Comments on: Do a Barrel Roll!

Do a Barrel Roll!

empath — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:16:44 -0800

An RC Helicopter, a bunch of fireworks, and hydrogen-filled balloons.

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:32:53 -0800

When I was ten years old, I used to dream of technology like this.

By: AugustWest

AugustWest — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:36:24 -0800

I just sent a link to my teenagers. The ending sequence is the best.

By: CheeseDigestsAll

CheeseDigestsAll — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:41:31 -0800

I predict more house fires as kids shoot roman candles in to eaves in an attempt to send a few down the rain gutters.

By: auto-correct

auto-correct — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:49:12 -0800

OH MY GOODNESS THIS IS AMAZING.

By: tylerkaraszewski

tylerkaraszewski — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:55:06 -0800

If you would like to build your own tricopter, the video author has published instructions.

By: dibblda

dibblda — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:56:56 -0800

I know it's winter and all but shooting fireworks randomly into a forest made Smoky Bear shed tears. A good use of RC otherwise.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:59:04 -0800

Coming soon to YouTube: videos just like this one but with patrons outside of Starbucks and fast food restaurants instead of balloons.

By: kozad

kozad — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 21:05:52 -0800

It's been decades since I've thought about the magazine Boy's Life, but this is pretty much the 21st century version of one of the magazine's articles. This is probably a Metatalk question, but I wonder what percentage of Metafilter's readership is boys. Men. Whatever.

By: WinnipegDragon

WinnipegDragon — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 21:26:22 -0800

I know it's winter and all but shooting fireworks randomly into a forest made Smoky Bear shed tears. Then Smokey saw the video and said, "Okay, yeah, that shit is pretty cool."

By: vverse23

vverse23 — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 21:30:08 -0800

All of the aspirations of my childhood are encapsulated in this video.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 21:53:00 -0800

This is what technology was invented for, right? This is the funnest thing I have seen in ages. I want to play this game SO BAD.

By: bicyclefish

bicyclefish — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 21:56:01 -0800

"So, Svend. There used to be a boreal forest here. Now there is just a raging conflagration. I certainly hope this did not involve a firework-spewing tricopter."

By: Mei's lost sandal

Mei's lost sandal — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 22:15:40 -0800

Check out the guy's video of his RC plane flying above the clouds with pan left/right on the on board camera! Astounding.

By: Mars Saxman

Mars Saxman — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 22:41:54 -0800

This is so unbelievably awesome I can hardly stand it.

By: Gorgik

Gorgik — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 23:14:11 -0800

When I was young we had to attach our firecrackers to hydrogen balloons by hand...AND WE LIKED IT.

By: Xoebe

Xoebe — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 23:18:57 -0800

I wonder if he put a lot of thought into the name of his production company.

By: darksasami

darksasami — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 23:33:05 -0800

Oh man, it took me forever to place the Gurgu Volcano theme from Final Fantasy. The video was great, but the hunt through various video game music archives was maddening.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 00:59:49 -0800

I wonder how long it will be before people are mugged or murdered through private remote control vehicles? (I'm not counting military drones.) Like the internet anonymity effect, maybe nice geeks + anonymous RC vehicles that can fire real weapons = death from the sky.

By: MillMan

MillMan — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 01:21:14 -0800

YES

By: Rhomboid

Rhomboid — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 01:23:00 -0800

Can anyone explain why electric RC helicopters have suddenly come into ubiquity in the last, say, 5 years, where previously they were impractical/expensive/hard to control? What exactly is it that we didn't have back in the 80s or 90s that we do have now that makes them into cheap toys? My guess is that it has something to do with high energy density of the newest Lithium-ion batteries combined with cheap but sophisticated microcontrollers that have integrated MEMS accelerometers/gyros.

By: vapidave

vapidave — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 02:07:45 -0800

Rhomboid, I was under the impression that it was Lipo batteries that made electric RC helicopters more practical but I'm not an authority at all. Hopefully someone will be along to clarify because I'm curious as well.

By: smoothvirus

smoothvirus — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 04:51:34 -0800

Rhomboid, you've already got it. It's the gyroscopes plus advances in battery technology. It's a lot easier to get into the hobby these days. There are coaxial helicopters that you can learn to fly in the course of one evening.

By: DU

DU — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 04:53:06 -0800

Make Magazine had an article a year or so ago¹ that, IIRC, said some guy in the late 90s/early 00s had figured out some stability thing with micro helis that everyone had previously thought impossible. I had gotten the impression it was a mechanical advance but it could be the tiny μcontrollers or even just the batteries. ¹That I can't find in the online digital edition, because it inexplicably doesn't let you search through all back issues.

By: usonian

usonian — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 05:08:36 -0800

I know it's winter and all but shooting fireworks randomly into a forest made Smoky Bear shed tears. Yeah, this was super cool until the last segment... Even when I was a pyro kid (what Boyscout isn't?) I would never, ever have been fired off roman candles in the middle of the woods. I would have been as much of a buzzkill about it at 12 years old as I am now.

By: Kickdrum

Kickdrum — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 05:22:36 -0800

By: Think_Long

Think_Long — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 05:45:48 -0800

Give them RC copters which can shoot fireworks and all men are boys. . . . and all older sisters are targets.

By: Hardcore Poser

Hardcore Poser — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 06:37:57 -0800

"Mr. P. Balloon of Homeleigh, The Burrows, Oswestly, has presented us with a poser. We do not know which bush he is behind, but we can soon find out."

