Technology which may be of interest.

[jongleur]

Originally Posted by pitlaw

As to the Lilly it may not be the One. Check out this well done review http://youtu.be/XTyGsXhkoUY

As is said in passing in this review,
there are many Youtube videos showing
damage to human flesh from spinning
rotors.

I ask, again, to the apparent vast void:
Why cannot one put rings around the
rotors so as to decrease the chances
of hurting innocent bystanders?

Hello? Anyone?

[patprice]

Originally Posted by jongleur

As is said in passing in this review,
there are many Youtube videos showing
damage to human flesh from spinning
rotors.

I ask, again, to the apparent vast void:
Why cannot one put rings around the
rotors so as to decrease the chances
of hurting innocent bystanders?

Hello? Anyone?

Maybe a Kort nozzle. Used on boats to improve performance though I have never seen one on a yacht. Google Kort nozzle for more....

[jongleur]

Why isn't something like these mandatory?

https://www.google.com/search?q=dron...C1BnYQ_AUIBygC

Seems to me a much more important
issue than the invasion of privacy thing.

... but not mutually exclusive.

[wcapital]

The first time my peace and quiet is disturbed by one of those things buzzing around my masthead I may decide to re-think my decision not to carry firearms on board!

[leftbrainstuff]

Originally Posted by tomfl

Understand your attraction to the concept of the Lilly. Suggest you do a google search on Lilly delay, also on crowdsource and success. Most crowdsourced products fail.

As for FAA registration keep in mind that that is only for the US. Also keep in mind that the FAA will not likely be around any reefs your boat is close to.

Here is a link to the multirotor platform I use. Not cheap but also not vapor ware like the Lily is.

Another option is a ROV instead of a flying platform. Here is a crowd sourced one I bought into. If you spend any time checking out the folks behind the Trident they have a real history of producing ROVs that work.

OpenROV | Underwater Exploration Robots

Not saying there are not other options, just that these two are the best bang for the buck I could find. If anyone has better options they can post I will switch in a New York minute.

Looks like 2016 might be the year of the possibly useful autonomous drone.

The lily could be useful for cruisers but it doesnt appear to have the robustness necessary.

Piloted drones aren't much use as a marine navigation aid.

The open source ROV got me interested. Until I read the line about being remote controll3d over the internet.



Sent from my SM-N900T using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[tomfl]

Originally Posted by leftbrainstuff

Looks like 2016 might be the year of the possibly useful autonomous drone.

The lily could be useful for cruisers but it doesnt appear to have the robustness necessary.

Piloted drones aren't much use as a marine navigation aid.

The open source ROV got me interested. Until I read the line about being remote controll3d over the internet.



Sent from my SM-N900T using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

Think you may have not understood that "remote controlled over the internet" is an option, you can also control it from a ground station, or perhaps even better a boat station. In reality a ground, or boat, station is simply a small controller with a LCD screen that displays the transmitted image from the camera on the ROV and has controls that allow you to direct the ROV forward, backward, left, right, up, and down. It also has the option to record what is being transmitted from the ROV.

If you have an internet connection at the ground station it is possible to have someone else with an internet connection control the ROV. The theory is that a flunky like me goes out to a remote location like a coral reef or ship wreck, drops the ROV in the water, gets the ROV close to the subject being studied, and then a smarty pants at a university takes control of the ROV and directs it to take the pictures the smarty pants thinks are important. At any time the person at the on site controller can disconnect from the internet and assume control. Or never connect the controller to the internet in the first place.

This video is rather long but shows the screen of the controller. As you can see the controller screen not only shows what the camera sees but also has technical information like how deep the ROV is, how level the ROV is, which direction it is point, and other stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s4Ze_xKH58

[svmariane]

Originally Posted by wcapital

The first time my peace and quiet is disturbed by one of those things buzzing around my masthead I may decide to re-think my decision not to carry firearms on board!

Thus begins "The Arms Race"!

[koolekat]

How good can it be if it can only follow you. You need to be able to send it out ahead of you.

[alansmith]

A64, I had totally forgot that incident. I was at the university during that period of time and was in warp drive trying to keep up with classes and works. There is a complete hole in my music base of following popular bands like AC/DC and the like. So, it is no surprise that I never heard of this chiller.


I am not a big fan of gov't intervention either. But u know it's coming. Google has done Beta testing on package deliveries. With even 9 year olds getting peep shots of neighborhood girls half naked in their back yard pools it is no surprise that regulation has already arrived. Heh, I am sure people were peeved when they drew up the first laws of yield in traffic situations after countless people died figuring "fug them, I ain't stopping." Most of us have seen traffic laws and how they are obeyed in many foreign cities. We are pretty darn civilized IMO.

[roland stockham]

Potentially interesting but to work I thing it would have to have a specialist program. Everything on the vid showed it flying away and filming the operator, what I would want is to fly a set distance ahead of the boat and film down or ahead. The ideal would be a 'pre-program' screen where you could mark a position or course relative to the operator, upload it then the unit would fly that course. That would also make it a must have SAR tool. Imagine being able to instruct it to do a box search for a MOB or even linked to a crew wrist band/AIS device with a program to 'track and hover' would be like having a SAR dog at sea! Will definitely be looking at this for the lifeboat

[roland stockham]

Further thought - How do you program it not to hit the rigging on takeoff and landing?

