Can’t believe that it’s only been 3 and a bit weeks since I got back from the most epic Australian adventure ever.
Have / having had a little bit of trouble getting my head around being back home, but nothing major.
Throwing myself into some tech and that has helped a lot. The first week or so consisted of a fair bit of movie watching (I plead jet lag and just wanting to crash after work), but the past week has seen almost no TV and tinkering each night.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BP6i7y_ggvF
Using the Opto 22 Raspberry Pi starter kit for this one…. That and (as you can see at the end of the video), a tiny bit of Node-RED.
Bought the boss’s old Phantom 3 Pro drone.
Been taking it for my Sunday morning Smart Car drives and slowing getting confidence in flying it and getting better at taking landscape photos with it.
Of course, you can’t fly a drone and not take a dronie….
Still planning on getting around to committing to study for, sit and pass my Part 107. (aka, drone license).
So, I guess you could say I am back, but don’t feel back.
Not sure what to do with the blog. Same as last time I suspect, write about what interests me and you lot can sort it out on your end.
We interrupt the silence (blissful, enjoyable, calming silence) to ask this… .What is going on in Victoria?
No really, what are you guys up to? Gary? Dan? Im looking at you guys…. Ok, perhaps only joking a little….
This popped up on my RSS feed (yes, no matter how busy I am, I always find time to feed my RSS addiction).
A person or a group of people have been dropping malicious USB sticks in mailboxes around Victoria, Australia. The State Police on Wednesday issued a warning, saying these USB drives are “believed to be extremely harmful,” urging the public not to use them.
“Upon inserting the USB drives into their computers victims have experienced fraudulent media streaming offers, as well as other serious issues,” the statement read.
That’s about the guts of it there.
Random USB stick shows up in your mailbox, well of course you plug it into your computer, I mean free storage right?
Yeah. Nah.
Ok, so if you really really really wana know what’s on it, get a Linux laptop that you can nuke after use, turn off the wireless, unplug it from the network, get yourself a boot-n-nuke application (or read about ‘sudo dd’ for a start) and don’t look at it, don’t browse any of the files, just kill it, kill it with fire. Then, and only then, enjoy your free storage.
Oh, and while we are on the topic of free hardware, there is a company (or many more than one) that is offering to pay you 20 bucks a month for you to host one of their Raspberry Pi computers on your network.
Don’t do that either.
Back to the sweet sweet silence of an inactive blog.
We have done a little more drone flying since the last blog. Not a lot. Just the one ‘work’ related batch and a bit of practice at home with the nano.
What we have been doing is looking at other pilots drone video to learn what works and what does not…… There is a ton of it out there. Hundreds of 2-10 minute boring as paint drying videos.
What’s interesting is that they are (for the most part) just gushing with excitement about how amazing the flight and video is…… Umm… It’s a sunset….. It’s a beach…. It’s a park….
It has no meaning to the viewer. None.
To them and their friends/family, sure, I bet it is a cool memory video, but to me and you, not so much.
We don’t know what the holiday was about, we don’t know just how amazing the sunset was (yeah, ok, it looks pretty from 200 feet up, but we really don’t need a full eight minutes of hovering to enjoy it).
Storytelling
Video is about storytelling. Did Hitchcock or Spielberg or Cameron have a drone? No, they made great movies because they could direct people to tell a great story.
I personally think that drone flying is amazing when it is told as part of a story.
Here is our first attempt.
To be clear, we are all finding our way with the drone. But, that said, I think it helps tell the story.
(Looking forward to sharing with you all the next video that our team is editing at the moment, it has some more drone footage in it).
If you are super interested we can share what bits are drone and what’s not (it might surprise you which shots are from the drone), otherwise, have fun guessing…..
I guess my point is this, drones are cool, yeah, sure, but if you just upload a home video it has very little impact.
Tell a story and use your drone as part of that story and you will get some traction.
But, for me, the real power of the drone I suspect is science. I am super looking forward to getting my hands on some footage and software.
