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Multirotors and Trees Oh My.

Having already smashed my Blade QX350 you’d a thought I’d be a little more careful.  But no.  On Matthew’s 6th birthday I thought I’d take the Hex out for a spin and document the White Death that had come down upon us the previous day.   If it’s going to be cold, might as well have snow.

So I strapped the legacy Contour HD camera to the Hex and took it out for a spin.

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Changes since the most recent flight included, the landing gear, and the weight of the camera.   Should have probably re-tuned it but I didn’t.

The plan was simple.   Start it up in the driveway, and execute an Auto-Flight that would circle the property filming the spectacular views.   Best laid plans.

Continue reading “Multirotors and Trees Oh My.”

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Multi-Rotors, a new hobby.

Long story short.   I’ve have wanted to get into RC helicopters for a long time, but they are hard, real hard to fly.  At least the cool collective pitch types that have the most maneuverability and seem like the most fun.   A buddy of mine tried, and gave up.  Then he found multi-rotors, and the Ardupilot platform and started building.

I initially acquired a Blade Nano QX for use in the office to learn to fly, and because it’s cheap and easy fun.  Almost indestructible.

Then I picked up a Blade QX350, which is awesome, but not programmable, or missionable.  But it has ‘safe’ modes, is GPS aware and will return to launch with the flip of a switch.

On Thursday, I built a Ardupilot based DJI F550 Hex with Jason.

DJI Hex

We assembled it in one day and test hovered it by 3:30pm in the afternoon.   This was only doable because Jason has built a couple of these and spent countless hours figuring out the nuances.   I am forever grateful for that.  I’m sure he saved me much frustration.

So we built it on Thursday and flew it a little bit.   And by a little bit, I mean hovered a little, tested a few modes, but didn’t get out of his back yard and not more than 30 feet off the ground or more than 30 feet away from me.

This morning that changed.

I was able to get it out and fly a bit in the front yard.   Living on 16 acres has it’s advantages.   I was able to exercise a couple modes.  Standard stability, Stability with simple, the new Drift mode as well as test return to launch.

This Google Earth plot shows everywhere we went, using the actual mission planner GPS data.

HexFirstFlight

I don’t have a camera mounted to it yet, but Molly took a little video of it with my phone.

DJI F550 Hexcopter first real flight.

Some video footage (raw) from a QX350 flight last weekend is here:

Blade QX350 with Contour HD camera mounted.

We were flying the Blade QX last weekend on the edge of that nasty storm.  It was surprisingly stable in up-to 30mph gusts.    It was blowing like crazy but stability mode really kept it controllable.  Pretty amazing actually.

I would never have tried that with the new F550 but the blade is rock solid in conditions like this.

Until next time.

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The Scarlet Crane and the Saffron Falcon

Full Disclosure: I used to work with Jim (although now he’s Mr. Fancy Pants Author J.E. Hopkins).   I haven’t worked with him in 12 years. We had lunch 2012, and he told me he was writing a book, or had just written a book.   I can’t exactly remember which. 

He described it as a fantasy thriller novel, and I thought “Oh great, anther Harry Potter wannabe, just kill me now”.

I’m not a huge reader.  Let me rephrase that.  I read all the darn time.   But it’s usually work related, technical stuff, or IT stuff.   It’s literally all I do, so no I don’t spend a lot of time reading for fun.   I will on occasion pick up a book, usually one that’s recommended, and enjoy a good read.   But that only translates to 6-10 times a year, often less, though that’s starting to change.

Then Jim told me his book was on Amazon, and at the time was on special for $99 cents.  I thought “Ah what the heck, the guy put a lot of effort into this, it’s worth a buck right?”.

Any book is worth a buck? Isn’t it?     So I bought it.

Just to put this in perspective, I like a good mystery.  I like a good action book, or mystery or spy novel, or even sci-fi.  I don’t however, generally dig fantasy stuff.   I have never read Lord of the Rings, though I loved the movies and probably should read the books.   I tried to read Game of Thrones.  I’d rather get a root canal, though I love the series on TV.  So maybe I do like fantasy and I just don’t know it.   The thought of reading Harry Potter though makes me want to hurl.  

When I read that the Scarlet Crane was a Fantasy Thriller revolving around the use of Transition Magic, I had the same initial reaction that I have with Harry Potter.  I clearly thought, this is going to suck, I’m not going to enjoy this.   It will probably be 10 or 12 hours of my life completely wasted.

I was wrong and pleasantly surprised.

It was more like a Grisham novel with a little ‘Magic’ mixed in.  Totally acceptable.   Mixed in might not be the right word since the book is clearly centered on it, but it didn’t dominate the book in terms of being way out there fantasy stuff that you have to be high to believe.    

I enjoyed it.  

Then he wrote a sequel The Saffron Falcon, and I was actually kind of excited to read it too.  I just did, and it was very good.   Jim has evolved as a writer.  The 2nd book was considerably better than the first and I am looking forward to future additions to the line.

So if you’re in the mood for a good easy read, I recommend these books.  

I get nothing from Jim for supporting his writing.  He hasn’t even bought me lunch (yet).  I do believe in giving credit where credit is due and Jim deserves credit and kudos for writing two good books.   Well at least one really good book and one pretty good book.

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Dropcam Pro, more cam, less drop.

Earlier in the year, I picked up a couple Dropcams.  The purpose was to set them up at the office so that we can get a look at what’s going on there.   Mostly to make sure the grounds crew was taking care of their end of the bargain.

I wrote about it here: Dropcam, the perfect name.

In that blog post I was very critical of the product.   We couldn’t keep them connected to our enterprise wireless network no matter what we tried.   In fact we jumped through hoops to do so with no support from Dropcam.  It was their lack of decent tech support that forced me to pan the product, and the company and send them back.   (Amazon return policy for the win).

Recently I got an email about the new Dropcam Pro.

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Initially I had flashbacks to the crappy support.  But thought, maybe, just maybe they’ve fixed them.  So I ordered up a pair.  What they heck right?  Amazon will take them back if they suck, and dollar for dollar, feature for feature they do seem to have something going for them.

The Dropcam Pro features the following upgrades:

  • 130 degree field of view vs. 107
  • 8x zoom vs 4x (although zoom is misleading since it’s a digital zoom, or like a crop and expand).
  • Excellent low light vision vs. ‘Good’ what ever that means.   I love it when a company uses general words to describe things instead of actual numbers.  Would be nice to know the actual LUX sensitivity.
  • Superior Audio Quality vs. ‘Solid’ audio quality.  Again, no real data.    It’s like saying “My dad can beat up your dad”.

Absolutely no mention of any wireless or stability improvements.  None.

So really what makes all this work is this cloud based DVR solution they offer, and of course ‘take additional money for’.   Out of the box you get a camera, that’s pretty straight forward to configure using a web driven wizard with the camera plugged into your computer.   Once you’ve given I the details on how to connect to your wireless network, you unplug it, set it up and give it power.

It then boots up, joins the wireless network and starts streaming your video into the cloud to their cloud.  Where they will allow you one of three options:

  • No DVR, you just get a live view of what ever your camera sees.
  • For the bargain price of $9.99 a month or $99 per year, they will save 7 days of video for you to rewind and replay.
  • For $29.95 a month/$299 a year, you get 30 days worth of your video saved in their cloud to review.

There are other bonuses like motion alerts and what not.   But that’s the gist of it.  You bought a camera that you can only view through their website/portal, and/or can pay them for DVR services. 

There is no ‘bring your own DVR model’ or a way to store video captured locally.   Not that I’ve found yet, with a precursory look on the web.   I’m sure it can be done, but that’s not their business model.  I wouldn’t hold your breath.  They will likely never offer this, hopefully some thoughtful hackers will in the future.

In all honesty, their base free offering is all we really need for what we’re using it for.   Again, that’s mostly to ensure the grounds crew does their job and clears the parking lot during bad weather.

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So far, at the time of this writing it’s stayed connected to our network for 3 days.   One small blip but not anything I’d consider a fail at this point.   So they look like keepers.

Video is good, night vision is decent, though this is behind a window, though our parking lot is fairly well lit. 

So what about their tech support?    Here’s where I get to hit them with a hammer again.   Upon disconnecting the service last time I was told (neigh warned), that we’re gonna delete your account, if you ever buy a drop cam again you’ll have to re-register.  I was OK with that.

So upon setup, I tried to ‘register’.   I couldn’t, that name was in use.  I thought, OK, so they didn’t really delete me.   Let me recover my password.

Sorry, that email is in use.  What?

Sorry, that email and that username don’t match up.  

Those were the only two items you can use to recover, and I’m certain nobody else registered that username with my email.  Not possible, not even to guess.

So I opened a ticket.   “Hey, I’m trying to set up a drop cam, and it says my password is no good.  I tried to use your password reset form and it tells me that the username and password don’t go together.   You recognize my username on one page, and my email on another, but I can’t make this account “GO”.    What shall I do?

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The response?

Without reading and processing my request:  Go here and use the password reset form. 

Gee.  Thanks for that.   So while waiting, I just created another email alias, and registered a new username with that.   I was skeptical I’d get my two weeks free trial using that ‘recovered’ account anyway.

So if you’re in the market for a nice camera, that’s backed by a cloud ONLY storage solution.  One who’s tech support is sketchy at best.   I can highly recommend Dropcam.

If you’re not worried that the company will fail, and you’ll lose the ability to store (or potentially even view) video down the road, Dropcam is for you.

If any of this cloud monkey business scares you, as it probably should might. Companies die and go out of business all the time.   Then Dropcam might not be for you.  I really hope it’s still working 2 years from now.

For what it is, I give it one and a half thumbs up.   Which is significantly better than the previous experience.