By: straw

straw — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 06:54:29 -0800

Rhomboid, as others have pointed out it's a combination of MEMS (Microelectromechanical systems) gyroscopes (also called "solid state" gyroscopes, but I shy from that name because they still have moving parts even if they're embedded in an integrated circuit) and LiPo batteries. Cheap gyros let you put a lot of the attitude stabilization on the airframe, with really low latency, and LiPo lets you get a power to weight ratio that lets you do aircraft without the noise and mess of small 2-cycle engines.

By: chavenet

chavenet — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 08:09:05 -0800

Give them RC copters which can shoot fireworks and all men are boys. . . . and all older sisters are targets. While all younger sisters are enthusiastic collaborators... (Come on Metafilter, bring on the stereotypes...)

By: gottabefunky

gottabefunky — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 09:18:14 -0800

"...boys. Men. Whatever." Exactly.

By: Mars Saxman

Mars Saxman — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 09:27:17 -0800

Cheap gyros let you put a lot of the attitude stabilization on the airframe, with really low latency, and LiPo lets you get a power to weight ratio that lets you do aircraft without the noise and mess of small 2-cycle engines. ...which means the whole business has turned into a software problem, and now we're cooking. This pattern shows up over and over. Want to make some field take off? Figure out how to turn it into a programming puzzle, and five years later hobbyists all over the globe will be roaring away at it.

By: djrock3k

djrock3k — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 09:27:46 -0800

Rhomboid, the other piece of the puzzle is materials science. The ubiquity of Carbon fiber and Rigidised encapsulated foam have led to stronger, lighter structures for all the monster batteries, micro electronics and rare earth high output electric motors to be velcroed/glued/screwed to. Guess I'll be working on the AR.Drone tonight...

By: djrock3k

djrock3k — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 09:31:27 -0800

... also, the grand finale of William Gibson's "Spook Country" stars this kind of tech. I couldn't stop laughing.

By: Chichibio

Chichibio — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 09:47:54 -0800

Same with "Zero History", but this time it's floating metallic penguins. Which is not a spoiler or anything, I swear.

By: thsmchnekllsfascists

thsmchnekllsfascists — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 09:48:38 -0800

How difficult would it be to rig up an induction charging scheme for this thing? I'm thinking of a tiny helipad where it could land and charge up without having to make a hard connection? Because once you've got that, you can get to work on 24/7 autonomous helicopter patrols. Would it be trite to point out that we're living in the future?

By: straw

straw — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 10:13:58 -0800

If you simply ran a strip of foil down each of those arms you could easily land on a cradle (with precision of not a whole lot less than half the arm-span) that'd make contact and let you do your charging conventionally. So, yeah, no need to over-technologize the 24/7 autonomos helicopter drones, citizen. The technology is here today! (Slightly harder is accurate position measurement with that light weight a drone (carrier-wave measuring differential GPS is still pretty heavy), but there are a few ways to solve that problem if you can constrain the need for real accuracy to within the region of the landing pad.)

By: thsmchnekllsfascists

thsmchnekllsfascists — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 10:40:13 -0800

(Slightly harder is accurate position measurement with that light weight a drone (carrier-wave measuring differential GPS is still pretty heavy), but there are a few ways to solve that problem if you can constrain the need for real accuracy to within the region of the landing pad.) You could always use IR beacons and optical tracking. If your base station can triangulate an IR strobe on the helicopter body, it'd be easier than GPS I'd think.

By: djrock3k

djrock3k — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 12:20:46 -0800

Oops, chichibio is correct. It's "Zero History" sorry y'all

By: mecran01

mecran01 — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 12:27:17 -0800

I'm pretty sure every single William Gibson book has autonomous killer drones. That is why THEY ARE AWESOME. and chain guns. And black slabs of tech that don't reflect light. And plucky girl protagonists. And much, much, more.

By: straw

straw — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 12:33:02 -0800

thsmchnekllsfascists yeah, I was thinking a couple of webcams and optical targets for the final tracking. At that point you've only got to line this thing up within a foot or so. Now I'm wondering if I need to preemptively build some open source versions of these things so that we can surveil the state. Or if that just starts the arms race early.

By: Telf

Telf — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 12:35:42 -0800

Now don't get me wrong, this is totally awesome. BUT what this death drone needs is some lasers. Right? Also a parabolic death ray. Possibly an iron man flamer. Seriously though, could we put lasers on this? Please?

By: wenestvedt

wenestvedt — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 12:59:01 -0800

Roman Candles in a dry forest might be better than my last encounter with them. An ongoing disagreement between two fractious roomates peaked with one of them sticking a lit roman candle through the doorknob-hole -- it was a new door, the previous one having been ruined by some sort of fireworks discharge -- of his bedroom while he slept. The bedspread didn't burn very long, but it certainly woke him up.

By: sunshinedust20

sunshinedust20 — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 14:39:10 -0800

wow thats awesome! I wanna get one of those RC Helicopters

By: 0xdeadc0de

0xdeadc0de — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:52:48 -0800

For anyone else who was late for work trying to figure out where the song came from, it is "Medieval Kaoss" by McVaffe, a remix of Gurgu Volcano from Final Fantasy.

By: hattifattener

hattifattener — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 20:11:42 -0800

Rhomboid: I think lightweight kickass brushless DC motors are also part of what made small easy-to-fly copters possible, but I think the LiPolys and cheap small rate-gyros are the main things. thsmchnekllsfascists/straw: You already have a camera on the copter! Just place some optical targets at known positions relative to the charging cradle, and a vision system (onboard or on the ground) can servo the copter into place visually.

By: 3mendo

3mendo — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 02:54:03 -0800

i cant wait to deploy these machines against people who park their cars in ways i find displeasing.