Building the BlimpDuino Board

This BlimpDuino project is a double-sided Arduino-clone autonomous blimp controller board that contains handful of components.

The parts that made up the BlimpDuino board includes the ON/OFF switch which is an SPDT mini power switch that is rated at 30V at 200mA. It fits great into a breadboard due to its pins that have 1” spacing. It can also be used as a general control switch aside from being a power switch. Another component is the capacitor which is a low profile electrolytic capacitor with 10uF at 25V rating. These capacitors work well as charge pump caps for MAX232 circuits since they are efficient surge/transient suppressors. They are also considered as high quality radial electrolytic capacitors.

The infrared receivers contain a carrier frequency of 56KHz with a transmission distance of 45m. It can be supplied with 0.35mA current with 10mW power dissipation. It can be mounted in a through-hole style while its beam angle can reach 45 deg with a viewing angle of 90 deg.

In the future, a much smaller surface-mount design can be made with a whole new outline using more sensors, LEDs for directional feedback, and with a more powerful processor.

Rest of the project