Helicopter with not enough juice

Submitted by vstarostenko on Tue, 03/12/2013 - 20:36

This is an attempt to create a motor/blade combo to generate enough lift to be able to lift the motor and the bade off the table. The speed of the rotation and amount of lift are generated by a potentiometer.

I carved a propeller blade out of a block of wood. I believed the blades to be long enough to lift the motor.

Unfortunately, the motor/battery 3-volt combo did not provide enough power to generate sufficient lift. It moved a lot of air but did not move off the table. I then used a more powerful battery that provided 4.8 volts, and it still was not sufficient.

The code is unmodified from the class code:

* one pot fades one motor

* modified version of AnalogInput

* by DojoDave <http://www.0j0.org>

* http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/AnalogInput

* Modified again by dave

int potPin = 0; // select the input pin for the potentiometer

int motorPin = 9; // select the pin for the Motor

int val = 0; // variable to store the value coming from the sensor

void setup() {

Serial.begin(9600);

}