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Our Price: $89.99


Availability: Usually Ships in 2 to 3 Business Days
Product Code: MKCA1
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Blimpduino is the latest creation by Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine and Jordi Muñoz of DIY Drones. This amazing kit made its debut at Maker Faire Bay Area 2009, flying all around the Maker Shed!

The Blimpduino kit is a very low-cost, open source, autonomous blimp kit. It consists of an Arduino-based blimp controller board with onboard infrared and ultrasonic sensors and an interface for an optional RC mode, a simple gondola with two vectoring (tilting) differential thrusters, and ground-based infrared beacon. Assembly is required, including soldering.

Please note: This kit requires (not included): helium for blimp envelope, 7.4V LiPo battery and charger, 9V battery, and an FTDI cable for programming. Also you can expand its capabilities by adding a 3-channel radio control unit if desired. Please read below for more information about these items.

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Features
  • 17 grams, with ultrasonic and IR sensors
  • Controls 2 motors and 1 vectoring servo
  • Built-in RC compatibility (can read two RC channels -- throttle and steering)
  • Designed for a 7.4V LiPo battery; has automatic power cut-off at low voltage to protect the battery

  • What's included:
    • Blimpduino board, with all SMD parts already soldered onOther through-hole components, to be soldered by user (easy)A simple laser-cut plastic platform for the board, battery, optional RC receiver, and motor componentsA servo, gears, and motor shaft for the vectoring (thrust tilting) functionTwo motors and propsOne IR ground beacon52" mylar envelope

    • Additional required items (not included):
      • 7.4v LiPo battery and charger9V battery for ground beaconHeliumFTDI cable for programming

      • Optional items:
        • RC transmitter and receiver

Average Customer Review: Based on 3 Reviews. Write a review.

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  0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 
Amazing sub $ 100 UAV kit July 29, 2009
Reviewer: Ric from Alberta, Canada  
A great kit and introduction to DIY UAV implementation.
The fact that you need a motor battery is stated and not a great surprise... I've bought many EP car and plane models for my kids so I know all about that.
Its a fun project and it amazes everyone who sees it fly.  
This is no Walmart toy!

Since my Blimp project, I am now working on and flying the ArduPilot UAV from the same designers.

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  0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 
Cool maybe, but a tale of caution.. July 12, 2009
Reviewer: Michael V from Pacific Grove, CA United States  
[ this software for the review is terrible, cant use parens or other so called special chars and it limits you to 1000 chars ]
I had written a rather long review with all the gory details, but MakerSheds review software doesn't like me.  
All i wanted to say about the blimpduino is that the project requires quite a bit of extra stuff not included in the kit.  If you want to build it with RC capability, even more.  I spent at least 250 dollars on top of the 90 for the BD itself.  
I've built lots of kits, etc, but the instructions here are pretty sparse, and the kit seemed rushed.  It's taken lots of rather frustrating improvisation, my son is loosing patience with it, as it's taken a while to order all the extra parts, deal with wrong or mismatched parts, etc.



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  4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
 
Blimpduino = Ideal UAV Starter Kit May 19, 2009
Reviewer: Ron Evans from Los Angeles, CA United States  
The Blimpduino from Chris Anderson and Jordi Muñoz is an amazing accomplishment: a starter kit for creating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for less than $100!

You will need to source some additional items, like rechargable LiPo batteries + a charger. Also, you will need some way to remotely control the blimp, if you want to just fly the thing around and have fun. In our case, we easily adapted the Blimpduino to use a pair of XBee modems, but you can also just connect any standard 2-channel radio controller.

My brother and I have been working with a couple of the Blimpduino prototypes for our open source UAV framework flying_robot (http://flyingrobo.com). We chose Blimpduino as the first implementation, because it is inexpensive, simple to build, and yet has some very cool capabilities for experimenters.

If you are ready to explore the incredibly fun and interesting world of homebrew UAV's you would be hard-pressed to find a better place to get started than the Blimpduino.

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