This is an image from Google Earth:
This is an image from more or less the same location taken this afternoon:
Zoomed in – note the game trails:
Since the start of this project I’ve wanted to see these images side-by-side. The thing that stands out most in my mind is the vegetation. The DIY photos were obviously taken in a different season than the Google Earth images. This illustrates what is to me one of the most interesting dynamics of the project, the dynamic of time. That is, because we have the ability to generate on-demand imagery, we can capture and analyze the element of change in a very granular way.
Jason Pittman (Geosciences Professor and co-conspirator) and I had the chance to fly the quad over the wetlands today, and had a couple of really good flights. The image above is one of the better ones – note the game trails and vegetation patterns. The next step will be to georeference this and other photos, using known reference points – roads, property lines, that little drain (below, lower left).
Minor crash yesterday into the wetlands. Only broke one landing gear, so a quick fix and back into the air. Set the GoPro on the one-photo-every-two-seconds mode – this is maybe the best of the bunch:
A little windy today, so I decided not to press my luck, and landed without incident.
When the GoPro Hero 2 cameras arrived, this little plastic mounting plate was glued to the top of the each box, presumably for display purposes?
In any case, the plate makes a really solid camera mount, albeit a shaky one. In an effort to dampen some of the vibration and steady the camera, I cut up a piece of an old Gateway mousepad and attached it between the body of the quadcopter and the re-mounted the plate.
Here’s the finished product, with the GoPro waterproof housing attached. Future flight videos and still images will hopefully be a little more stable now.
After the bad crash – the bitter outcome of this otherwise successful flight – I rebuilt the ELEV-8, and finally had the chance to fly it this afternoon. One of the props is acting a little janky, so I need to check that the ESCs are all programmed correctly, and determine whether or not that particular motor has a bent shaft, but am otherwise happy with the outcome.
One of the crucial tasks in getting the quadcopter flying is programming the ESCs, or Electronic Speed Controllers. They store a variety of parameters, not all of which I entirely understand, but all of which need to be set for each ESC. The Turnigy Programming Card pictured above makes this process easy. Simply connect the ESC to the card, load the settings, and repeat. I created this little job aid as a quick reference for the appropriate settings.
Friday’s flight ended in a tree, but in the seconds before that crash, I had the idea for the first time that I might just be able to fly this thing. I thought about it all weekend, and resolved to never again fly without the GoPro.
This morning, I strapped the camera to the bottom of the aircraft, and headed down to the loading dock behind the bookstore. I’m actually starting to get the hang of this thing, though I am still seized with a tiny bit of panic when first it jumps into the air, and sometimes when it seems to make its own decisions. Nevertheless, I was able to execute seven or eight successful – successful here being defined as flights that don’t end in repairs – takeoffs and landings. Here’s video from the best one:
To do:
Tweak the camera settings to limit the width of the angle
Come up with a better way to secure the camera to the quadcopter – as it is, I’ve zip-tied it to the bottom, but have to waste a tie each time I remove the camera.
Got a bunch of flight time in today, and I’m starting to just barely get the hang of it. Things were going well until the quad went over my head, and I got disoriented and flew it into a tree. Broke a prop, but am slowly learning how it responds in the air. Last week, I took it over to Parallax, and Nick flew it in the parking lot and gave me some pointers. Nick and Jim and Kevin have been nothing but supportive!
Burning through landing gear at a mean rate, so I decided to build up some little cushions…
