Nab 2013****
- Thread starter destructomatt
- Start date
tahoelight
Member
I did get to see it at NAB. Sounds like they are still working on it, but do have high hopes for it. He is working with stepper motors which are more costly than brushless but have their advantages. Al did not have a price set yet. It will be run from their own stabilization unit so it is all in house.
R_Lefebvre
Arducopter Developer
This has been a fantastic thread guys. Thanks. Especially Stacky, that really put things in perspective. This is still a hobby for me. Luckily, I've tried to keep my spending at that level too, though I did dip into my savings a bit to build an Octo... But still it wasn't too bad. I have avoided quitting my day job thus far. 
I'm lucky in that I realized that I don't have an artistic bone in my body, so I wasn't willing to jump in with both feet and a "buy it and they will come" attitude. I also just felt prices were way too high for what you're getting from the big guys.
I still want to make a career out of this, but I've got a wider perspective. I think the movie industry is just the tip of the iceberg, though it's obviously a sexy field to work in. I'm looking towards more "industrial" applications. Outdoor inventory, mapping, building inspections, etc.... this part of the market is going to be HUGE. I think in another year or two, you'll have UAV guys operating like skilled trades. They'll have a truck, and $10,000 worth of tools. Compare industry welders. Anybody can buy a welder for $2000. But people don't want a welder. They want a weld. So they pay for the guys who can get the job done.
And I think this will apply to the more artistic side of things as well. IMO, the more RTF systems on the market, the more valuable the SKILLS will become. And that is what you need to sell. I think photography, and UAV flying are completely different skills, with little crossover. Tons of photographers are going to buy these RTF systems, and promptly crash them into a building, or the Thames, etc. That's where you guys come in, the ones with the rare ability to possess both skills, flying, and photography.
I'm lucky in that I realized that I don't have an artistic bone in my body, so I wasn't willing to jump in with both feet and a "buy it and they will come" attitude. I also just felt prices were way too high for what you're getting from the big guys.I still want to make a career out of this, but I've got a wider perspective. I think the movie industry is just the tip of the iceberg, though it's obviously a sexy field to work in. I'm looking towards more "industrial" applications. Outdoor inventory, mapping, building inspections, etc.... this part of the market is going to be HUGE. I think in another year or two, you'll have UAV guys operating like skilled trades. They'll have a truck, and $10,000 worth of tools. Compare industry welders. Anybody can buy a welder for $2000. But people don't want a welder. They want a weld. So they pay for the guys who can get the job done.
And I think this will apply to the more artistic side of things as well. IMO, the more RTF systems on the market, the more valuable the SKILLS will become. And that is what you need to sell. I think photography, and UAV flying are completely different skills, with little crossover. Tons of photographers are going to buy these RTF systems, and promptly crash them into a building, or the Thames, etc. That's where you guys come in, the ones with the rare ability to possess both skills, flying, and photography.
ChrisViperM
Active Member
This has been a fantastic thread guys. Thanks. Especially Stacky, that really put things in perspective. This is still a hobby for me. Luckily, I've tried to keep my spending at that level too, though I did dip into my savings a bit to build an Octo... But still it wasn't too bad. I have avoided quitting my day job thus far.
I still want to make a career out of this, but I've got a wider perspective. I think the movie industry is just the tip of the iceberg, though it's obviously a sexy field to work in. I'm looking towards more "industrial" applications. Outdoor inventory, mapping, building inspections, etc.... this part of the market is going to be HUGE. I think in another year or two, you'll have UAV guys operating like skilled trades. They'll have a truck, and $10,000 worth of tools. Compare industry welders. Anybody can buy a welder for $2000. But people don't want a welder. They want a weld. So they pay for the guys who can get the job done.
And I think this will apply to the more artistic side of things as well. IMO, the more RTF systems on the market, the more valuable the SKILLS will become. And that is what you need to sell. I think photography, and UAV flying are completely different skills, with little crossover. Tons of photographers are going to buy these RTF systems, and promptly crash them into a building, or the Thames, etc. That's where you guys come in, the ones with the rare ability to possess both skills, flying, and photography.
+1 ....wise words, especially about industrial applications.
Chris
The Thames thing was a planned "ditch", not a crash, BTW. Was detailed in another post. The intial operational scope/plan included this as an option if there was an in-flight issue. There was, and the pilot ditched it to avoid a dangerous situation. They were congratulated by the British CAA for effective action/reaction. It's this type of planning that will be needed to sustain this as a business.
ChrisViperM
Active Member
This is just bull-crap ....the technology is just not ready (yet) to fly savely over crowds of people !!! How would the operational scope/plan look like if there is no river nearby and the crowd would be much larger: Hit only andults and no kids ???? How would you talk to people who got hit by a 7-10 kg brick with rotating "knives" landing in their face....Sorry sir, this was not a crash...this was a planned "ditch"....but we will get you stiched up nicely. I am a Multrotor freak myself, but if I could not bet my house on the safety of my rig flying over people, I just would not do it, regardless of the money and fame I could get out of that job....and if that guy would have made a "save landing" on one of my kids, I would tie him in my garage and cut his skin off in 1 cm stripes !
Chris
R_Lefebvre
Arducopter Developer
That comment was tongue in cheek, but it does reveal my cynicism. I don't really know if it was a planned ditch, or if it was luck. But I don't immediately believe what people tell me. I've had plenty of "planned ditches" where I miraculously threaded the needle and didn't hit anything. At least, that's what I tell people.
