_OSC_NOCLKOUT & _BODEN_OFF & _WDT_OFF & _PWRTE_ON & _MCLRE_OFF & _CPD_OFF & _CP_OFF 
	ERRORLEVEL -302
	
	cblock		20h
	pwmcounter, channel1, channel2
	endc

	ORG		0000h
	goto	setup
	
	ORG		0004h
	movlw	0x03		;interrupt turns on motors then
	movwf	GPIO		;call pwm keeps checking to see it's
	BCF		INTCON,2	;time to shut them off
	RETFIE				;reset interrupt
	

setup
	bsf		STATUS,RP0	;bank 1
	movlw	0x3c
	movwf	ANSEL
	movlw	0x3c
	movwf	TRISIO		;set I/O
	movlw	0xd0		
	movwf	OPTION_REG	;set tmr0
	bcf		STATUS,RP0
	movlw	0x07		;turn off comparitors
	movwf	CMCON
	movlw	0xa0
	movwf	INTCON		;set interrupt 

start
	movlw	0x09
	movwf	ADCON0
	call	pwm
	call	pwm
	call	pwm
	call	pwm
	call	pwm
	call	pwm
	call	pwm
	bsf		ADCON0,1
	call	pwm
waiting
	btfsc	ADCON0,1
	goto	waiting
	call	pwm
	call	pwm
	call	pwm
	movf	ADRESH,0
	movwf	channel1

	movlw	0x0d		;change to read channel 2 potentiometer
	movwf	ADCON0
	call	pwm			;time for adc recharge
	call	pwm
	call	pwm
	call	pwm
	call	pwm
	call	pwm
	call	pwm
	bsf		ADCON0,1

waiting2
	btfsc	ADCON0,1	;waiting for adc
	goto	waiting2
	call	pwm
	call	pwm
	call	pwm
	movf	ADRESH,0
	movwf	channel2
	goto	start

pwm
	movf	channel1,0
	addwf	TMR0,0
	btfss	STATUS,C		;test flag if set then turn off GPIO,0
	bcf		GPIO,0
	
	movf	channel2,0
	addwf	TMR0,0
	btfss	STATUS,C
	bcf		GPIO,1
	return
	
	end

edit: code updated