Meet the HelioHopper, a concept that came out of a collaborative group at ITP. The HelioHopper is a little flying machine that uses the sun to power its engines.
For this experiment, we used a Micro Mosquito Helicopter from Radioshack to prove if the concept will work or not. This prototype will prove that solar power flight in the form of a helicopter is possible. The first step was to deconstruct the toy and hack into its control system and power system to use solar cells as battery chargers. The original circuit was left untouched for now. At a later point, we may scrap the remote control system to make the aircraft lighter.
For the powering of the 3.7V battery, we are using four 4.5V, 22mA flexible solar cells. Our observations show that the once hooked up to the circuit. The four cells in parallel can deliver around 5V at 30mA-40mA depending on the sun. Our calculations show that if the battery is charged for 10 min. the resulting power collected will make the motors run for 14 seconds at full throttle. These where good results for our HeliosHopper. We will be working on the solar cell placement and landing gear in the next few days.
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