Bladestar

Bladestar is a remote-controlled electric indoor flying toy produced by WowWee under the FlyTech brand name. Bladestar differs from typical helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft designs in that the entire wing and body structure rotates, driven by two electric motors mounted 180 degrees apart.

Hardware

*Bladestar
*2 spare propellors
*2 pairs of wings
*Infrared (IR) remote control
*"Dogfight" accessory fitting for remote control
*Requires 6x AA batteries

The Bladestar is powered by an internal 50 mAh Lithium polymer battery, and is recharged by connecting to the remote control. The remote control has a throttle slide control on the left, and a 5 button directional control on the right. When in use, the remote control emits an IR signal to provide a reference point to the Bladestar. If the Bladestar loses this signal for 10 seconds (due to remote control being turned off, or aimed in wrong direction), the Bladestars motors will turn off, allowing the Bladestar to descend.

The throttle can be adjusted to make the Bladestar hover, climb or sink. The directional control sends additional IR signals telling the Bladestar to move relative to the remote control: away from remote, towards remote, and right or left. The center button of the directional control sends a 'kill' signal to the Bladestar it is aimed at, causing the motors to lose speed. This is used in the 'dogfight' mode to make an opponents Bladestar lose power and descend to the ground.

The Bladestar has two IR emitters, one located centrally on the top for detecting ceilings, and one on the side of the body for detecting walls. There is one IR detector also mounted on the side, which receives IR signals from the remote control, and reflected IR signals from the top and side emitters. The Bladestar uses these reflected signals to avoid ceilings and walls while flying in autonomous mode.

References

* [http://www.greensheet.com/newswire.php?newswire_id=8494#WowWee's%20Flytech%20Bladestar%20receives%20Editor's%20Choice%20award%20at%20CES Bladestar wins Editor's Choice award at CES 2008]
* [http://reviews.cnet.com/WowWee_Flytech_Starblade/4660-13855_7-6827526.html Bladestar video review on CNet]
* [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2244289,00.asp Overview of new WowWee releases at PCMag]

External links

* [http://www.bladestaronline.com Official Site]
* [http://www.robocommunity.com/category/47/FlyTech-Bladestar Bladestar Home] on [http://www.robocommunity.com RoboCommunity] - The official WowWee Robotics user community