Baltimore Hackerspace hosted the first meetup of the new Baltimore Drones Meetup group. The event was a huge success. There were about 10 drones on display and everyone had stories to tell and knowledge to share. One of the hot topics discussed was the perception of the word Drones. Baltimore Hackerspace can relate to this problem. The word “Hacker” has been tainted for decades and our decision to call ourselves a Hackerspace vs a Makerspace was a big one. What is the definition of a Hacker anyways? Everyone has their own opinions of the word.
Baltimore Drones is in the same boat. What is a Drone? Should we call our toys Drones, UAVs, or Multirotors? This was a hot topic and we all seemed to agree on most things. There are so many positive things Drones can be used for. Most of which can create new jobs which are disparately needed these days.
Thank you to all who participated. We look forward to hosting future meetups for Baltimore Drones.
Last week, Terry Kilby from Baltimore Drones stopped by Baltimore Hackerspace and he brought a couple of his Drones with him. I think it was the first time allot of us have seen Drones of this quality up close and they were just as exciting as I thought they would be. Both Drones were made to port a camera on the bottom of them and Terry said that he frequently contracts out the Drones for special camera work. Very cool!
Progress has been slow. in the past week we’ve gotten all the requisite parts, but have been lacking in time to assemble it all.
all 4 wheels are now on the kart, and the original body fits surprisingly well. Fronts are 4″ steel wheels from Harbor Freight, $6.99 apiece with some real bearings in there. Rears are 5″ azusalite nylon wheels from a member’s gravity car.
some of our drivers, too, fit surprisingly well. We’ve had to widen the roll cage a bit to accommodate adults, and we removed some of the crossbars from the existing ‘rollcage’ so they wouldn’t interfere with seating position, but aside from that the exterior of the body is just about completely stock.
the body rests on a simple frame of angle iron. It supports our vertical loads well, and is torsionally flexible. This is good because it will serve as rudimentary suspension and will prevent the castered front outside wheel from coming off the ground under cornering. The front wheels have caster so they experience negative camber during cornering, which should allow the tire to maintain a proper contact patch. While we expect understeer due to the relative dearth of weight on the front axle compared to the rear (and the better tires with a larger contact patch on the rear), caster should help mitigate it.
Power will be delivered to the rear wheels from the EV warrior motors via #35 chain. Attached to the rear wheels are 60-tooth sprocket drums. Since these are also part of the braking assembly, their cost is not counted toward our $500 target. The donor kart did not need a chain drive so we had to remove the original brake drums to make way for the new ones. brakes are azusa 4.5″ drum assemblies, also from the gravity kart. they will be actuated by a hand lever on the steering yoke.
We even have comfortable seating worked out! A member brought over many, many office chairs so we a good selection to pick out the sturdiest, perfect-fitting seat. with the nature of the seat and the posture, the kart is surprisingly comfortable to sit in and feels stable as well. The body has been cut out to lower the bottom of the seat to within an inch of the minimum ‘axle height’ rule. this, combined with the slightly laid-back posture of the driver, should keep the CG as low as we can get. perhaps we won’t need the frame extensions we’ve kept on for provisional wheelie bars!
Now it’s on to drivetrain and steering. we hope to have the thing rolling by the end of Wednesday night
We’ve been having some fun decorating, painting and building new workbenches for the hackerspace. We also realized we have a lot of junk to sort through! Whew!
Anyway, if you haven’t stopped by yet, we wanted to show the progress of how things are coming a long. Here are some updated pictures:
