PIC-controlled R/C helicopter

My project for Microprocessors consisted of taking a cheap air hogs helicopter from Wal-Mart and setting up the switches on the controller to be controlled by the microcontroller on my breadboard with some c code with different states that range in the speed of how fast the propellers spin and even completely turn off.

For my project I utilized pins 6, 7, 25, 24, and 23.

6 - AN4/RP2/CN6/RB2

7 - AN5/RP3/CN7/RB3

23- AN12/RP12/CN14/RB12

24- AN11/RP13/CN13/RB13

25-AN10/RP14/CN12/RB14

These pins were used for controlling the throttle of the air hogs plane, when the panels are taken off and unhooked from the actual controller. There are five lanes of metal panels used to increase/decrease the height of the plane when it is being flown. I wired colored metal wires to the ground strip, the mid voltage, low voltage, and high voltage panels using my soldering iron.

I used a combination of hooking these wires up to one another to get the desired output of height I wanted.

LOW + GROUND = OFF STATE

HIGH + GROUND = HIGHEST_VOLTAGE _STATE

MID+ GROUND= OFF STATE/ MID OPEN JUST KEPT THE PLANE FLOATING ABOVE THE GROUND

ETC.

After tweaking the helicopters controller, I figured out how to set it to pins on the microcontroller and I simply assigned the pins on the c code to the pins I had needed to use to send the correct set of values to the helicopter. I assigned values such as A, B, C, and D to send specific instructions to the PIC24 to allow specific gates to open and send a voltage to command the plan. The hardest part of it all was just figuring out the right combinations needed to get it working.

PROJECTFORMICRO.docx

Grading: 15 points

  1. Scope -- reasonable?
  2. Functionality -- limited; the helicopter isn't trimmed, so it spins uncontrollably.
  3. Hardware complexity - good; figuring out the R/C control to blade speed took some experimentation
  4. Software complexity - ok; basic digital I/O
  5. Presentation - N/A
  6. Practicality / usefulness / fun factor - great!