aerial photography – Riveted

Day 7 – Quadcopter Video of Pierre’s Echo Bay

Laura Domela — Sun, 24 May 2015 03:40:00 +0000

Kevin made another quadcopter video! Hope you like it, Pierre!

Flying Around Fossil Bay

Laura Domela — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 13:41:50 +0000

Kevin shot some aerial/quadcopter video of us in Fossil Bay over on Sucia Island the other day and made a short video.

The weather wasn't quite as beautiful as as it was for his previous Sucia Island quadcopter video, but this is a different view of the bay on a gray day and gives a good overall feel for where we were moored in the bay (and Ev Henry Point there on the right of this frame, where we hiked the other day):

Birth of a New Drone

Kevin Morris — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 13:00:31 +0000

(Posted by Kevin)

My last drone was lost at sea in March. Apparently we didn’t do a blog post about it at the time, which is a mystery because it was exactly the kind of event we’d normally blog about. We were on the Oregon coast, and I’d been flying the drone over the beach and along the rocky shoreline all day. The GoPro HD camera was capturing the best-quality video I’d ever gotten from a drone – smooth, sharp, no vibration – and the gimbal was keeping the camera nicely level. I had spent a few weeks building and tuning it to get those excellent results. In First Person View (FPV) mode – it could go more than two miles away – with its long range control and video radio links.

On about the fifth flight of the day, I invited Laura out to watch on the “guest” video goggles. It’s like taking a ride on the drone. I was flying it along the beach, and cut out over the water for a bit – the drone was about 1800 feet away from us when the video suddenly went to static – with no warning. We tried various rescue techniques (just in case it was still out there hovering) including activating the “return to home” feature. We waited a few minutes… there was no sign of it “returning to home”.

We reviewed the video link recording (the lower-quality flight video, not the stabilized HD video), and stepped one frame at a time through the last few frames before we lost contact. Studying the telemetry, we figured out what (most likely) happened. One of the connectors where the battery power comes into the drone had apparently come loose and the whole thing fell out of the sky and into the Pacific Ocean. We hiked along the beach at the spot closest to where it went down. There was no sign of it – and the current/waves were pretty extreme out there where it must have gone down.

Here’s the downlink video of the fatal, final flight:

I ordered all the parts to build a new one that week.

Now, five months later, all the parts have arrived and the new drone construction has begun. This one has numerous upgrades over the lost one – including a much more robust connection where the last one probably failed. Here are some photos of the construction process:

Almost ready to bolt the top on:

The new drone – a TBS Discovery Pro FPV Quadcopter – is now complete and has survived the first 16 test flights.

It has almost three hours of flight time logged, and seems to be even more stable than the last/lost one.

We plan to use this one to do more aerial videos and stills of our travels, and probably more fun projects like our “Chasing Ships” series:

New Drone!!

Laura Domela — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 21:17:01 +0000

Kevin finally got all of the parts from Team Black Sheep to build his new Discovery Pro FPV Gimbal Quadcopter. He hasn't flown since The Incident, (I can't believe Kevin didn't do a post about The Incident on Riveted, but this'll give you some background if you want, plus more technical stuff than you probably need…) and I was happy to see the box from Hong Kong arrive on the porch a few days ago. He's busy building now and it should't be long 'til he's got a new flying photo machine in the air again!

This is our kitchen table right now. (He probably doesn't need that salad bowl right there in his work space now, does he?)

Chasing Ships in the Columbia River with the Hexacopter

Laura Domela — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:44:56 +0000

Here are three of Kevin's "Chasing Ships" videos from out at Skamokawa, WA:

This is where he takes off from our campsite with the hexacopter and a Sony 5n camera and then heads out over the middle of the Columbia River and the hexacopter becomes a teeny tiny little dot (a dot that would be over $2K to replace at this point, were it to fall into the river). He's getting some gorgeous footage of these HUGE ships. He's flying through a video feed on the hexacopter that transmits into a pair of FPV googles (FPV, for first person view), while I play the role of the "spotter" trying to keep track of the little bugger as he gets further and further away. (Basically all this means is that I stand there saying "You're getting really faaaaarrrrr. You're just a tiny dot now. I can barely see you. You're gaining/losing altitude." Super helpful stuff, really.)

If you like these, his YouTube channel is here if you wanna check out more of his stuff.

The tiny dot that isn’t a bird? That’s Kevin’s hexacopter.

Laura Domela — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:51:31 +0000

Can't wait until he's finished with this video he's making!