I would be more convinced if we actually had more information about exactly WHAT went wrong. This is a massive oversight in the industry. If that was a manned plane crash, all the details would be spelled out in gory detail, so that the rest of us could learn something from it. But with UAV's, all we have is silence. I would love to know exactly what could happen to an Octo, whereby the operator feels he needs to "ditch it", but he still has enough control to actually ditch it? Most of the time they tend to be all-or-nothing events. The only thing I can think of is that the operator saw that the battery was failing rapidly and he had just enough power to get it over the water and then shut if off.
I had a really bad Octo crash a couple months ago. I dissected the situation to a quite high level, all the way to determining brown-out voltage levels of different parts of the system, and how the system operates as different chips brownout before others. And I shared that info so that everybody is aware. I'm also taking steps to fix the code so it cannot happen again.
Not many people do this, and the "authorities" are not requiring it.
For example, if it was a battery failure in flight, then what can we do to prevent that in the future?
The simple fact is that you cannot be totally certain that your equipment will NEVER fail. so the answer must be that your equipment should be such that it does not need to fly over a crowd in the first place. Legislation already exists to prevent that with full size aircraft so why should MR's be given special privileges to fly close because the poor things can only lift an ultra wide angle lens. Keep them 300 feet away min. and then the technology may catch up with the safety demand. It's no use talking about brown outs and other stuff that legislators don't understand when the dam things cant even autorotate. If you have to make an emergency autorotation landing with a SR heli. when you are 3-400 feet away, chances are that nobody will even notice. The flight rules are that same as full size helis STAY OUT OF THE DEAD MANS CURVE the lower you fly the faster you must fly. You should always have enough stored energy to land and take off again and fly at least 10 feet.
If someone really wants low level shots directly over the crowd then there are plenty of other ways to capture that shot from the ground that have stood the test of time.
Multi rotors have done one bad thing in that they have brought people with photographic experience into the hobby with a view to making it a commercial operation without them having the years of RC experience that most of us have. These people don't know what can go wrong until it happens. The ease with which one can start flying one of these is what makes it so dangerous. Looks like DJI are all set to put the final nail in the coffin.
If someone really wants low level shots directly over the crowd then there are plenty of other ways to capture that shot from the ground that have stood the test of time.
Multi rotors have done one bad thing in that they have brought people with photographic experience into the hobby with a view to making it a commercial operation without them having the years of RC experience that most of us have. These people don't know what can go wrong until it happens. The ease with which one can start flying one of these is what makes it so dangerous. Looks like DJI are all set to put the final nail in the coffin.
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R_Lefebvre
Arducopter Developer
Yeah, the DJI stuff scares me. I've gotten into an argument with a local DJI Phantom dealer. He has called me elitist because I have stated that I actually don't want our system to be *too* easy to use. I think 9 minutes from the box to the air is actually a really bad thing. There's enough Phantom flyaways as it is. Can you imagine a system that has "9 minutes from box to the air", if that system also includes complete automation and unlimited waypoints? I'd rather not think about it.
And I agree with what you're saying. Some have said this flight was "safe" because the flight plan kept the thing from flying directly over the heads of the people. I say that's BS. It would not take much of an error to send that thing over the crown.
And I agree with what you're saying. Some have said this flight was "safe" because the flight plan kept the thing from flying directly over the heads of the people. I say that's BS. It would not take much of an error to send that thing over the crown.
dazzab
Member
Where in that video was the pilot flying over a crowd? I must have missed something.
What makes you think 300ft will make people safe? A helicopter rained down on London not long ago. Aircraft hit houses from time to time. If you want to be safe we need to ban these. At the very least they probably should be classified as 'experimental' so they are heavily regulated. You'll notice that the plane RC community hasn't had this issue at all. Millions of people fly RC planes without all this fuss. Wonder why?
Another way to view this is that multi rotors have brought a lot of RC hobbyists in to photography that have no qualifications/experience in photography. As an ex pro commercial photographer I prefer that take on it.
Droider
Drone Enthusiast
Unless I have miss read this thread title it was about NAB2013 NOT the London incident. If you want to discuss the London issure please post in here http://www.multirotorforums.com/showthread.php?10764-Another-one-bites-the-dust
Dave
Dave
SMP
Member
Sorry Dave, this manages both. DJI flying Phantoms over the crowd at NAB. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yEx_ZeEZAqk
ChrisViperM
Active Member
I hate that smart-*** male *****....and his obviously drug addicted buddy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbMe5GAkq_g
But I guess apart from the "news" about Phantoms and MoVIs there was not too many highlights on the NAB....what I was really hoping was some sort of development in the HD-Video down-link department....might just as well have missed it.
Not directly NAB related, but still interesting:
Chris
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DucktileMedia
Drone Enthusiast
who is making this heli? $100k???
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BorisS
Drone Enthusiast
No clue never seen it before. But to tell the truth for calm conditions flying thats not very inpressive and the gimbal was is just radio controlled or actually stabilized ? And wire dampening on pull strange one !
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ChrisViperM
Active Member
It's called "Black Armored Drone"....what a stupid name
View attachment 11286
http://blackarmoreddrone.com/
Chris
View attachment 11286
http://blackarmoreddrone.com/
Chris
Attachments
SMP
Member
http://blackarmoreddrone.com/store/
50K+ .... Ambitious. Now they just need LaForet to go "gamechange" it.
50K+ .... Ambitious. Now they just need LaForet to go "gamechange" it.
ChrisViperM
Active Member
The main trouble I see with that design is the 2x ESC's enclosed inside each arm.....no way the heat from the ESC's can go away.
I like one of the comments on the diydrones.com site:
" And no, $49,000.00 is without the RED. Although the movie industry always had more money than sense. "
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/12-rotor-with-the-red-epic-camera
Chris
I like one of the comments on the diydrones.com site:
" And no, $49,000.00 is without the RED. Although the movie industry always had more money than sense. "
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/12-rotor-with-the-red-epic-camera
Chris