November 14th, New Fans

While working on the project earlier in the day we came to the conclusion that the fan we had planned on using (2000 RPM) wasn't spinning fast enough to lift the hovercraft. Luckily we just acquired two new fans. The new fans (15,000 RPM) spin at a greater speed and are a lot smaller than the first ones we were trying. The smaller fans could allow us to use more fans in our design. We decided to try using two of the smaller fans and a Styrofoam base.  We tried to distribute the weight as evenly as possible with the battery pack in the middle. The setup is shown below.

After setting up the fans and battery pack on the Styrofoam base, we made a skirt out of a different material than we had previously used. In previous attempts we had used a supermarket bag but in this attempt we decided to use a clear painter's plastic. Below is the video of the first time we turned the new fans on with the new set up.

We were very happy that the fans we were using were finally able to lift up the hovercraft. The hovercraft was not able to slide very well because the skirt didn't have a hole in the bottom. In the next video below there is a hole in the bottom of the skirt and you can see that the hovercraft is able to slide smoothly along the floor.

Next we will try to make a bigger and more stable version of this hovercraft. We still are debating adding more fans to the design and are still in the trial and error stage.

November 14th, Lift Tests

Before assembling our hovercraft we wanted to make sure the fans we purchased were able to lift a miniature version of a hovercraft. We first tried by attaching the fan to a plate and making a skirt out of a plastic bag. When researching different homemade hovercrafts we realized that a common theme is a hole in the bottom of the skirt. We weren't sure how big the hole was supposed to be so we decided to go with a guess and check procedure. In our first attempt, we cut the hole in the skirt about as big as the fan we were using. This attempt is shown below on the left. The fan was not able to fill up the skirt and lift it off the ground. We decided to make the hole in the skirt smaller so that more air would fill the skirt. This attempt is shown on the right but also failed in lifting the plate.

 We decided to change the base of the hovercraft from the plastic plate to a piece of the Styrofoam that we will be using in the full scale prototype. Once again we tried two different types of skirts. First we tried a skirt without a hole as shown below on the left but this method did not work. Next we tried cutting a hole in the skirt, as shown below on the right, but again the hovercraft did not lift.

After many tests we thought that the problem wasn't in the design of the skirt, but in the power of the fan. We thought that the fan wasn't spinning fast enough to lift the hovercraft. We decided to try increasing the voltage to the fan and the results were minimally better but still not enough to sufficiently lift the fan. After a few hours of trying different conditions we concluded that these fans (2000 RPM's) were not going to be able to be used for our hovercraft.

November 14th, Working in Lab

Fans:

Today was the first day during lab that we got to work with the fans that we purchased. We were able to power the fan with a 12 volt battery pack using the code below.

LCD IR Remote:

We also worked on using an IR remote to control the message that appears on the LCD. A video is shown below of the remote changing the message. The code used is also posted below.

November 7th, Solidworks Parts

Protective Case:

Each group is allowed to print 1 cubic inch of material for each member. Since we have four members we are allowed to use up to 4 cubic inches of material for this project. We decided that the best use of our material is to make protective cases for different parts of our hovercraft. One component of the hovercraft that we feel it is important to protect is the arduino board.

This case for the arduino will help us in two major ways. First and foremost it will  provide support and protection to the arduino making sure that it will not get crushed or wrecked upon impact or the hovercraft crashing. Secondly, having the arduino housed in a case will make it easier to attach to the hovercraft without worrying about damaging it. We were able to design a case for the arduino that utilizes only 0.7288 cubic inches. We are happy with this because we think that we may need to use up to three arduinos. Therefore we would need three arduino cases totaling about 2.2 cubic inches of material.

Servo Motor Mount:

Realizing we will have extra material left over we decided that we would also like to create protective cases and mounts for other important components in our design. Next we decided to make a mount for the servo motor. This case used only 0.36 cubic inches of material.

After creating 3 arduino cases and 1 servo motor mount we would only have used about 2.56 cubic inches of material. This leaves us with about 1.5 cubic inches of material left to be used for the rest of the project.

Where Parts Will be Mounted:

This is a very rough estimate of where we think we will mount parts on top of the hovercraft. We aren't sure how many fans we are going to use or how many arduinos we are going to use. This picture is just an idea but is still subject to change. In the picture the parts labeled F represent the fans and the protective cases for the arduino look the same as they do above.

 

November 6th, Component Acquisition

Fans To Support Hovercraft Skirt

We have found the fans that we are going to use for the bottom of the hovercraft.  We are going to order four because they are only $8 each.  If we only need two or three fans on the bottom then we will use the remaining fans to steer the hovercraft.  It just so happens that these fans are Riverhawk Colors.  Here are pictures of all the fans:

We are definitely buying all four of these fans.  

November 6th, Turning Motor On and Off With an IR Receiver

What We Wanted to Accomplish:

I order to create the hovercraft we must have a way to turn on the fan that will blow air into the supporting skirt of the hovercraft.  We wanted to see if we could turn on the motor using an IR Receiver and a remote.  After many changes to the code we final accomplished the task.  

Here is a Picture of the Setup Board: 

Here is a Video of the Motor and IR Receiver in Action: 

Here is a sample of the code: