December 2, 2013

Turn your paper plane into a motor-propelled flying machine with PowerUp 3.0

by Sayan Chakravarty

There is nothing more basic than a simple piece of paper folded into a kickass plane, but it’s always fun. Some fly, some nosedive, some spiral out of control; and at best, in the name of upgrade, all we can do is to change the angle of the flaps to make it fly a little better. How about giving it a motor and control it using a smartphone? I mean, how cool does that sound? A kickstarter project named PowerUp 3.0 can turn mundane paper planes into proper flying machines. Designed by Shai Goitein, the PowerUp 3.0 is a small module that clips onto a body of a classic paper plane forming its frame. The module has a small propeller and a rudder on the back end and a Bluetooth connection hub on the front.


The MicroUSB charged flying module has a small Lithium Polymer battery that can propel the plane for 10 minutes on a single charge. With Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, it has a range of 180feet/ 55 meters and a top speed of 10mph. The controls of the module can be operated via a smartphone app, which was initially designed for iOS, but is now available for Android also. The app has a very neat intuitive user interface with a tilt-to-steer feature for the rudder control. The seed funding campaign launched on Saturday blasted past its $50,000 target within 8 hours and by now the funding has crossed the $350,000 mark with 54 days still remaining. The basic PowerUp 3.0 package costs $30 but all those pledge levels have been bagged by early backers. Now the price has been pushed to $40. You’ll have to shell out more to get added extras. I am an avid aero-modeling enthusiast myself, and I absolutely love it. I want one!

[Via – Kickstarter]