RC Hovercraft

This is an RC Hovercraft, which is a remote controlled car-like machine and can travel over land and water. It has an airtight skirt on its bottom that causes the body the “hover”. It is mostly made up of depron, which is a very light foam material.

Engineer

Leo Y.

Interests

Engineering, 3D Printing, Machine Engineering, and Video Game Programming

School

Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School

Grade

Incoming Sophomore

Reflection

During my time at BlueStamp Engineering, I have had many fascinating experiences and learning new things such as soldering, cutting depron, and assembling electronics. Before coming to BlueStamp I had zero experience with engineering, so when I arrived I was very nervous and scared that I would mess something up and maybe break something, both of which I had done. While in BlueStamp, I also made some friends and we would play basketball during break, helping me work on my social skills. The six weeks I’ve been at BlueStamp were very rewarding in many ways, also showing me new things to achieve in the future. I want to learn more about engineering and maybe return next year for another six weeks.

Third Milestone

The third milestone is where I demonstrate and present the things that I have made. My hovercraft is basically complete, yet I still need to add on a top and modifications. My hovercraft has the electronics, skirt, and rutters are all done and ready to go. During the making of the third milestone, the rutters and skirt had some complications because of their designs, but with some editing, I had them fixed. What I’m going to do next is to get a top setup and hot glue it on, with a movable snout so I can access the batteries and show the insides.

RC Hovercraft Pieces

Rc Hovercraft Blueprint

Second Milestone

My second milestone took me a long time to finish, but now that it’s done, I can move onto the third milestone. During the progress of the second milestone, my batteries have gone dead, remote control transmitter weren’t working, and the skirt also took some time to be corrected. The skirt was the main reason it took so long to finish, but also I needed to connect all the wirings, batteries, motors, and ESCs. What I’m doing next is to fix up the skirt a bit more, and test everything out with a demo.

Rc Hovercraft Wiring

First Milestone

Today I’m going to be talking about my first milestone, and that is the base of my main project. The base of the my main project, which is an RC Hovercraft, is a depron made board, depron made air channel, a fabric skirt, and depron supports for the top/cap of the hovercraft. During the making of this there were some difficulties and mistakes in the designing. The first mistake I made was the air current, but I easily changed that and fixed the depron pattern on the inside. The other mistake I made that was difficult to change was that I messed up on the skirt of the hovercraft, where I accidentally glued the bottom of the skirt into the hovercraft, where it should’ve been cut and where the wind blew out to make an “air cushion”. I took the base apart and cut the skirt, changed the bottom, and finally finished with a little wind test. These experiences were great, and I really hope to do even more for the next milestone.

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BlueStamp Engineering

Build Plan

Name: Leo Yan

Location: San Francisco

Instructor: Tamir

Starter Project: TV-B-Gone

Main Project: RC Hovercraft

Major Steps to Complete Project:

Get all the resources together from Tamir.

Create Blueprint and let instructor check it over.

Get all measurements together.

Do 1st Milestone.

Get trained on depron cutting knife and hot glue gun.

Do 2nd Milestone.

Start cutting pieces and assembling everything together.

Get batteries charged and assemble electronics.

Connect everything and test them out.

Do 3rd Milestone.

Finish hovercraft.

Do Final Milestone.

Modifications

Add LED lights.

TV-B-Gone

My starter project was to build a microcontroller called the TV-B-Gone. The TV-B-Gone is a small device that uses infrared lights to turn off TVs that use infrared light remotes. The TV-B-Gone wasn’t the most complicated thing to build, but I still came across some difficulties that made me stop and think. The very first difficulty was that I needed to find the instructions, and this was actually my very first engineering project and anything built by myself. The other difficulty was when I had put everything together, I put in the batteries and went into the bathroom, but when I came back the batteries were very hot and we thought that there was a short fuse in the circuit, but turned out to be in the batteries, which were properly taken care of. Even after those incidents, the TV-B-Gone was a success, and I’m proud of my project.