Helicam v1.1 initial flight

I've rebuilt the camera rig and done a lot of tuning to the helicopter, so I'm a bit more confident flying in wind -- but still skittish, as this video shows.

New in this video: the on-board mic is working, and I have remote control of the camera's tilt angle. (I MacGuyver'd an articulating mount out of some corrugated cardboard, a paperclip, a spare 6-gram servo, and some mylar from a Teavana bag.)

CX-Cam flight test video

Over the holidays, I was working on something rather different. After much experimentation, tuning, and part-hunting, I now have a small aerial camera platform. This is something I've wanted to do since at least middle school, and technology has finally caught up.

The neat part, to me, is that it's nearly off-the-shelf hardware. It's based around a small radio-controlled helicopter and a commercially available wireless camera. (Both are modified, but not extensively.)

Perhaps most importantly, this is something that I'm having fun with, and that others are interested in — a nice vacation from my language/Forth work, which nobody ever comments on. :-)

Here's a video.