Category Archives: Technical

Aerial Photography, flying, Story, Technical

10. Into the Bloom – Part I

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Previously: Dealing with the fear of water

Ever since my last fly over the water of lake Margruite in Scottsdale, I was looking for my next opportunity to fly.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to do that for four weeks.

Don’t get me wrong, I did have the intention and made the necessary plans, but ‘reality’ was not on my side (no, ‘reality’ is not how I call my wife and daughter…).

I even brought my drone with me to our short trip to LA hoping to catch some nice views…

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My drone stayed put the entire round trip until we got back from LA. Well, almost in the same position. 5 minutes into the ride my daughter informed me that if this “thing” in the back seat will not stop “clicking”, she will teach it how to fly out the window, so I had to stop and rearrange the bungee cords to hold the gimbal in place so its metal parts stop hitting each other in loud metallic sound.

During the visit, every time I dared to think: “This is the perfect time to fly it”, either my wife or my daughter (I guess I do call them ‘reality’) had a convincing reason for why I shouldn’t stop the car to fly it at that specific moment.

I really wanted to fly it next to the power windmills in Palm Springs but,  “surprisingly”, the winds in the area were too strong (now I know why they chose this area to install them) and it was too cloudy to get a good picture anyhow.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Of course this is when my wife and daughter said it would be ok if I’ll fly it now… twisted reality…

When we got back home, I had to crawl into the back of the car to detach the poor plastic bird off the back seat and bring it home, without giving it a chance to fly during the entire trip.

I felt like I have to correct this, so the following Sunday, I cleared my schedule to find the time to fly it.

By the time I got things going it was close to noon. In the desert, ‘close to noon’ during summer can mean 3 digits temperatures of about ~104ºF (~ 40ºC for my metric friends), but this mid-May  Sunday noon was already showing these high temperatures earlier than expected.

The good news about this time of year in the desert is that you get to watch the blooming of the cacti. If you never seen a blooming cactus, you better not say you lived in the desert. This is one of the most beautiful phenomenons of the desert view. Seeing these tall Sonora Saguaro cacti rising to an impressive 40-60 feet (12-18m), with a bright cluster of flowers at the top, is one surprise  that is waiting for any new desert resident (sorry for ruining the surprise to any future desert residents…)

So I decided to dedicate my next shooting to this beautiful act of nature.

Finding cacti in the desert is quite easy, you just need to walk in any direction for 5 minutes and you’ll hit one. But finding a blooming one can be quite tricky if you missed the peak of the season which last only a few weeks, which of course is what happened to me.

So I’m in my car, scouting for blooming cacti and as I drive I notice a few on side of Frank Lloyd Wright road just a few miles before it ends.

I stopped my car in one of the first exits, and got ready to fly.

Quick pre-flight check:

  • RC On: Check
  • GPS ON: Check
  • IOC Off: Check
  • GoPro On: Check
  • GoPro Recording: Check
  • Battery plugged: Check
  • 6-tone sound effect: Check
  • Gimbal stabilized: Check …. Uncheck…. FAIL!

I scratch my head, why is my camera pointing to the floor? oh… maybe the tilt control is down…

  • Tilt Control up: Check
  • Gimbal Stabilized: FAIL!

$H1T! what do I do? Like any good software engineer, I look for the quickest way to: “restart”… Now I understand why they have this little plug between the gimbal and the quad, so I can reset it by quickly unplugging and plugging it back in.

I unplug, count to 5 (like in any troubleshooting guide) and plug it back in.

A second later the gimbal does its initialization and the camera is …. stable… well sort of…. but stable enough for me to fly it…. I know that something is wrong but I don’t know what yet…

I run a quick pre-flight-check again, all seems good, except for the crooked camera, but hey, these flowers will not wait for ever….

I take off, flying over FLW trying to get to the cacti on the other side of the road, having the worst angle to do any decent guessing on the actual position of the camera relative to the one cacti that is blooming, but hey, I’m thinking of all the poor people who are actually hiking in this weather, and I’m immediately appreciative of the easy hobby I chose.

The entire flight the drone is “fighting” my attempts to control it, although the wind is very light, and it reminds me of the times when my children were 3 yrs old and I was trying to convince them that it is time to go back home from the park, while they keep running through my fingers and returning to the swings…

Without any other option I force the drone to land next to me, and we are off. I could swear that the flight time was shorter than usual but I’m not sure. I get to the drone, picking it up from one of its arms, turn the GoPro off, and I realized an overwhelming sharp burn in my arm. I almost dropped my baby before I realized my arm touched one of the motors. It took me less than 1 second to realize what happened. The motors had their first ‘welcome to Arizona’ flight ever, and they didn’t like the heat, so they were fighting back by producing counter heat! That was HOT!

I kept looking for more cacti to shoot, found a couple of other locations and since one of them was next to a nice green area, I decided to use it to practice some flight maneuvers in that area.

I realized that shooting without watching what you shoot, brings us back to the old film days where you had to wait for your film to be developed before you could watch it. So, when I got back home and went through the ‘digital development process’ (copying the files to my computer) I could finally review my footage.

