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Please do not feel bad for making newbie mistakes. It is normal. But avoid people and aircraft. Do whatever else if you have to, but avoid people and aircraft. Not trying to jump down your throat. I've been dumber than you. I even posted it on the internet. Making silly mistakes in front of the community and then having everyone scramble to get you to stop doing that before a bureaucrat busybody decides more legislation is necessary is kind of a right of passage. So is feeling embarrassed about it. Think of your drone as like a penis. It's ok to be proud of it and do cool tricks with it, and it's ok to have it out in private. But don't show it off in crowded areas.
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May 3, 2023 16:57
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RC Aerial Vehicles: Think of your drone as like a penis
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May 3, 2023 17:00
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thanks guys, I'll keep my drone experiences to myself from now on. oof.
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May 3, 2023 17:03
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Dont take it personally, people are trying to help you understand the safety aspects
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May 3, 2023 17:19
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Beve Stuscemi posted:You really got lucky here. You shouldnt be losing LOS around a big building like that, let alone control and video feeds. For all of the above mentioned reasons, but you cant trust RTH to do the right thing in a busy city area where it has to deal with a large building. People smack the backside of buildings when their drone decides to RTH and either cant ascend because it hit its altitude ceiling or doesnt ascend enough. Big buildings are also usually covered in antennae and towers that pose a thread to RTH-ing drones too. The thing with return to home is, out in a field somewhere you can just set it to a couple hundred feet and it will just overfly everything on the way back, but in a city you're completely relying on the (admittedly pretty great) obstacle avoidance and that it doesn't try to land in the worst possible spot. LifeSunDeath posted:thanks guys, I'll keep my drone experiences to myself from now on. oof. I wouldn't say that, but I would make mention that people from the internet seem to love reporting completely innocuous poo poo to the FAA all the time. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanrupprecht/2020/12/17/drone-pilot-received-182000-proposed-fine/?sh=25eca1e32fe0 Some guy out in Philly got slapped with a proposed, but as of yet un-issued fine of $182,000 for violations including this. Fair to mention that he was well into the FAAs education counseling at that point. Saw an interview with the guy, he seems confident that the DoJ isn't going to issue the fine, but has no assurances of that. Choice quote quote:A few places in the letter alleged multiple flights that were very close to multiple buildings and structures. Many people think Part 107 prohibits just flying over people. It also speaks to property and many people miss this point. Section 107.19(c) does not allow you to cause undue hazard with your drone to people’s property if a loss of control were to happen for any reason. Some of the flights were very close to buildings and the FAA is arguing that this was an undue hazard towards the property. nomad2020 fucked around with this message at 17:34 on May 3, 2023 |
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May 3, 2023 17:25
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LifeSunDeath posted:thanks guys, I'll keep my drone experiences to myself from now on. oof. Please keep posting and don't let this get you down. We all have made mistakes and want to help others learn without having to repeat them or inadvertently get into trouble
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May 3, 2023 17:34
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The sanctioned place I most often fly in is: - A public, city park - Often a TFR during special events (I've heard of FBI patrolling days before special events and talking to fliers) - Often has plenty of people picnicking, playing soccer, etc below flying planes & quads - Has had a flying community for decades I've never heard of issues in my >1 year flying there. Flyers are respectful and most non-fliers are pretty entertained despite occasional crashes, debris. I've only had one person bug me while flying to ask if I was recording their granddaughter playing soccer while flying a fixed wing. 
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May 3, 2023 19:16
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People really don't like drones/penises near children.
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May 3, 2023 19:22
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Many times kids have randomly come up to me and ask about what I'm flying, if they can try, etc. I let them try on the goggles and show them the FPV view. I say something like "if you study hard in school, you can make this, too." Parents have always been pretty appreciative.
