Free-Flight Timer with Brushless Feature

Illustrated in this project is an easy to use and light brushless free-flight timer which has been converted from a cheap commercial speed controller.

The use of affordable 5g, 10g, and other similar brushless motors is made possible by having a brushless timer. Up to a CDROM-sized motor around 24g can be driven by a 6A source. During the operation, the motor starts and ramps up to full power over 1 second at the press of a button. Before gradually fading over 6 seconds to smooth the transition into a glide, it will run for a configurable duration. A memory is used to store the run time permanently and can be changed between flights easily. At any time, the motor can be stopped manually and if the motor is stalled, it will cut within a second or two.

A DIY ESC program is used as the basis of the timer software. A programmable Atmel ATmega8L AVR microprocessor is the brain of the chosen ESC. The 32 pins of this chip have their own specific purpose of performance. Although the software is useful for other projects, it will only be suited for Atmel chips.

Rest of the project