The good news, no “burnt-film on my memory card”, but the bad news were that there was a reason to my bird’s madness. It seems that my gimbal over-rotated and got its wires tangled which caused its motors to over-fight gravity.

gimbal-tangled-wires

This explains it all… The Gimbal’s brain was trying endlessly to adjust the camera, but the motors got blocked by the wires and therefore the camera kept rattling and the footage came out fuzzy and jumpy.

I managed to get only a few seconds of stable video… nothing close to what I wanted… but here you go…

Luckily I had about one more week before it is too late to find the blooming cacti… maybe next week would be more successful?

 

Continue to part 2

 

Aerial Photography, Drone Flying Tips, flying, Technical

9. Brave over water

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Previously: the boulders of north-north Scottsdale

After a very busy week, where I couldn’t find the time to take my drone to breath some air, I finally was able to find some time this nice Saturday to enjoy a fun shot.

Realizing that covering too many spots in a single fly is not my thing, I’ve decided to return to my usual style of longer shots in fewer places.

As usual I got into my car before I even know where I’m heading.

I had some time to think about it as I headed for my monthly haircut at my favorite European Barbershop. I was excited as I parked my car sneaking a pick into the shop as I saw no line. By the time I got to the door, a quicker dude beat me to it, so I had even more time to think.

I kept reading about the external battery mounts to see if I can extend the flying time. All of my reading convinced me that the extra weight will not give me much more flying time per run, will overheat my motors and will increase my chances of crashing my drone…

I decided to give up on this for now. Maybe I should just get more batteries so I have more than 3 rotations.

I also noticed that flying time is almost identical with the 2200 mAh and the 2700 mAh batteries I have, while theoriginal  2200 mAh are better fitted into the battery housing… so probably I should stick to the original battery packs when I decided to buy additional juice power.

With my new haircut, I was ready to hit the road but with all the reading and the NBA playoff tip-off in front of me at the barbershop, I did not make up my mind yet .

As I backed out of my parking lot, my mind was set… the Margruite Lake in Scottsdale, not far from the crossing of Via de Ventura and Hayden road, and no, I didn’t know this is how it is called until I started writing this post, so don’t worry if you didn’t know the name.

This is also where my favorite coffee shop is, Altitude Coffee Lab, where I buy my coffee beans to make my favorite drink before I leave home every morning.

Since I started shooting video with the drone, I realized that every time I’m driving my car, I’m constantly in “recce” mode, trying to figure out if I want to film here and how will this shot will look from my flying camera.

This lake was on my mental list for quite some time now. It is located on the nice greenbelt,  11 miles of continuous biking pathway starting at Shea & 101 hwy all the way down to Tempe lake, and has some nice visual features.

This specific point on the path has a very nice view, a water fountain and a wide lake. In addition it has a lot of activity which I wanted to capture in my video, such as bikers, joggers and sometime even some in-lake activity…

As with any busy spot, people were drawn to my drone like flies to a purple light. The moment I placed it on the ground to run through my  pre-flight checks and plugging the batteries, people gathered around starting to ask questions.

I was mostly concerned with all the dogs around, after my bad experience in my 2nd flight at the McDowell mountain area…

My mental shot plan was, to break my 21 minutes of shots into three styles:

One would be along the bike path with some slides away to the sides or vertically. The other would be over the water and around the water fountain and the 3rd would be a high altitude set of shots to capture the beauty of the entire lake.

With the excitement of the people around me, and with all the Q&A sessions I ran through, I didn’t get to capture all that I wanted, but I did have a few breakthroughs today.

I was able to perform much more complicated flight maneuvers while staying under 5 feet from the ground, and I was able to control the camera’s tilt in a smoother way than usual (I learned how to hold the tilt control at the back of my RC more firmly and slide it slowly while keeping the grip of it as strong as I could).

The attention of the people was amazing, they were all waving at the camera, even the dogs didn’t freak out, which is good because I didn’t want to see anyone being dragged into the lake by their dog because of me…

As always I was looking for extending my trust in myself and my flying skills. I decided to fly the drone relatively low over the water, close to the fountain, and also try to cover the entire lake distance.

This is one of these moments where you have to train your brain to stop thinking on the “what if” and trust that the drone will come back to you in one piece, although every time you read the stories of experienced drone owners, they have their fair share of stories of drones that decide to go on their own, crashing into water and other kinds of drone-takes-control-of-its-own-destiny situations, occasionally  ending up with a lost or damaged-beyond-repair equipment…

The thing that works for me in these situations is to forget how much it cost me to build this flying toy, and to get in-the-zone and focus on enjoying the act of flying and doing my best guessing what does my drone see, vs what I think it captures and how to avoid basic mistakes of running into trees or buildings…

As always, my eyes were deceiving me and fooling my judgment. I was attempting to do a full lake flight and shoot it from its north side, but was barely two thirds of the way over the lake before I turned it back, thinking it is already beyond the water line. Despite this repeating mistake, it was still the farthest I have ever flown my mechanical bird, and the views ended up quite amazing.

I was mostly impressed with the beauty of the reflection of the skies and clouds over the lake as I was speeding over it.

The light wind was not too helpful, but at the same time was not enough to cause any problems except for some shakiness at times, mostly during the fast high altitude fights…

Editing this video was the hardest one so far just because of my attempt to keep the video at the 2 minutes mark, while I had good material for at least 8 minutes of video out of the 21 minutes of footage… but let these be my problems…

Enjoy the “viewdeo”

 

Drone Flying Tips, flying, Story, Technical

5. Going Pro (or in short GoPro)

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Previously: How I learned yet again that too cheap has its price…

So, I decided to go pro and buy a GoPro with a motorized gimbal so I can get the resolution I wanted and the stability I needed.

I love my Amazon mobile app… between the app and the amazing “Amazon Prime” I can review and order things in the best price through my phone and get it at my door within 24-48 hours with free shipping… I LOVE IT!

So, less than 48 hours later I got my new GoPro HERO+ Black edition, which, lucky me, is using the same SD micro card as the Vivitar (I guess there is at least one good thing about Vivitar copying the GoPro so well… actually, not so well… but you get my point…)

A day later the gimbal arrived  (it did all the way from Hong Kong!!!)

I installed it and did a quick test

Although I have both programming and electronics background, still to this day, when I plug something for the first time and it works, I’m always amazed, surprised and excited! I can’t believe how it all integrate so nicely the first time you try it…

This was no exception, but wait… there’s more…

The Phantom comes with an additional lever on the RC’s back that allows sending tilt level signal to the camera. But in order to enable it, I had to disassemble the drone, run wires through the tiny holes, plug it into the “brain” of my Phantom in order to program the tilt channel to properly control the camera so that it can be set to view forward or downwards.

Another thing I learned about myself, I’m getting so excited when I see screws especially when I need to unscrew them… I can’t explain why, but it probably explains why I ended up as an engineer, I just can’t resist unscrewing screws, just so I can screw them back in later on… I should probably see a Dr. about this… but… I won’t let any Dr. screw with my head… 😉

With the new gimbal mounted (which came with shock observers as well to reduce the jello/”moving shutter” effect), I was ready to take it on its next air-trip.

Just like a little boy I counted the hours left until the weekend starts, so I can go fly my more-expensive-by-the-day toy.

Going forward, every time I launch my drone I must forget how much money I’m throwing to the air and hope it will land in one piece…

Saturday morning finally came, and I was ready… so ready…

I quickly decided on my next location for shooting, which was the starting point of another trail in the area. I plugged the battery to the drone (it makes a load 70s video-game sound every time you do this, as if I won the last level of Pacman), and was getting ready to take-off, as a couple with a dog went by me, ready to start their morning walk.

As soon as my drone took off and hovered at about 5′ above the ground their dog freaked out and start barking like crazy! I was apologizing while pushing the throttle’s stick up to make the drone go high enough so the dog could cool down.

It didn’t help, the dog just went crazy and kept barking at my drone. They tried to calm it down for a few moments and realized their morning walk is over. They gave me one of these polite yet discussed angry looks, and went back home with their freaked-out barking dog. I felt bad, but hey, my drone has its need as well…

As always, a video worth a million words… so I give you my first GoPro + motorized gimbal flight results:

As you can tell by the fact I added some music, this time I was much happier with the results.

First, I didn’t need to apply any filters to compensate for the vibrations of the drone, or add any color corrections.

Second, the quality of the video was so high that I could actually crop and zoom the video without losing much of the quality (except for the bird’s shot where I really got into the “digital zoom” range for a short while in the editing).

In addition, I started to feel much more comfortable controlling my drone in the air, and was able to run much more complicated moves like flying through the soccer-goal while flying 2 feet off the ground, or tracking the baseball field while turning the drone and flying sideways…

I came home, reviewed the footage and felt the need to have another run. I decided to practice my maneuvering skills and did two more flights.

The first was an outdoor flight but back in my backyard, trying to control it in a tight space… with and without GPS:

The second was an attempt to fly the drone indoors and see how well can I (not) control it:

I was so excited with the results (relatively speaking…)  but my expenses needed one additional Amazon visit … With the Gimbal, the camera was so close to the edge of the landing gear that the camera would hit the floor on each landing and even during takeoff (which explains the camera jumpy movement you see at some of my bad landings). This camera and the gimbal are too expensive to let them break on each tight landding attempt… so an extended set of landing gears was due to be purchased, with additional camera mounting spacer that will lower the camera ~ 1 inch from the drone to help capture less of the propellers in my view.

I can’t wait for next weekend when I’ll get to play with it again…

Lessons Learned

  • With or without GPS, flying in closed or narrow areas will cause your drone to go crazy, no matter how good you can control it, unless you can fly fully manual (which I’m far from ready to…)
  • ALWAYS assume that the drone is closer than where you think it is… perspective is so confusing… like this feeling that two planes are about to crash although they are so far from each other…
  • Dogs don’t like drones… Just live with it…
  • Flight time with the gimbal went down from about 10 minutes to 6.5-7 minutes
  • GoPro at 2.7k gives amazing results and allows to crop and “zoom” in editing down to 1080p without losing anything, which allows to hide the propellers
  • The original landing gear is too short for the GoPro with a motorized gimbal…