After last nights test flights, I'm not surprised the miner's militia plans to do something...
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
OK, got some more mods done, test flights flown, and video. I'm going to start with the battery mod. The drone shipped with one battery -- and it turned out to have a bad cell even though I was able to fly it briefly before it grew so weak the drone couldn't lift off. After a couple of emails to the vendor sorting things out, a new battery is on it's way.
I was impatient to fly, so also ordered a 3-pack of batteries and charging gear. These had a standard JST connector frequently used in drones. The OEM battery used a proprietary connector to discourage swapping it out. The supplied charger seems a bit flaky, while the one that came with the extra batteries from Bloomiky works well and charges fast.
To use the extra batteries, I needed to swap in a suitable connector on the drone, so I ordered some JST connector pairs with pigtails. To do this right, a new connector also needs to be soldered to the board as a spliced pair on this connector seems chancy. Here is the new one on the left and the old one on the right.
To do this, the drone requires disassembly, here's a few pics.
Basically, you take the leads off the motors at one end by desoldering them from the board, the rotate back and lay down the one half of the drone body backwards to gain access, extract the old battery leads and install the new pigtails cut to suitable length. I found about an extra inch of lead was helpful. Here's what's under the hood.
The small box with the yellow wires running over it is the barometric sensor. More on this in a moment.
While I was in there, I found the antenna was laid down atop the board. Sometimes antenna polarity is important, but in this case I thought the omnidirectional nature of the upright whip worked best, so I drilled a hole in the top of the shell so it could stand up for maximum range.
I carefully reassembled things, but could now swap in batteries as needed. The product listing indicated that you should not do this, something about the coreless motors overheating. I don't run them fast or hard enough for it to be an issue, but would be important to monitor if you did.
One more piece of business. On the first page I illustrated the app on my iPhone 4 I thought was the correct one, since there are two choices presented in the App Store. Here's the one that you need, GX_UFO.
So with that straightened out, I'd hoped to use the phone as a FPV monitor, as designed and advertised. So far no joy. I have yet to see any wifi signal from the drone, which is generated by the small pod that holds the camera. My iPhone 5 will be out of the shop any day, so will try it next. Not too big a deal, but hope to have this symptom fixed soon.
This drone is decidedly easier to fly than the dodgy little Brookstone. I'd also gained confidence from all the practicing with its limitations. The early test flights with the Quadcopter showed lots of promise. In large part this was due to the altitude hold feature, which depends on a barometric sensor/switch. When it is useful, you're more likely to find yourself flying in less confining spaces than the layout. Or that's my excuse anyway.
Looking around, I found a review of the same control system (but not the same drone). One of the prominent comments was on how windy conditions sometimes played havoc with the sensor. It is rather sensitive, so this makes sense. After gaining confidence in my flying outside the layout room, flying over the railroad proved more difficult. I am chalking this up the confined area and the odd blasts of winds this creates by the drone flying over in such close proximity to the ground.
Crash at Cement Creek AKA MOVI0019 from Mike Lehman on Vimeo.
A pretty darn good flight will be posted in WPF, but I wanted to emphasize the difficulties with this one. I'm sure I'll improve. I really did some banging around at first, but did only some minor damage that was easy to fix. The way this drone is setup tends to minimize any damage it'll cause. But flying over the labor of love that a layout is is always going to be tricky, you have to be willing to take some risk.
One thing I found helped were the ducts I made for the fans. I left them off at first, fearing they might concentrate the downblast too readily. The drone is powerful enough to find all your loose ballast, other scenery materials, light structures, and vehices. But the ducts seem to run interference for the barometric sensor. All of the sudden I was flying better because of their moderating the disturbed air around the Drone. Not great, but better.
Perhaps as camera technology improves this will become more feasible, but a tiny camera is not going to be as good as a larger one, and a small drone doesn;t have enough lift to carry a big camera. And unless you have a hanger size layout, a drone big enough to carry a nice camera is too large to fly indoors. Catch-22. The small ones also tend to be twitchy and not always have all the cool stability stuff you cna get in larger ones - if you watch videos of people flying the small ones, usually the showoffs with great reflexes are flipping them over and zooming in and around obstacles as fast as possible. Two different friends of mine have two different types of the large outdoor ones - one guy likes to take pictures, so his is a highly stable model with all sorts of homing features so he can fly it up almost out of sight but be assured he can get it back in a known area before descending. The photos he has taken from it are breathtaking. One taken from behind his house showed an old (but still active) N&W, now NS branch line near him south of Roanoke. My other friend is all about the stunt flying. his videos are not usually from on board, but show him flying th thing upside down towards the ground at high speed and at the last second inverting and just kissing particularly tall blades of grass. His drone has two of the motors close together - picture doing a jumping jack with your feet together but arms up. That's how it can do crazy stunts, but it's also a lot harder to fly.
I only have one of the little ones, but without a camera of any sort. I can generally fly for a whole battery charge without crashing, but I still don't think I'd want to fly over my layout (if I had one at the moment). It's not too difficult to get the same effect with a smartphone and a selfy stick, unless your layout is a HUGE island. Maybe if I were more confident of my piloting skills, but even with rings around the props you cna still do some heavy damage to HO scenery and structure details.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
BMMECNYC Do the ducts interfere with the camera field of view?
Do the ducts interfere with the camera field of view?
Just to follow-up on this, no, the ducts don't seem to be an issue, even if the camera is pointed straight ahead. I've built new ducts since I've confirmed they're OK like this and will have a pick of the drone with them up a little later.
rrinker Perhaps as camera technology improves this will become more feasible, but a tiny camera is not going to be as good as a larger one, and a small drone doesn;t have enough lift to carry a big camera. And unless you have a hanger size layout, a drone big enough to carry a nice camera is too large to fly indoors. Catch-22. The small ones also tend to be twitchy and not always have all the cool stability stuff you cna get in larger ones
Randy,
Thanks for the comments. Yes, this is right at the bleeding edge of being viable. The features on bigger drones are just starting to filter down to drones more suitably sized for indoor use like this, but I suspect it's the sort of thing that will progress rapidly.
I certainly won't brag on my piloting skills, they're pretty lame, even for a twitchy old guy like me. I think this experiment is more about establishing feasibility and inspiring others to give it a try. I was/am concerned about potential damage, but despite my clumsy attempts at avoiding it, crashes have done very minimal damage. Biggest one was next to three tracks in the Durango yard, but the drone is light enough all it did was knock a truss rod lose on a Blackstone drop-bottom gon. I thought it knocked a truck off, too, but turned out that I'd lost the mounting screw somewhere and only gravity was holding things in place, so a net positive in letting me know to effect a repair. Also popped the top cable tie lose on a stiff-leg derrick at the lumber mill, but what looked like a real mess required simply putting the hook back on the pin at the top.
Yes, progress with this depends on further modernization. If this drone were half the weight, it would be even safer for most stuff in HO. And any thoughtful pilot will try to steer a crash to less populated areas, but that depends on control and most of the time that's why I'm crashing, for lack of...but I do what I can.
In the end, yeah, I could crash into something I spent hours or days on, but that's life in the real world. We usually avoid tornados, hurricanes, plane crashes, and wind storms in the layout room unless the intrude there from the 1:1 world.
The wind storm thing is, I think, the major sticking point with drones over the layout. Lose stuff will get flung. But the biggest problem is the interaction between the prop wash and the barometric sensor and its effect on holding altitude. I've got an idea or two on dampening its sensitivity, so may add that to the test program.
Ultimately, low and slow is how to take good pics, along with any stability augmentation features, so progress will come.
What I envision are smaller, more sophisticated drones that are able to follow your train in "selfie" mode, sending the image back to your DCC or other controller, but thta's down the road a little as improvements bring us smaller drones with better stability features, as well as improved cameras. I will say that the 2.0 Mp camera is a big improvement over the 0.3 Mp one on the Brookstone. While not as good as a handheld, they can be quite good if the platform is close to motionless...still a challenge for me.
Mike,
Keep going. Orville and Wilbur would have been proud of you.
Guy
Modeling CNR in the 50's
Thanks for the support, Guy. I actually lived in the Wright Bros home town, Dayton, for a coupel of years as a kid. Maybe something rubbed off?
In that vein, I may actually have come up with a solution to the serious control problems experienced when this machine is in ground effects, which seems to be causing most of the dodgy flying once analyzed.
The barometric switch is mounted at the rear of the chassis in the very back of the body. The whole thing is basically a two-part clamshell, with the main board, etc mounted in the bottom of the top half. Eight screw attach the bottom to the top. It's not airtight around the mating surfaces, but fits closely. There is some opening area where the battery compartment door slides open. Then there are four oval peneings, tow on each side, which seem to have been made specificallyas vents. A part of that is cooling the electronics, but doubt anything but the motors on outriggers are getting more than even a little warm.
What the vents also do is provide openings for the air pressure to shift in and out. They are located towards the middle of the underside. So the barometric switch is in what's basically a bucket. Anything coming in bangs down on the sensor and bounces off the interior of the enclosed end, permitting a second pulse to also cause the system to quiver far too easily.
In effect, the control system is reacting to the instantaneous inputs of air pressure, mostly caused by the ground effects bouncing off various elements in close proximity to the drone. That's why the darn thing is so jittery when it's close to anything solid or that would cause it to reverberate, as it's contantly shaken back and forth by whatever bounces back from the propwash.
What we really want the barometric sensor to do is sense difference sin air pressure caused by altitude. How to accomplist this? I came up with an elegant solution. The back part of the lower shell is curved and there's even a QC sticker there on mine to help guide you. Simply drill 5 small holes there jusr far enough inside the edge to clear the outer shell. This vents the end of the body, so that changes caused by propwash blow through more than they affect the sensor, yet the longer term pressue changes caused by changing altitude remain fully detectable.
I then flew the drone and found it's much calmer when close to both horizontal and vertical surfaces. Now things remain under control instead of tending toward the bezerk. Don't think I'll try a layout room test flight tonight, but I hope to be able to show some improvement tomorrow.
Pic of the simple vent barometric sensor vent mod.
Note the five small holes drilled around the QC sticker. That's all you need to do.
With the mod to help the barometric sensor, the quadcopter few much better, more stable. I already knew what was behind where I drilled the holes, but if you're uncertain, take a look first by opening things up enough by loosening the screws.
With better flight performance came the increasingly obvious problem of getting too close to the ceiling. This causes another issue with the barometric sensor. The strong downdraft the copter generates makes for low pressure right at the ceiling, so it tends to want to move into the low pressure. I'm not sure why, as I'd thinking the sensor would then cause the copter to seek lower altitude. I suspect the downdraft is strong enough to overcome the ability of the sensor to order a lower altitude. So I fabbed a bumper cage to keep the copter from latching onto the ceiling like a tick.
It slips into holes in the body, so is easy to remove. It does make for a somewhat top-heavy copter, but is easy enough to fly. I made mine from the plastic sleeved steel line/piping found in the Plastruct refinery kit.
But there was tragedy involved. One of the area's mysterious vehicles crashed and burned. Several witnesses were present when the flying-sauver-like object landed in the middle of Animas Forks and took out three of the old prospector's burros
It turned into a hit and run when the mysterious drone left the scene and fled.
Some calls to the Air Force suggested possible answers and this supposed dashcam video...
ThreeDroneShortsNVEExport.0003 from Mike Lehman on Vimeo.
A guy on another forum decided to do a "drone" flyover of his layout. It worked out great. What he did was to move a hand-held video camera in a "drone-like" manner, then add quad copter sound effects later.
I don't think you'll ever get a drone to do what you want. You would need to be able to control its position to within fraction of an inch, especially vertically. Even high-cost drones don't offer the sort of precision flying you need.
Mark P.
Website: http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.comVideos: https://www.youtube.com/user/mabrunton
BruntonI don't think you'll ever get a drone to do what you want. You would need to be able to control its position to within fraction of an inch, especially vertically. Even high-cost drones don't offer the sort of precision flying you need.
Hi Mark,
I'm not trying to duplicate what a good camera would do with the drone or to simulate the drone's flight so much as provide a new perspective. So I don't need precision so much as a way to simply hold and use a camera in a new way. Not sure if the last video I posted just above here is working for people or not yet, but it shows the sort of possibilities that this new technology represents.
In part, this includes a more light-hearted approach to the idea of layout photography. I try to fly with the goal of getting particular views, but now it's with the realization I can't always control what shows up once the video is downloaded. But what comes out is almost always interesting. This lack of control will definitely put some people off, because it's a hobby where being somewhat OCD is pretty rampant. I am that my way to a certain extent, but I also rather enjoy the random and often paradoxical results.
So what's coming out after many practice flights, I am getting what I expected, which is to expect the unexpected and embrace it. I do aim to improve on those results, although progress has been a little slower than hoped. Probably why they like to train young pilots and not 60-ish ones
I am not a big fan. Most RR are not built for the "drone point of view"
yougottawantaMost RR are not built for the "drone point of view"
It is a matter of perspective, so if the layout is all "letterboxed" in and stacked up, true enough, you'll have trouble flying a drone over it because of the ground effects issues I've been dealing with. You really need about 3' of overhead space to make this work right now.
In the future, I can seea new class of ultralight drones whose more limited propwash will make using them easier.
But people with an interest -- not saying anyone needs to buy a drone -- might start planning and building so that when the follow-me drone for the layout becomes a practical reality, they'll be ready to enjoy it. For starts, that would include avoiding hidden track...
But doing that is right where layout planning is nowadays. We try to avoid hidden track as much as possible -- although I'll admit my layout sure doesn't meet that standard. In any case, I'm sure that there will be people experimenting with this in different ways. Like sound, drones on the layout will be a bit wonky while the basics get figured out, but I suspect that wide adoption will eventually come, simply because they're already so cheap.
The technology to do decent imaging is certainly already here, it's a matter of repackaging and adapting it to suit our needs. Here's an interesting side by side comparison of two pics of the same subject from this week's WPF. The first was taken with my Canon digicam on a nice Sony tripod. The second was taken by the no-name camera on my $55 drone. Not a bad matchup, considering what the Canon cost me.
Canon PS XS100
The Quadcopter generic 2.0 Mp
One option with my drone is that the camera is adjustable from straight forward to straitght down, giving you some shooting option.s
The limiting ceiling keeps these from being better, but they reveal useful details. Here's part of the Durango station, icehouse and turntable (complete with propwash blown truck).
Silverton at the North Star mill
Theres a new drone coming out soon called the airselfie (meant to replace selfie sticks) Its a small drone that supposed to take pictures or video up to about 60 feet from its base. Though pricey IMHO at $295 it might have the potential because of its size for aerial layout shots. Read about it yesterday.
Joe Staten Island West
Hi Joe,
Sounds like another option to join the fun. There are several other similar models on the market already.
The Eachine E50 "Elfie" is well under $100. It appears to be a knock-off of the ~$350 Zerotech Dobby Poscket Selfie Drone. The still somewhat more expensive (~$500) Yuneec Breeze is another option, as is the Parrot BeBop..
But my ~$60 515 quadcopter can do basically the same thing with a little practice. Once you get used to flying a drone backwards as it's turned around and facing you, any drone can be a selfie drone. If it has headless mode, this makes that easy, just face it toward you when doing the start-up/calibrate sequence.
You are right that size matters. The smaller/lighter the drone, the less potential for it to cause damage, because you will crash unless you've already got lots of piloting experience.
What I wish my drone did better was hold altitude more precisely. The big issue over the layout are the ground effects caused by propwash against the layout in close proximity. I assume, but can't say for certain, that pricier drones have better altitude hold precision. Worth a test flight before purchase, if it can be arranged.