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May 3, 2023 19:29
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I'm also a newbie with drones and I have a question about the "not around people" concept -- My daughter had a regatta last weekend and I flew the drone over a couple of her races. In LOS and 20M or more off the water. People around me seemed very receptive, lots of questions, had a cop ask me a bunch about it, and didn't have any issues. Is that a cringe operation, or is that accepted use? Yes, I see other teams, but it's a sport that doesn't have a lot of first-person vantage points.
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May 3, 2023 23:27
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EVERYWHERE 
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Just don't fly over people.
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May 3, 2023 23:37
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You’re very unlikely to hit anything or hurt anyone flying over a sailing event. And it’s a race, so people are expecting filming to be happening anyway. So that sounds like a great thing to use your drone for. I always ask myself: 1. If the drone crashes or falls out of the sky, is it likely to injure someone or cause serious property damage? 2. Would it be weird to take the same footage with a normal camera? If you can answer yes to either of these, don’t do it.
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May 4, 2023 01:31
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Over water is especially not bad IMO because when it hits the “ground” it sinks. That really sucks for you, but from a safety perspective it’s not bad
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May 4, 2023 02:03
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i own every Bionicle posted:You’re very unlikely to hit anything or hurt anyone flying over a sailing event. And it’s a race, so people are expecting filming to be happening anyway. So that sounds like a great thing to use your drone for. Another benchmark is that an FAA reportable accident is one that costs more than $500 to fix (not counting the drone) or causes serious injury (person went to hospital). If nothing ever happens, few people would ever care about these two, but it's more of a CYA thing from my perspective. Outside of just blatantly stupid things that people might do.
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May 4, 2023 04:33
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Related to recent chat, here's some going over FAA drone enforcement trends. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNb72vLFBYs A couple of highlights; The number of enforcement actions is increasing over time, the Northeast FAA branch is by far the most active, and most enforcement comes as a result of property damage or injury occurring. Nothing too surprising, but it is interesting to see it in black and white.
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May 5, 2023 04:58
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i own every Bionicle posted:You’re very unlikely to hit anything or hurt anyone flying over a sailing event. And it’s a race, so people are expecting filming to be happening anyway. So that sounds like a great thing to use your drone for. Good friend of mine (single lady) has a neighbourhood creep who regularly flies up and down their back alley at about 20-30', right at the fence line and just hovers with the camera towards peoples yards.
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May 7, 2023 15:27
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guidoanselmi posted:Many times kids have randomly come up to me and ask about what I'm flying, if they can try, etc. I let them try on the goggles and show them the FPV view. I say something like "if you study hard in school, you can make this, too." Parents have always been pretty appreciative.
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May 17, 2023 23:23
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I'd like to take a moment to voice my appreciation for how efficient the FAA has been with recreational drone usage, ESPECIALLY in comparison with the EU. I've got a trip to the Azores coming up, and wanted to make sure that I'm in compliance with EU drone laws. Despite having a common set of regulations across the EU, each country largely has its own method of registering drones and operators, and the Portuguese one is a loving nightmare. First, I had to take the EU open category test via the French aviation ministry because the Portuguese one simply doesn't work. Then, trying to register via their main UAS site is impossible because you're required to have a digital key to do so- something that's not available for non-EU nationals like myself. So I finally am able to register via another aviation ministry site, and was sent a PDF to sign that basically says "I'm the person who registered on this site." I first sign it with Adobe Acrobat, and then get an email back saying that signature isn't a valid electronic signature and that I should physically mail the document to Portugal. That's not really an option for me so I go down this huge rabbit hole of finding out what constitutes a valid electronic signature for the EU before finally throwing up my hands and signing it with DocuSign, which appears that they finally accepted. Now I can finally file my authorization requests for the areas in which I'd like to fly as any drone flight with a camera, even with drones under 250g like my DJI Mini 3, requires advance authorization as they're classified as an "aerial survey." I think probably at least 95% of drone footage I see from the Azores is taken without authorization and subsequently without consequence for the operator, but poo poo they sure don't make it very easy to comply. pantslesswithwolves fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Jun 16, 2023 |
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Jun 16, 2023 15:27
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Yeah the EU drone regulations are still a bit of a mess, and the laws have recently changed making things even more confusing as much of the guidance is now outdated. It is especially annoying that you need to register separately in many countries even though there's a supposedly unified legislative framework. Also some countries have some pretty weird laws - did you know it's illegal to disseminate aerial images of most parts of Sweden without explicit, per-image permission from Lantmäteriet, the Swedish geographical authority? I do think the general thrust of the EU drone regulations is reasonable enough, hopefully the signatory states will eventually make things a bit more straightforward for non-resident pilots. big scary monsters fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Jun 16, 2023 |
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Jun 16, 2023 15:48
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On the subject of regulations, Canadians have an opportunity right now to provide feedback on proposed rule changes until 2023 09 22. https://gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2023/2023-06-24/html/reg6-eng.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Umy4nqS0Q50 They still want foreign operators to get SFOCs, and now want to charge $150 to do so. This is bullshit and they need as many people reminding them of such as possible in my opinion. Also FPV pilots are still left out in the cold. Medical exam every 5 years and mandatory ground school + an exam that costs $50 per attempt. This is unsuitable for recreational FPV. If you want FPV racing to become a thing, I respectfully ask that you fill out the form and politely but firmly explain why the proposed new changes are insufficient. Thank you
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Jul 1, 2023 15:19
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I didn't watch the whole thing, but the new license and medical is for the new complex license category. Apart from the per model fee, which frankly doesn't really affect anything, there's little in it that negatively affects FPV/recreational fliers. The BVLOS/Medium RPAS rules are a huge step forward for the commercial industry, which is what this is really aimed at. It'll make the paperwork on our end much much easier.
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Jul 1, 2023 16:05
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I've been noticing drone job opportunities for wind farm inspections lately. I'm not really available to travel currently but I find it interesting to start seeing job openings with the title "UAS operator".
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Jul 1, 2023 21:26
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The new guidelines don't negatively effect FPV fliers, but they don't do anything to decriminalize stuff they made illegal in 2019. If I wanted to do something as benign as using DJI smart track to record a video of myself mowing the lawn, it would be illegal. Ditto for flying fpv with goggles.
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Jul 1, 2023 21:53
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pantslesswithwolves posted:I'd like to take a moment to voice my appreciation for how efficient the FAA has been with recreational drone usage, ESPECIALLY in comparison with the EU. I've got a trip to the Azores coming up, and wanted to make sure that I'm in compliance with EU drone laws. Despite having a common set of regulations across the EU, each country largely has its own method of registering drones and operators, and the Portuguese one is a loving nightmare. First, I had to take the EU open category test via the French aviation ministry because the Portuguese one simply doesn't work. Then, trying to register via their main UAS site is impossible because you're required to have a digital key to do so- something that's not available for non-EU nationals like myself. So I finally am able to register via another aviation ministry site, and was sent a PDF to sign that basically says "I'm the person who registered on this site." I first sign it with Adobe Acrobat, and then get an email back saying that signature isn't a valid electronic signature and that I should physically mail the document to Portugal. That's not really an option for me so I go down this huge rabbit hole of finding out what constitutes a valid electronic signature for the EU before finally throwing up my hands and signing it with DocuSign, which appears that they finally accepted. Now I can finally file my authorization requests for the areas in which I'd like to fly as any drone flight with a camera, even with drones under 250g like my DJI Mini 3, requires advance authorization as they're classified as an "aerial survey." Quoting this old post because I had similar pains of registering a drone in EU. It is indeed a shitshow, with every country having a slightly different procedure on how exactly it's done. My advice is to register in Ireland. I registered at their aviation authority website (https://iaa.mysrs.ie/auth/sign-in), filled in personal details, attached a scan of my passport, and within few hours the application is approved. There is a PDF to sign, but it doesn't require an electronic signature, a scribble with a drawing tablet is fine. After that, you need to watch the online competence training (10 minutes) and answer some multiple-choice questions. Then you need to pay a 30 EUR fee for the Proof of Online Competence training. Payment is online via credit card. After that, you can register as UAS Operator, check a few boxes, pay a 30 EUR fee, and as soon as the payment clears you're issued UAS Operator registration number, valid for 2 years. The whole procedure is quick and painless, and all the forms are in English. The potential downside is that, unlike most EU countries, you can't get a 5-year validity for operator registration, but that's a minor nitpick. The other one is that if you need a Remote Pilot license, you cannot do it in Ireland remotely, you have to appear in person. There is also the fact that you should apply for UAS Operator in the country you're having your maiden flight in, but there is no real way to verify that. Hope this helps someone.
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Jul 5, 2023 18:26
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Does anyone have links/recs for a good crash course in drone photogrammetry? I have a DJI Mini2, and would basically just like to make some 3D models of my house/maybe some random rocks etc. if I can find places which have interesting landscapes + allow drone photography.
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Jul 6, 2023 16:33
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nomad2020 posted:I've been noticing drone job opportunities for wind farm inspections lately. I'm not really available to travel currently but I find it interesting to start seeing job openings with the title "UAS operator". I've met a couple guys doing this as contractors for PG&E, doing inspections of high voltage transmission towers. They were having issues navigating the impossibly lovely, rutted out utility roads out in the backcountry. They were in rented 4wd pickups, but they should have been in Jeeps for this job. Just miles and miles and miles of poison oak and illegal grow ops, lol. Wind farms are probably way easier, though.
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Jul 6, 2023 18:49
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I just saw an article about the new FAA rule that's going to ground a lot of drones for noncompliance in September. There's an article about it at DroneDJ, (no affiliate link on my part), about a $40USD module that should make civilian drones compliant. meatpimp posted:I'm also a newbie with drones and I have a question about the "not around people" concept -- LifeSunDeath posted:thanks guys, I'll keep my drone experiences to myself from now on. oof. A couple of years ago, I was doing a test flight with my Mavic Pro at a near-vacant beach before flying it up to get a video of a rocket launch as it came over the horizon. The launch was scrubbed, but I was just playing around and flying over the water and empty beach. I ended up meeting a group of people, chatting with them, and filming a wedding proposal while hiding behind a sand dune, then let it hover as I walked back to the picnic table I had taken off from. I walked back to the table and as I flew it back from over the water and sand at about 7 or 8 feet above the ground, I have no idea what happened but I lost signal over an open area when it was less than 40 feet away. Fortunately, it flew in the same direction it was already going although it did so at full throttle, and I had just enough time to swat it down because it was headed directly toward a residential area and it happened too fast for me to manage to catch it. My index finger looked like I had jammed it into a paper shredder and I threw everything in my bag and walked the two blocks back to my car while biting it to stop the bleeding. I rubbed it down with some hand sanitizer while trying not to bleed everywhere, and wrapped it in packing tape and fast food napkins until I could get to the pharmacy down the street and get some butterfly stitches, gauze, medical tape, and a box of bandages to put in the bag with the drone. My finger took 2 weeks to heal, I had to replace all 8 blades and spend a couple of hours with a microscope and tweezers to get the sand out of the motors, but my finger was the only casualty since I'm not a cartoon character and don't have or walk around with around a cannon that launches fishing nets at rogue drones.
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Jul 16, 2023 03:56
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GWBBQ posted:I just saw an article about the new FAA rule that's going to ground a lot of drones for noncompliance in September. There's an article about it at DroneDJ, (no affiliate link on my part), about a $40USD module that should make civilian drones compliant. A lot of dji drones will be getting a firmware retrofit. Some got their certs removed though. I know my air 2 will be non compliant for about 2 weeks as dji says air 2 firmware isn't coming until Sept 30. Which is nice because now I don't have to shell out $400 to use my $800 drone.
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Jul 17, 2023 00:44
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tildes posted:Does anyone have links/recs for a good crash course in drone photogrammetry? I have a DJI Mini2, and would basically just like to make some 3D models of my house/maybe some random rocks etc. if I can find places which have interesting landscapes + allow drone photography. Do you know about litchi? It's $40~ish but lets your mini2 do waypoints. You want to pan over an area/circle around an object and take pictures that overlap oneanother about 80% (it's not too different from taking a panorama). Litchi will automate this. I don't know about a crash course but they have forums or something. Then you need to acquire an image stitching software suite to take all your pictures and combine them into a 3D object. There's a bunch to choose from. Pix4D is popular. Opendronemap exists. I have had good success with agisoft metashape. You basically dump a bunch of images into it and then don't use your computer for 6 hours. Eventually it'll spit out a map you can save as a giant .jpg or a kml that you can actually load into google earth and it'll overlay a high resolution map with terrain altitude information on it so you can where hills and stuff are. It's really cool. You should definitely make a map in Autumn when the leaves are changing colour so you can find out where the local maple trees are. I've yet to find a way to cross-reference terrain data with maple tree location to generate an optimal path for sap lines but there's probably someone who knows how. DreadLlama fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Jul 23, 2023 20:41
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tildes posted:Does anyone have links/recs for a good crash course in drone photogrammetry? I have a DJI Mini2, and would basically just like to make some 3D models of my house/maybe some random rocks etc. if I can find places which have interesting landscapes + allow drone photography. My last post on this topic sucked. Here is a better one. Step 1: Fly your drone around. Take lots of pictures of the thing you want to model. I couldn't remember how to do waypoints so I just manually flew this. I probably took too many pictures of one area and not enough pictures of another. Good waypoint software eliminates the guesswork and you're all but guaranteed to get the data you need in as few pictures as possible. But you can compensate for bad data by getting a lot of it. Just slowly orbit around the thing you want to get pictures of and stop to take a photo every half second. I personally do recommend actually stopping to take a photo rather than doing it on the fly, as unless you have a phantom 4 you have a rolling shutter and the relative movement of the drone can introduce some distortion. At the low speeds you're likely to be flying at it probably doesn't matter much. But you know, best practices. Get pictures. Get like 241 pictures. Drain a battery taking pictures. If you're flying this manually, more data = better than.  Step 2: Open up agisoft metashape and click on the workflow button. The first option is to import pictures. Press that button and select all the photos you just took. Probably copy them off your SD card and into a folder on your hard drive.  After you do that your screen is going to look something like this. That's only if you're lucky and you have a camera drone that saves gps coordinates in the photo's exif data. If you are especially fortunate the gimbal has an IMU in it and the data about the camera's facing and orientation will also be in the photo's exif data. I am fortunate in that I have a mavic 2 pro and the gimbal and the gps and the camera all talk to each other. (I am trying to replicate that arrangement in an arducopter based drone and I'm really impressed with DJI for making it look so easy. It is not a trivial task).  Step 3 is to work your way down the list, from "align photos" to "build dense cloud" to "build mesh" yadda yadda yadda "build orthomosaic" This is a "dense cloud"  This is a mesh:  It's mostly there but a lot of the detail is missing. You need to build texture to really bring it to life. Once that's done you can read the writing on the vehicle again.  I can't tell the difference between a textured mesh, a DEM, and an orthomosaic.  But you need the orthomosaic to export.  Then it's time to export the image into something you can use in another program. The only one I'm familiar with is "google kmz" which gives you a google maps object that you can scroll around in and look at on anything you've got google earth on. It would be pretty cool if one of these options would allow you to turn this into an asset you could drop into a drone racing league simulator custom map. This object isn't particularly interesting but I can think of an area I would like to scan and race around in.
