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Today I did some flights with my quadcopter, for the first time with a GoPro Hero HD (720p; 60 fps). It’s mounted with a handlebar mount.
This is the uncut version. A nicer one will be uploaded later.

The altitude shots are as high as I dare to go without FPV live feed. At that height things can go wrong quickly.

The buildings and structures are from an archery club. When the quadcopter is at it’s highest point at 3:24 you can see the river Scheldt. According to Google Earth, the river is about 700 meters as the crow flies.

Around 6:30 I crash, that’s because I lost line of sight behind the little white structure.

I finally got my quadcopter tuned enough, and flying skills to a satisfying level, that I had my girlfriend film me while doing some flights.
It’s nothing overly exciting for now, since it’s still way too heavy to do any tricks. It’s filmed on a patch of grass enclosed by flats and houses, so I didn’t want to crash it in someone’s garden anyway.
Before I continue, let’s enjoy the movie.

For those who still don’t know what a quadcopter is, it’s basically a frame with 4 (hence ‘quad’) motors pointing upwards. Two of the motors spin clockwise, the other two counterclockwise. You can go from 3 to theoretically an unlimited amount of motors, though 8 motors is the maximum I’ve seen so far. At the middle of the frame are the electronics. They consist of a kind of processing unit (in my case an Arduino Mega) and sensors. The sensors measure the attitude of the craft (roll, pitch, yaw), height (with a barometer) and acceleration. These sensors help the processing unit to level the craft. You can even go as far as installing a GPS unit, range sensors etc… The processing unit receives commands from a transmitter and in turn commands the motors.

This is a very short explanation. If you want to learn more, head over to the Aeroquad site. Those guys made the actual software that’s running on the Arduino. I learned everything to get started over there.

For pictures of my quadcopter, go here.

Evolution?

I consider myself a more than average person when it comes to knowledge of IT in general. I’m not afraid of attacking a computer case with a screwdriver, or flashing weird ROMs on my cellphone, or… dual booting a Linux distro. I’ve used Linux before, liked it (couldn’t miss Windows though), messed it up, forgot about it. Now I want to try it again… (continue reading…)

Nvidia 7950 GTX in my Dell XPS M1710

I bought my Dell XPS M1710 in January 2007, so it’s three years old now. Except some overheating issues, which I solved by cleaning the fans and applying Arctic Silver thermally conductive compound, I didn’t really have any major issues with this laptop. If you want more information about letting your XPS run cooler, please follow this link.

A few days ago strange things started to happen. During the boot up of the system, random pixels and stripes appeared, even at the BIOS screens. The Windows loading screen was normal but then a final screen with pixel distortion came up and the screen turned black. I had to shut down the system by holding the power button. Some browsing on the internet with my desktop pc confirmed my fear: my graphic card was fried. Apparently this is a common problem with Dell’s gaming rigs which are terrible at heat management. Some forums report problems when the laptop is only one month old. I guess I am lucky it worked for 3 years.

As my warranty is expired, my first reaction was to search for a new graphic card on eBay and other second hand sites. The graphic card in my system is a Nvidia 7950 GTX and they are being sold on eBay but at crazy prices! No way I’m going to pay about 300 euros for a second hand card that gives me absolutely no guarantee about how long it will work before frying again.

Then I found some forums about people putting their graphic card in the oven and baking them alive! The idea is that due to constant heating and cooling of the card, tiny cracks start to form in soldered contacts. Baking the card melts the solder, restoring the contacts. I thought “What the hell, I’ve got nothing to loose. My laptop is worthless now anyway.” (continue reading…)

Dell XPS M1710

Dell’s gaming line of laptops are notorious for how bad they handle heat. Although I must admit they did their best cooling the CPU and GPU with dual fan exhaust and multiple heat pipes, it just can’t handle the high temperature peaks during games. Furthermore after 3 years a nice fur of dust had formed on the cooling fins, effectively reducing the cooling abilities. When idle, the fans would constantly run at average speed with CPU/GPU temperatures of 60/70 degrees Celsius respectively. In games however the fans would go ballistic running at full speed with the GPU temperature peaking at 90 degrees Celsius! At some occasions the system would shut down due to overheating!

I wanted to solve this by doing three things: ‘overclock’ the fans of my Zalman laptop stand, remove the dust on the cooling fins and apply Arctic Silver thermally conducting compound between the CPU and GPU core and their heat sinks. Arctic Silver is fantastic at conducting heat! I already wrote an article about overclocking the Zalman (link), so this article will only handle the XPS itself. (continue reading…)