Hovercraft

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  Our workspace

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  The one, the only

It has been long since Patryk and I wanted to build a hovercraft. We tried and tried but every time we had missing materials/resources. Today this changes!

This hovercraft is supposed to... well... hover! And go around places! Even if in the end it won't do this, so long as it can go forward a few centimeters and turn left/right (it specifically excels at this), then that's great and it means we finally created something that works somewhat!

We based our hovercraft around an ESP32 microcontroller, with 2 DC brushless fans for direction, as well as 1 DC brushed fan for the hovering. The direction fans were controlled by the ESP32 using PWM, and some electronic speed controllers which did the actual high current work for us, in order to spin the fans. In order to control the hovercraft, we implemented a very very simple Bluetooth communication using a HC-05 BT module. The code was written using the PlatformIO IDE.

Even today, after several already failed attempts to build a hovercraft, we were missing some things, and we found this along the way. First it was a voltage regulator for the fan that would make the thing hover... We never found one, but instead used the 5V output from one of the speed controllers. Then we had to limit the current going through that fan with a H-bridge or transistor of sorts, which we didn't find... We improvised by using 20 resistors connected in parallel on a tiny breadboard. We accidentally burned a 0 ohm resistor on the ESP32, making it unable to turn on anymore... We stuck a piece of wire to what was left of the resistor, and things worked.

We are glad that we finally got to build this hovercraft, and that's enough of an achievement for both of us. Even more of an achievement was all the hacking that had to be done so that we could get the thing to work as intended. Workarounds to workarounds to workarounds to... We applied a true engineer's mindset to problems that could have completely ruined our hovercraft plans.

This was a huge opportunity to learn a thing or two about DC brushless fans, electronic speed controllers, and to remember some Electrical Engineering theory from first year (we're third year now), which was genuinely useful.

If we can't get the hovercraft to... actually hover, then obviously that's our next plan. If we do however manage to get it done before presentations, then what's left is to add some tribal fire vinyls to it, for added speed!

Built With

• c
• electronics
• esp32