Endless(or at least extended?) Power Cycle

[Aaron Lewis]

Hello everyone. Real quick: was hoping to have been able to attend this evening but have company coming from out of state this week, so busy busy. Please save lots of unpacking/organizing for me to contribute.

So I've always had this idea(the technology, not a specific project) since I was young that I've never looked into. I still haven't, though I'm about to, and would just like to put the idea out there for your opinions.

I, being a lil toy-loving kid at heart still, have always(since was 6yrs old) wanted a remote control helicopter. Since I recently learned about quadcopters I kinda switched that dream over. So one disappointing problem with any flying device these days is a short battery life which is typically around 6 or 7 mins.

As I'm sure many of you are, I too am interested in alternative energy sources. I watched this video of a guy who was powering all his major appliances off of a small little wind mill that he attached to the top of his house. See where I'm going with this yet?

My idea is this: Is it possible to have a fan or motor generate it's own energy, once started manually, to keep powering itself? From my research, yes. Your thoughts? How about implementing this into a quadcopter? I know there would be much better things to spend time on implementing this into, like a car, but a quadcopter would obviously be smaller and less complicated and less expensive.

Have any of you already built a quadcopter that you'd be willing to modify?
Has anyone already done experiments of any kind with self-generating energy sources?
Does anyone find this intriguing?

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Aaron Lewis

[Joe O'Donnell]

Claims of motors that 'power themselves' are generally considered to be claims of a perpetual motion machine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion  Perhaps you were thinking of something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_wind_turbine  I haven't built a quadroptor, but there is a well developed community doing that: http://diydrones.com/ The only part that we don't already have that would be needed to build a quadroptor, is this:  http://www.invensense.com/mems/gyro/imu3000.html  The above needs this adapter for effective use: http://www.robotshop.com/schmartboard-qfp-qfn-adapter.html Joe --- On Wed, 10/24/12, Aaron Lewis <aaronle...@gmail.com> wrote:

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