At this stage I am leaning toward using wUnderground a bit more.
I have paid the 10 bucks a year to remove ads from their apps on my devices and web, so it’s nice and clutter free viewing the weather.
WeatherUnderground also have a pretty nice API (computer interface) that I will be doing more with in groov as soon as I get some time.
The thought is to make custom weather dashboards in groov for each of my locations of interest. ‘Computers’ (Phones, iPods, iPads, Tablets, Phablets, pretty much anything that can display a webpage) are becoming cheaper and more abundant to the point where they can be used to display a single page. The thought is to have one in the house/kitchen that displays some weather data.
WeatherUndergound have an iPad only app that does this, but it is white, with no black/dark screen option, also their weather camera update is broken, so I figure I would redo it in groov. Build it just the way I want it.
As usual, it’s all a work in progress….. So yeah, heads up Gary, we will be putting your station under the microscope! (Tom, we know your stuff is reliable, you are off the hook for now).
Edit: Gary and Tom, you guys should consider pushing your data to WeatherUnderground as well. No one in your area is doing it…..
Events have conspired to push us back into flying radio control aircraft. Specifically, drones, multirotor or quadcopters… They all the same thing, but people call them different names. Here is a quick recap of how this all came about.
We shoot video case studies at work to highlight how companies use our gear to automate a process. It’s good for them and it’s good for us, it helps their future customers understand how that company can help them, and it helps our future customers hear and see how others have used our gear.
So, a few weeks back, we had a case study video shoot to do in Northern California, cold storage of fruit.
At first, the boss said that he would be flying the drone… It is after all, HIS drone. He has flown it a few times and he also doubles as the director for the film crew, so it makes sense for him to be there.
Events built to the point where he was not going to be able to make it, so that left me to pick up the drone (I also do camera B and audio duties).
Long story short, I had around 3 days to learn how to set it up and fly it.
Phantom 3 Pro Drones
dji phantom 3 pro drone
The DJI Phantom 3 Professional is no longer their top of the line drone, but it is still a lot of drone. Costing something north of 1500 bucks, it is also out of my price range.
The really interesting thing for me is that flying the thing is as much about the software as it is about flying.
The system uses a tablet, in this case an iPad something (Sorry, I don’t know anything about Apple products – it just works with the drone is all I know), it gets the feed from the remote. Both video and data show up. Both are required to fly the drone.
Quick practice
I was not going to learn how to fly on the job, so we did a few quick flights the Sunday before we left.
Rusty, but the drone has GPS, altitude lock and active stabilization electronics to help. The thing that really weirds me out is that you pretty much fly it from the video feed 99% of the time. Only during takeoff and landing do I look it (and even then I’m sure there are guys that do the whole thing from the video feed).
This is very different to how I have flown fix wing stuff in the past!
We also had to brush up on old skills like propeller balancing.
On location
To say I was nervous is a MASSIVE understatement.
If we get some time, I plan to rough edit some of the video shots we got and share them here.
Here is a photo that our video guy got of me, I had no idea that he took this photo.
Here is one that I took of me from the drone.
At this point, I am flying inside the massive cool room that they store grapes in.
Nano practice drone
The good news is two fold. Firstly, I did not crash. Secondly, I get to do more flying latter this week at another video case study.
In the middle of the two weeks Freddy and Terry asked me what I wanted for a Father’s day present (apparently I am hard to buy presents for… and my name is not even Gary…).
The answer was pretty simple…. I needed a small practice drone.
So. There we are.
I am flying for work and pleasure.
Right now the FAA are between rules, so we are looking at whats required to keep this up moving forward.
At the moment it is still the bosses drone. Not sure whats going to happen there as he has been using it less and less (that was happening long before this shoot – just to be clear). It’s the sort of thing that if you don’t keep it up, you get rusty…. As I can attest to.
You might read or hear more about drones moving forward. Radio control aircraft seem to be making a comeback into my life. Amazing how stuff like this works out.
