To the skies...after some repairs

I bought these two spoil quadcopters on carousell. They cost me $18. I figured I can open them up to see how they tick for a low price. Plus, I'm sure not everything is spoil (like the RC controllers might be working). 

Here I have opened up one of them. The frame is surprisingly sturdy.

The motors being connected to the micro-controller.

The battery seems bloated. Might be why it isn't working.

I went to find out what the things written on the battery mean. the 300mAh is pretty standard.

15C, which I originally thought was optimal working temperature, turns out to be 15 capacity. This means it can be discharged at a maximum rate of 15 times its capacity. In this case, 4500mA (4.5A).

Also learned about multiple cells being grouped together in series(S notation), to increase voltage, and parallel (P notation), to increase capacity. The battery I have is a single cell.

Still trying to find out what the first line means (I suspect it is the 'model' number) and the last one (initially I thought it was date of manufacturing but then I saw a picture of a battery with 3 digits in the middle). Once I have done that, I can order replacements.

Edit: Asked a friend. He also thinks it is date of manufacturing. Also suggested that 752030 could be dimensions. Sounds legit.
Asked Reddit (r/diydrones) as well. Waiting to hear back.

Absence and updates

It has been a long time since my last post and the reason for that is because I was involved in a start up! We taught computational thinking and I was the main Python instructor. Along the way I learned bootstrap and actually set up our website. A few pages are still not done. You can check it out here: www.thekrono.com.


So last week I met up with a friend to help him get his proximity sensor up and running with Arduino. Then I realized how much I missed working with Arduino. My own FYP is purely software(more on that in another post), so sadly I wont get to play with hardware.

I've decided to hold some Arduino workshops for Open Source Society, since so many people seem to need to learn Arduino. I will start on Sunday (trial class with friends) and then hold the first proper one on Thursday. I will be calling this series 'Tinkering Thursdays : Arduino 101'.

Meanwhile I have been eyeing a NFC card reader shied that works with Arduino and Raspberry Pi.
It is called 'PN532 NFC/RFID Controller Shield for Arduino'. I am wondering if I should get the original (will cost me 50-70) or a third party one from DX.com (will cost me 30). Will give an update on it once I have bought it and tried it out.