Bill, it was fun bringing the helipad out of the lab yesterday and thanks for sending me this link where you have mentioned it. First, hello all, my name is Mark and I am the design guy behind the pad that "is just a bunch of lights". Please be nice to Bill, he just saw something that he thought was cool and wanted to share it with the community.

I make my living as an electronic design engineering consultant, but enjoy flying RC heli's as one of several hobbies. The pad idea came about 2 winters ago, when all flying was limited to indoors. The original prototype was a circuit board only, on cheap standoffs, which I built and took to different customer sites and labs, where I would get several of the techical folks to have some fun. From those original fun flying indoor days, I took away alot of feedback and promised that if I ever got the time, I would incorporate them and we would have a better widget to play with. So, this year I did just that. Its now has a bigger surface, its completely enclosed, it has a multitone buzzer, it has more memory so more than 4 patterns can be stored, and it has the ability to communicate with a PC terminal (or application) over USB and each pad has a wireless transceiver that allows it to find and join the network of other pads. That last part is extremely geeky I know, but the idea is to have the pads create a "fly here, now fly there" random hopping pattern so competitions could occur.

The basic premise is, a microcontroller runs an algorithm that goes along with a proximity sensor (in the center) that senses how close an object is. At the objects closest, lights will either turn on, or off, depending on the pattern. At is farthest, the light pattern will be doing 1 of many different patterns, along with different optional sounds, etc.

The circuit board itself WAS designed for an outdoor sensing pad as well, however this first enclosure obviously was not. It was designed for the mini and micro flyers. The good news is, the outdoor enclosure is in design. I'm working with a custom wood-working shop on this to make sure I can properly house and protect my circuit board and sensors, etc. It will be ready when its time to bring the bigger heli's out this spring.

I posted up a few more pictures and a video, showing it with an MSR.

Next step is for a local RC group to play with it and get some good video and some good feedback.

There is no advertising or marketing plan, etc. At the moment, the plan is to have fun with it....

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