
Drone Flies Into an Active Volcano [video] - dronehire
http://www.dronehire.org/blog/drone-flies-into-an-active-volcano
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nlh
This is supremely cool.

Tangential stupid question:

Obviously there's been a ton of buzz lately (and innovation) in the drone
space.

What's the big technological driver that's allowed / caused this to happen? I
don't know the details of the internals but it seems that the tech has been
around for a while (radio controlled planes, servos, helicopters, smallish
cameras, etc.).

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lmm
The multi-rotor drones are basically uncontrollable without computers; you
need a reasonably powerful processor, which in turn means a fairly high-
capacity battery. I think a lot of the innovation has come from mobile phone
tech; there's now a lot more demand for small, light, high-performance
processors, batteries and cameras, and so while much of the tech is not really
new it's a lot more available to hobbyists than it was a few years ago.

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cscheid
The set of (say) 4 motors consumes _much_ more power than the on-board
computers. Brushless controllers these days handle 20 amps at around 5 volts
for a total wattage of 400W(!) . The on-board computer power doesn't even
count.

Of course, you're right that powerful computers are needed. But it's more
about miniaturization for weight purposes.

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uptown
The Phantom 2 are pretty great drones ... but they're also prone to "fly away"
where they decide to take-off on their own - ignoring your commands. There's a
bunch of videos on YouTube showing people's Phantoms flying away. Like this
one:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkQ9eB7M7iQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkQ9eB7M7iQ)

This video purports to help prevent that from happening, though it's not
guaranteed to prevent your $1000 drone from making a break for it.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bxjL7wFyb8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bxjL7wFyb8)

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mikeyouse
Watching an uncontrolled drone strafe an overpass at street level and split
power lines for a commuter train, really increases my sympathy toward those
who want to regulate these.

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fnordfnordfnord
Sure, everything has to be regulated; but how do you propose to regulate and
then how do you propose to enforce those regulations?

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mikeyouse
I'll leave the specifics to the better informed, but certified 'kill-switches'
and 'no-fly-zones' seem like obvious places to start.

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Killah911
Footage got better by turning the sound off. I wonder if editors in general
have poor taste in music or are simply trying to convey their excitement thru
dub step background music.

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sillysaurus3
Just curious, which music would you use? This happens to be important to me,
so some analysis would be appreciated.

EDIT: Assume only a visual feed was available, no audio.

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natch
I would frankly like to hear the sounds of a spewing, gushing, burning
volcano, even if it's underneath the (also very fun to listen to) sound of the
drone itself and all the wind noise. It doesn't seem like a huge leap in
intuition to realize that this would be exciting to hear even if the
environment is noisy.

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eterm
Every sound you've ever heard on a nature program is fake, that is to say it's
mixed in after from other sources.

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cooper12
>Every sound you've ever heard

That's a _really_ broad claim. DO you have a source for this statement?

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sbirchall
yeah I wouldn't say _Every_ but a very large majority most certainly are. I
used to delight in ruining people's enjoyment of nature documentaries by
pointing out that anything walking on snow is the sound of custard powder
being crunched and twisted in a rubber glove! Yeah: I'm a bastard ;)

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tunap
I like the growl that is administered to every video cat larger than a fat
tabby. IF I ever hear that sound IRL, I won't be thinking cougar or bobcat,
rather how to deter the jaguar from crushing my skull.

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sbirchall
There is a soundbite used to dub over the top of replays in Premiership
football as broadcast on terrestrial TV here in the UK. Once you notice it's
exactly the same sound every time it's something you can never not notice and
it's infuriating! There are a few whoops and screams in it that get me every
time and make me cringe.

In this vein there's an amazing line from Man on The Moon when Kaufman refuses
to let canned laughter be dubbed over his show: "That's dead people laughing!
You know all those people they recorded are dead by now, right!?"

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will_brown
Anyone notice the Google Map under the video showing the location of the
video? If anyone is interested here is a link with the video geotagged in
Google Maps:
[http://112.196.33.85/solitaire/demo/will_brown_new/show_vide...](http://112.196.33.85/solitaire/demo/will_brown_new/show_video.php?vid=140)

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duiker101
Nice footage but I didn't really like the editing.

On a side not, damn $900 and it can fly 22 minutes. That sounds very little, I
hope this things will improve soon they sound amazingly fun!

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dmd
I would have said "damn, $900, and it can fly 22 minutes!". That seems like a
hell of a lot to me, based on what was possible just a few years ago.

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Aardwolf
Amazing!

How are the images collected? Is it streaming while the drone flies, or do you
have to get the drone back "alive" to retrieve the data from it?

