UAV Toolbox 2.1 - Share your flights!

CraigCam · May 11, 2017

I guess being a child of the 70s and paying attention to light and shadow outdoors all the time is paying off. I think it's what I love the most about flying and shooting. I'd love to have the thermal camera and fly at night here in summer and record all the glowing rocks and fauna from the days heat soaking and night time release.

Texy · May 11, 2017

Wow. What if you could mount two cams side by side for 3D filming and make one of them a FLIR. Talk about psychedelic!

CraigCam · May 11, 2017

I thought about that with the go pro but I did not own the proper platform. I know for those VR tours of the Seattle space needle they used a stick full of GoPros to make the VR. But imagine FPV at night though IR. I could hand someone the sky view googles and take them for a magic carpet ride.

Dr Delta · May 11, 2017

CraigCam said:
This video is long on purpose. I was trying lots of moves.

smooooooth....!

Typhoon Charlie · May 11, 2017

Can you share your summary for this flight?

CraigCam · May 11, 2017

I am trying to. I keep seeing it trying to go through Facebook? And I get a no go on recognized domain for app error.

Typhoon Charlie · May 11, 2017

Just copy and paste URL here

ArnhemAnt · May 12, 2017

CraigCam said:
This video is long on purpose. I was trying lots of moves.

Nice work Craig. I'm interested to know whether you noticed any real discrepancies with the altitude on your flights? Seems like things were timed really well. I know the altitude discrepancy is not from the app and that it is a characteristic of the H, but you seem to have 'tamed' it very well.

As for the updated UAV Toolbox app, I've been through a few flights with the updated version and I love it. I really like the way that you can put in additional info regarding batteries, etc. The work that Tuna has put into this is pretty freaking cool.

CraigCam · May 12, 2017

ArnhemAnt said:
Nice work Craig. I'm interested to know whether you noticed any real discrepancies with the altitude on your flights? Seems like things were timed really well. I know the altitude discrepancy is not from the app and that it is a characteristic of the H, but you seem to have 'tamed' it very well.

As for the updated UAV Toolbox app, I've been through a few flights with the updated version and I love it. I really like the way that you can put in additional info regarding batteries, etc. The work that Tuna has put into this is pretty freaking cool.

Yes I did experience altitude variances from run to run. The one I posted actually started the lowest of my many flights. It cuts off the tops of some of the spires more than it has before but I accepted the trade off because I got closer t the weird tops and broken off arms. I make records for a living and understand that the final performance may not be everything you want but has the enough to not ruin it with endless tweaking and lose your vision. The pursuit of the perfect route is impossible as there will be deviations every time. The overall route once intimated was always pretty close. If I ran forward and backward runs, I could see the overlap on the telemetry with the summary and see how much it stayed in the "lanes" each time.

I seriously spent weeks on this by going everyday I could to the same spot and run the CCC. I studied my footage alongside the summary by using my laptop opened to the UAV site and my iMac with the HD video. I knew this would be one run and no editing as the light and shadow were really the subjects. Once I saw some of my first moves - the original pick and plot flight - the toolbox let me get really creative. The hardest part was distinguishing between the shadows and the cacti on the low resolution map that we have to use in the field on the ST. I really needed a spotter to help me and it would have been easier. I needed someone to be with me to log video time while I call out waypoint marker changes. If I run a mission really slow, as I've run this route at a crawl where it took over nine minutes and fast where it was a minute and a half, that log would allow me to better tweak my path.
With a steady slow run, your video log would reflect the real moment your next CCC move happened which would help better understand how to best plot a camera roll or position change.
I hope today to now use the same CCC but run the camera myself but I'm already past the good light. Still it's good practice to work the gimbal with the joystick so I can better train my team operators later.

CraigCam · May 12, 2017

Typhoon Charlie said:
Can you share your summary for this flight?

UAV Toolbox - Yuneec ST-16

Graham · May 12, 2017

Tuna, depite the mission planner allowing negative altitudes, at present it's not possible to convert Missions to CCC if any altitudes are below 6m. Would it be possible to do away with this restriction as sometimes I fly below my take-off altitude on a bank or a hill. Thanks for a super app!

Typhoon Charlie · May 12, 2017

Great thanks

CraigCam · May 12, 2017

Typhoon Charlie said:
Great thanks

The LVC warnings are after I finished and did some free flying. So this summary reflects total battery usage but the telemetry and video are just the CCC.

ArnhemAnt · May 12, 2017

CraigCam said:
I hope today to now use the same CCC but run the camera myself but I'm already past the good light. Still it's good practice to work the gimbal with the joystick so I can better train my team operators later.

That's impressive that you had the camera angles set through CCC as well. I thought for sure that you were operating the camera/gimbal.
Whenever I fly CCC I always set the gimbal to Global so I can control the camera independently of the flight path.
You have obviously put in a lot of hours on this location.

CraigCam · May 14, 2017

Yes I did. I really wanted to understand what set angles would generate. I reviewed a lot of footage for sure.

Texy · May 14, 2017

It took me a while to figure out how the angle presets would work, but I eventually figured it out. I surveyed two fields and the app made it possible for every single photo to be facing North.

ArnhemAnt · May 14, 2017

I've never looked at setting the camera angle with the App. Maybe I should start looking into that..

Any tips you guys could share to give me a head start?

Graham · May 14, 2017

ArnhemAnt said:
I've never looked at setting the camera angle with the App. Maybe I should start looking into that.. Any tips you guys could share to give me a head start?

I find 18-20 degrees gives a small amount of horizon in the image, which I prefer.

Typhoon Charlie · May 14, 2017

Here is a flight consisting of 12 orbits using POI. The wind was blowing about 10 MPH. You can see how consistent the orbits are.

UAV Toolbox - Yuneec ST-16

CraigCam · May 15, 2017

Graham said:
I find 18-20 degrees gives a small amount of horizon in the image, which I prefer.

The lower you are the less degrees you have to play with. That's one of the reason I built different elevations into my test. Next time I start a new one I'm going to pay closer attention to my original waypoint set flight and those gimbal degree numbers now that I'm understanding it better.