The Cactus Trip Diaries

As usual, when you reach one goal towards a project, another one climbs to the top of the list. Sunday’s triumph was our ability to fly the drone. Then Jonathan solved an issue with firm ware upgrades on Monday and yesterday Angie’s son Peter donated an old Nexus tablet to the cause. That left time for me to run through the check list of achieveables again and that raised some more questions:

Does the Nexus actually work?

How do you take images and movies while the drone is in flight? Seeing is believing!

What format is the output in, can my laptop use this and can I include them in my presentations next year?

And so me moved to a park near Jonathan’s home for some open space for another trial. Within seconds we saw evidence that the Nexus worked and that we could use it to operate the Drone’s camera. While holding the Drone we could take stills and movies. What about in-flight? Sure, no problem! This time, after the confidence booster of the maiden flight, I sent the drone up to a height of some 25 meter. What about moving forward and turning circles? Yep, all by trial & error rather than from the manual. On-lookers must have thought that they had walked in on young kids’ birthday festivities, the way we were jumping around and high-fiving.

The following movie clip (it uses .MOV format files, just like my Nikon DSLRs) was taken by mistake, but is quite amusing as we mess about, thinking that I had finished the previous movie. The film of what was supposed to be our day 2 demonstration film, where I fly the drone at speed across a soccer pitch, through the goal posts and then return at some altitude, was never recorded. Tricky things, those touch screen controlls!

So, sit back, be patient, and enjoy, and laugh with us when we come back with images of the Atacama Desert in flower!