How do you control the drone, that is, do you get a first person view of the
drone while you control it, or do you have to go with looking at it in the
distance?

~~~
sounds
Edit: Ninja'd by dronehire. Please refer to his answer.

Educated guess here, but the article says it's a GoPro camera, so they
probably have to get the drone back alive and download the video from the
GoPro.

On the other hand, wireless HD video streaming isn't that hard to do,
especially in remote areas like volcanoes where the 2.4GHz band is pretty much
all yours. To do better out of line-of-sight it makes sense to use both a fast
2.4GHz radio and a more reliable but slower 433/900 radio and buffer the video
on the drone if the 2.4GHz radio drops.

But that isn't going to be as cheap as just strapping a GoPro on one of these
Phantoms.

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kefka
400MHz/900MHz are not "slower", it's just that the band plans only allow less
bandwidth usage. Because the 2.4GHz band is so high frequency, an individual
channel can be bigger. For 802.11B, it's 22MHz channels.

But, it's easier to make a radio using lower frequencies. In the 70 cm band
(400~MHz), you can get some ground-wave propagation. But the overall channel
size is smaller. With 2.4, its Line of Sight only.

In all honesty, the ideal setup is a low frequency (144MHz or lower) for
command and control, with a higher frequency video transmitter. No sense in
sending every bit of data down the same pipe.

Source: Me, KC9JEF

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lutusp
> 400MHz/900MHz are not "slower", it's just that the band plans only allow
> less bandwidth usage.

Yes, but bandwidth = speed, so all else equal, a wider allowed bandwidth
produces greater speed.

> In all honesty, the ideal setup is a low frequency (144MHz or lower) for
> command and control ...

Maybe in a perfect world without anyone else competing for the frequencies.
But even without competing uses, higher frequencies have reduced noise
problems -- as you go up in frequency, thermal noise declines, so smaller
transmitter powers become acceptable (or the same power produces more reliable
communications).

But then there's the line-of sight problem, which gets worse at higher
frequencies.

Note about radio control that, over decades of time, the command & control
frequencies have been going up. There's a good reason -- the original 27 MHz
scheme was unworkable for multiple reasons, but one of them was limited
bandwidth.

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kefka
> Yes, but bandwidth = speed, so all else equal, a wider allowed bandwidth
> produces greater speed.

That's not quite true. It's Bandwidth + encoding = speed . And there's tons of
digital encoding schemes: ASK APSK CPM FSK MFSK MSK OOK PPM PSK QAM SC-FDE TCM
for starters. And those would allow you to pick up and decode using any old
computer running a HDTV usb capture card that can go into raw mode.

> Maybe in a perfect world without anyone else competing for the frequencies.

Nobody would bat an eye if I was to start doing UAV control over 145.50-145.80
with a 20KHz bandwidth . I'd just hop on the local repeater and announce that
is what I was doing, and have a radio listening in priority mode to it. If I
heard of any anomalies, I'd shut it down and investigate what's going on.

And I have no LoS issues and 2M usually has a nice noise floor. Obviously that
doesn't quite apply at night, but just stay vigilant in not harming others.

> Note about radio control that, over decades of time, the command & control
> frequencies have been going up. There's a good reason -- the original 27 MHz
> scheme was unworkable for multiple reasons, but one of them was limited
> bandwidth.

Tubes and early silicon made access to the lower frequencies tenable. Of
course the lower frequencies will fill up first. So, it does make great sense,
for higher bandwidth using services, to use high frequencies. That's why I
said the video could be on the 2.4 GHz spectrum, whereas the command can be on
144MHz.

I'd also consider going lower, making AM more usable. For command frequencies,
NOT having capture* is a great deal. That's why control towers mainly use AM
and digital modes/CSMA variant.

*Capture is an FM phenomenon, where the strongest FM signal that hits a receiver is the only signal the receiver can hear. The receiver is literally captured to that station. AM does not have that, and what you hear is the jumble of every station in range. Just tune at night on AM and you can hear this.

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clarry
I guess there's supposed to be a video there. Can I have a link to it?

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prewett
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-shWVW1UBc&list=UUeshk0LPlCk...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-shWVW1UBc&list=UUeshk0LPlCkUlNuAAwkbjdw)

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nsoldiac
I'm a Phantom owner and I'm skeptical about those flying time numbers. I get
15-18 minutes on the drone by itself, but if you add the weight of the gimbal
and camera (~0.5lb) the flight time goes down at least 4 mins, AND the gimbal
needs power from the drone's battery too. I've heard the Phantom's flying time
with the working gimbal is more like 6-8 mins. But if you know what kinda shot
you want, that could be more than enough, just get lots of extra batteries
(and those have dipped in price, you can grab one for $12).

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digz
I get muuuuuch more than 6-8 minutes with my phantom 2 and gimbal. I don't
like to push it, so my longest flights are usually ~15 minutes, but I always
have at least ~30% battery remaining. In addition to providing power to the
gimbal, the phantom 2 is also giving some juice to the gopro, and to a fpv
transmitter.

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trevoragilbert
This is really cool. Though seems a bit risky to have your drone flying around
with lava shooting through the air. Any idea on how they avoided ruining their
drone?

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Stratoscope
That's simple: none of the chunks of red hot molten lava flying all around the
drone actually hit it.

If you want a technical term, I think it's called "sample bias".

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tvirelli
Was I the only one hoping to see lava hit the drone and take it down?

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TheLoneWolfling
Losing a drone is a lot better than losing your life.

Teleimmersion gear + a drone like this = ?

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bstew
Probably pushing around $2k if they got an aftermarket transmitter and FPV
gear. You can get the whole setup to do this for about $1200 with everything
you need but I assume they probably used some pricy extras.

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afhsfsfdsss88
From a hacker's perspective, this is very want.

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MiguelHudnandez
Make magazine's latest issue is apt:
[http://makezine.com/volume/make-37/](http://makezine.com/volume/make-37/)

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NKCSS
Very cool :)

