Arduino in Flight, an Arduino That Can Control a Helicopter

I have seen many hacks to control an rc helicopter with an arduino but I have a helicopter using radio control (not ir led). With a couple parts I will show you how to build your own! Read the whole instructable before beginning this project. This requires no modification to the helicopter.

You will only need a few parts for this build:

- RC helicopter (I used a S032 ,but any will do) 
- Arduino
- NPN transistor
- Wire 

Tools:
- Soldering Iron
- Helping Hands

The helicopter's remote works by reading an analog signal coming from the potentiometer on the joysticks. If we were to connect the transistor to the joystick, the remote would think that the joystick was being moved. The arduino will control the transistor, in turn controlling the remote and that will control the helicopter.

Now we will connect the transistors to the potentiometers. The 2 prongs on the potentiometer will connect to the the transistors's 2 side legs. The middle leg will be fed through the back and so will a ground wire connected to the remotes's ground.

I decided that writing code for controlling the helicopter would not be useful because you all have different ideas on what to do with the helicopter. But running the "fade" example program and putting the throttle wire on pin 9 would have the helicopter takeoff and then land repeatedly.If you have any ideas please comment below. Hope you enjoyed my instructable.