Vectoring Thruster 3D

I needed Sebi to design something for our friend (I’ll probably make another post about it when having that project finished) and he did it in the OpenSCAD. This came bit as a surprise because Sebi’s been using some different app, which I don’t know … and I am lazy to learn.

Seeing how well he did, I’ve instantly recalled that there are couple things I would still like to improve on our blimp! I’ve recalled that our vectored thrusters ended up just 2D (a rudder), where I planned to get those 3D when having some spare time.

The plan was easy – reuse maximum of what we already have – which is doing well in 2D and insert a new piece between the nozzle and and the vector mount which will be 90^o twisted to allow the nozzle to serve as its horizontal stabilisers – elevators.

It worked out perfectly.

Next stage was to slice it and send it to printer and in couple hours we’ve ended up with a quite interesting setup.

I mounted both servos and Sebi did all the wiring, using one of his spare Arduino Mega and joystick.

Bit of coding from Sebi.

#include <Arduino.h>
#include <Servo.h>

Servo servoX, servoY;

auto potX = A0;
auto potY = A1;

void setup() {
  servoX.attach(2);
  servoY.attach(3);
}

void loop() {
  servoX.write(map(analogRead(potX), 0, 1023, 45, 135)-10);
  servoY.write(map(analogRead(potY), 0, 1023, 45, 135)+5);
  delay(20);
}

It actually needed some more “love” to polish all the surfaces properly to make all movements smooth, but it worked out perfectly!

Hope you like it too!

Now we need to prepare a second one, mount those on our blimp and add all the elevator logic in there! 🙂