Night Flyer!
The Night Flyer takes RC Aircraft to the next level.
Many of us at SparkFun are not only interested in embedded electronics, but also have a love for RC airplanes. So this project from SparkFun customer Tom Hastie strikes especially close to home. Check out the Night Flyer!
Besides having a sweet name (Night Flyer!), this project is very cool from an electronics standpoint. Essentially, Tom is using an Arduino Pro Mini to control four daisy-chained MAX6966 LED driver chips over SPI. The MAX6966s each have 10 channels of PWM control, so with 4 chips, he has a total of 40 channels (or 13 different RGB channels). He uses our SSOP 16-pin breakout so he can use a protoboard to wire up all his parts. What I'm trying to say is that Tom has control over a lot of different cool colors. The result is a pretty awesome airshow!
Tom does a great job of documenting his build so you check out his build log plus a whole bunch of videos like his breadboard with only 1 RGB channel, his prototype circuit with 10 RGB channels, and his completed aircraft flight demo (my personal favorite). Great work, Tom!