[Canibul]

I got caught up in the Kickstarter sourcing for the "Pocket Drone". It was a disaster, and they sold 1200 of them. When I complained and wanted my money back, they got my complaint mixed up with the people complaining about late deliveries, and sent me a second one. I traded the second one, complete and still unopened, for the basic body, motors and wiring board for one of these: Aquacopter

I took the components out of the first Pocket Drone and used them to complete the Aquacopter, but it's sitting in a pickup truck in Texas at the moment. No room in the luggage to bring it back with us at Christmas.

Personally, I feel that drones are doomed for private use. Oh, maybe some toys that are unsuitable for open air flying might be approved but lets face it, the ability of drop a kilo of plastique into the middle of a sports area is eventually going to get someone's attention. The GPS "no-fly" restrictions are a joke to someone bent on destruction.

The Amazon plan to deliver merchandise strikes me as also doomed. People will be shooting them down and netting them and jamming them, just to see what's in the package. Plus the salvage value of the drone.

The government can't control what a criminal does with a drone by licensing honest people. Duh.

Now, ROVs I like. I was involved heavily with many, many of them from the early HydroProducts RCV225 up through my retirement ten years ago.
I worked for Chris Nicholoson ( MiniROVer, MaxiROVer, etc) in Falmouth MA for a while as a consultant. I'd LOVE to have a small ROV on the boat.

For the aerials, I do own the Quadcopter, and two smaller training drones with cameras and FPV, but I also like my kite and GoPro setup. Simple, cheap, rugged, low maintenance, no regulations, safe, and I have a 200 lb. test line to it all if it goes under. I've used a lot of kite aerials on the blog.

[tomfl]

Originally Posted by Canibul

I got caught up in the Kickstarter sourcing for the "Pocket Drone". It was a disaster, and they sold 1200 of them. When I complained and wanted my money back, they got my complaint mixed up with the people complaining about late deliveries, and sent me a second one. I traded the second one, complete and still unopened, for the basic body, motors and wiring board for one of these: Aquacopter

SNIP

Now, ROVs I like.

SNIP

The Aquacopter is very similar in form factor to the Mariner and the Splashdrone which was basically a second generation Mariner. I was not happy with my Splashdrone because the waterproof camera case was not waterproof and like many others I experienced control problems due to the battery wires interfering with signals from the controller; there were also issues with internal heat. My HexH2o is much larger inside so components are not as close to each other and there is an internal fan and cooling fans. Here is a link to the pix of a Splashdrone.

It is quite possible to set up autonomous flight with modern platforms, something many of the mapping platforms do. Here is a link to an open source effort with lots of good stuff.

Autonomous passage seems to be a reality with the OpenROV technology. What I like about both the original OpenROV and the Trident is that they are small enough to carry on my boat. What I don't like about the OpenROV is it is a kit that you have to build yourself; it requires both skill and time. The Trident seems to have a smaller form factor and is affordable.

I have to disagree about the end of flying RC platforms. I do think there will be limitations on where they are allowed. I view it being similar to the CB radio craze several years ago. The FCC tried to limit and control CB radios and failed. There are too many folks with too many RC platforms and China is flooding the market with them. Not to mention there are lots of folks who can simply build them from the ground up.

The down side is that some will wind up in the hands of folks who don't know how to be responsible in flying them. But when you see a video like this one with me landing my Inspire 1 at the end it is hard to see how any government can stop these platforms from spreading.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Evr3GIjPSIo

[Canibul]

We'll see. Wait until a few hundred people get blown up, or shot, or blinded by a few UAVs. Sending the FAA $ 5 doesn't prevent any of this. i agree little toy 'drones' will likely be around, things that can't lift much more than a simple camera and can't handle wind or have much control distance. Indoor and backyard. But I suspect that five years from now the only people licensed to fly over public areas or carry payloads or have any kind of range will be news, research, Government and police. I hope I'm wrong, but the terrorists won all those battles years ago. They just haven't all been fought yet.

[tomfl]

Originally Posted by Canibul

We'll see. Wait until a few hundred people get blown up, or shot, or blinded by a few UAVs. Sending the FAA $ 5 doesn't prevent any of this.

SNIP

Problem is nothing does anything to prevent any of this. It is fairly easy to find plans for capable platforms, buy components off the internet, and build them yourself. Companies like DJI are releasing firmware updates that prevent their products from flying into a NFZ(No Fly Zones) or even be started if in a NFZ. Other companies will likely follow soon.

There have been many analyses about the effort needed to use an UAV to attack the public as opposed to use more traditional methods. It is far cheaper and easier to simply put C4 in a backpack and leave it in Grand Central Station, or some other crowded location, than to build a UAV that would carry say fifty pounds of C4 and fly it to such a location. Not to mention strapping the C4 on the body of a terrorist and having them board a subway train or walk into a crowded building. Not to mention it would be far easier to use something like a home brewed cruise missile which could carry a bigger load than a UAV.

A UAV does not provide good bang for the buck for a terrorist.