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Sep 3, 2023 01:36
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DreadLlama posted:My last post on this topic sucked. Here is a better one. Like, seems you'd be able to scan a bando and fly it with really great detail, but because nothing is actually solid you'd just pass through everything. Paper + short demo render: https://huggingface.co/papers/2308.04079 A cool location to rip: https://twitter.com/jonstephens85/status/1692610954104824090 CapnBry fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Sep 6, 2023 |
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Sep 6, 2023 22:27
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I have not tried that. That looks hella cool. Especially since I want to carry this thing: https://www.amazon.ca/Vuze-3D-360%C2%B0-Camera-Blue/dp/B06WWG7SB6?th=1 around as payload and use it to fly through an area taking photos in all directions. Problem is it weighs a whole freaking pound, so I need a big gimbal to carry it. Probably a gremsy pixy u, which is a $2200 gimbal, and another pound of weight. And then you start building the drone you need to carry around 2lb payload for any length of time, and you're looking at a serious financial investment. Like, a 15" hexacopter kind of investment. But this? This looks like a person could literally build an environment from their action cam footage on a freestyle quad. That's crazy! I'm definitely looking into this. Thank you!
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Sep 8, 2023 16:55
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Is the only way to do 3d Gaussian splatting via a million inscrutable python scripts? I really want a program where I can just point it at the data and have it work
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Sep 9, 2023 18:26
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What’s a good resource for building a drone from scratch? Like starting with a carbon frame, picking out engines, flight control, etc… is there a single place that rules or is it all fractured? I used to fly little micro helis like the blade mcpx but haven’t picked it up in a while. I still have my old Spektrum DX8 and some bits and pieces and was thinking of getting back into it or making a drone. Should I ditch my radio or is there compatibility with BnF stuff still? Is there a good storefront everyone uses or has Ali express taken over all others? I remember back in the day you could get stuff super cheap as long as you didn’t mind waiting for the slow boat from China, (pre-Ali express) but can’t remember any reputable sites or if it matters anymore. Cheap Chinese stuff really revitalized the industry back then. Anyway, Love the thread and hearing about people’s experiences. Also my bad if this is scattered… figured I’d 
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Sep 10, 2023 15:49
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There's the website https://rotorbuilds.com/ where people upload what they've built. It's not a store, just collections of lists of parts that go well enough together that the builder decided to share with the internet. It's searchable, so if you have a vague idea of what you want you can enter in some terms and it'll spit out a number of builds fitting that description: https://rotorbuilds.com/search/3%22+ultralight+LR Some builds include step by step instructions with photos and videos. Others are a little more barebones. This is a pretty good one: https://rotorbuilds.com/build/26959 But it doesn't have everything you could possibly think of. This search query sadly returns nothing: https://rotorbuilds.com/search/ardupilot+ultralight
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Sep 10, 2023 18:43
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DreadLlama posted:There's the website https://rotorbuilds.com/ where people upload what they've built. It's not a store, just collections of lists of parts that go well enough together that the builder decided to share with the internet. This is pretty awesome, thanks!
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Sep 10, 2023 19:02
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It's a pretty handy resource, yeah. I'm glad you find it useful But if you want to see awesome, check out Captain Vanover's youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9uEJCqhVo
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Sep 10, 2023 19:39
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I am so late but thank you that post was so helpful!
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Sep 10, 2023 21:43
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Does anyone make what is essentially a fixed-wing version of a DJI drone? By that I mean a plane that does the following: -real time video-feed back to your phone/tablet -gps so you can see your planes position on a map and use Return To Home if you get lost/low battery -stabilization to keep the plane within the limits of its flight envelope I miss flying fixed wing and I’d like to strap my new GoPro to one and get some video with it. I know I can build this with ardupilot, but does anyone make a turnkey setup?
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Sep 10, 2023 22:09
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You want a Parrot Disco! Sadly they are no longer manufactured and you'll have to find one on eBay.
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Sep 11, 2023 02:22
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