Solid state Batteries, The future of Transport...

As a avid user of Lithium batteries, I have seen the progression of much storage devices begin to gather a lot of traction... Since the early eighties John B. Goodenough had been working on lithium

Rechargeable batteries... Although Sony had scaled the production for commercialization... John B Goodenough has been credited for the original idea... Winning a Japanese prize in 2001 for his discoveries of the materials critical to the development of lightweight rechargeable batteries.


Since the growing trend of electric vehicles in the 1800s... The use of old technology of lead acid batteries left the electric car trend behind when ironically a electric motor replace the hand crack of a old petrol car... The use of petrol and diesel replace the electric car, simply because the technology can prove to provide longer range and fast replenishing times then the current battery technology... But a resurgence in the mid 90s documented in the film "who killed the Electric car?", as incorporated several thousands
 Lithium batteries, whose original used was from computer laptops... When inventor of the cars modern drive controller Alan Cocconi first prototyped the electric car... In amongst the political and possible future of GMs first electric car... A Silicon Valley company called "Tesla", Spearheaded a continued trend to create the first successful modern electric Car company... A business move, much to the regret of GM and other car manufacturers has turns the car industry upside down...
As well as electric cars here has been a diverse array of alternative vehicles that has surface in the markets... Other start up companies has been exploring, Electric planes, electric bikes, Drones, Electric boats and Hover cycles...
With only one main drawback, these vehicles has yet to be scaled up to commercial success... Currently modern lithium battery has progressed slowly due to the nature of chemistry, is a polar opposite to silicone chip development...
Modern Lithium batteries also have a inherent flaw of its liquid electrolyte being the only system that has worked for storing electrical charge... This required the ions in the battery to flow and intercalation within the batteries liquid electrolyte and electrodes... This mixing of ions and liquid electrolyte and battery electrodes causes dendrites or possible electrical shorts as well as puffy battery packs with a narrow range of temperature tolerances... In-short the batteries liquid electrolyte is its biggest flaw in its fundamental design...
Currently after much research in lithium chemistry and other battery designs... as well as the formulation of a new test rig to research into battery degradation... Solid state batteries has become the buzz word for next big thing in power storage technology...

Again John B. Goodenough along with colleague Maria Helena Braga, has developed a glass electrolyte that replaces the liquid gel that fills in between the positive and negative electrodes... The theory is that glass is a dielectric material that can hold a electrostatic charge for the positive and negative electrodes... The battery with its capacitor-like properties should hold greater mount of energy and removes the possibility of dendrites and electrical shorts, with the added bonus of increased charge cycles...

Currently other car manufactures such as Fisker and BMW and Volt-wagon have predicted a possible solid state battery future with-in 2025... While the future is bright in the electric car world its hard to say what the future hold for drones utilizing this technology... As the current system for drones is to use lithium polymer batteries, whose flaws are greatly ignored to solve a problem of limited weigh and power density issues for a prolonged flight...

 As well as safety issues, as many flight operators may disallow lithium batteries over a 150w/hr due to its explosive nature in its chemistry... Removing the inherent danger of a lithium battery would allow transporting drones for people on holiday as hassle free experience...  Dji has not come with a official policy to use such technology... But due to its innovation and its aggressive nature to maintain market share, its likely that DJI would incorporate solid state batteries to remain at the top... The advantages alone would bring about incredible flight times of at least double the current specs of today drones... and with such a platform,  it could bring about a change on how we film and capture our selves in the future...

To stream or not to stream, That is the question...

Can you imagine that you cam perform to a small crowd, talking about what you love or of course showcasing your moves or local hometown... The thing is that when you fly it brings a new dimension of excitement to things... In this world of high tech video streaming to your phone you can imagine that with the power of the internet you can see you can gather up a bunch of spectators with in a few seconds...

 While staying on you might even see these curious people are from all walks of life and watching from different parts of the world... The internet has he ability to make one spectator become a lot more... Its you ever go on social media and click on the live videos you might see quite a few live streams gather up a lot of viewers just because its live and someone is broadcasting... The next thing is to keeping the spectators interested enough to watch more of your broadcast... This can be difficult, if you are shy and just wanna do a boring fly video with not sound or audio...

I personally engage with the viewers and hope I get enough questions to keep the ball rolling... Sometimes its a laugh when I can have a conversation with someone but generally its the old question of what drone is that how far does it fly, how much does it cost, even online stream to a few people you cant escape those noob questions... But generally you should act with some enthusiasm on the noobs and  allow them to follow on the conversations, at the very least to be a ambassador to the drone world...
When starting to broadcast its often a good idea to check your stream or internet link and use on your phone or tablet a app to check the data flow... In a typical 4G network you can see that the video can stream 720p or even 1080p depending on the network or how close is your nearest cell tower... An app would check the upstream and down stream and will generally tell you how good of a quality a link is...
The next thing is to check your phone... I generally dont get much problems with a IOS devise when it comes with broadcasting live...  However with an Android system its more or less difficult to figure out the trouble spot on why the camera view or the broadcast quality is at a poor standard even when the drone is at close quarters...

My crystalsky monitor has stream capability but until recently has very poor live stream quality... I did have a few third party apps I was using at the time but decided later I didn't need to... Having a vague theory that the processor is is being taxed every time I use it, I discovered under the settings and "apps" There is a indicator that shows how much ram the crystalsky is using at the current time... On further investigation there was a lot of unknown apps that seems to be listed that wasn't part of the software function of the DJI go4 app or the crystalskys core system...

Disabling the unknown quantity in the android OS has returned my Crystalsky  ta reasonable machine... I could only guess that this was part of the reason why DJI didn't allow third party application on their tablet because the processor would easily get bogged down... For any other android user its the same whether you use a Samsung phone or similar... The phone will display pixelation or lag... despite the low Radio Frequency interference...
This again is because the is a processor bottleneck that the phone is experiencing... Android has a tendency to pick out background processing that off hand cant be turned off... Only if you go on you-tube and tell the phone in its settings to reduce background processing... you might have a reduced the stress of the phones processor and the DJI can possibly function reasonably well... As digital video feeds require a lot of processing power for digital error correction as well as aircraft control and telemetry readout...

Of course the android phone still has no real proper editing facility to disable apps to other then what it has in the settings option... So a delicate balance of good digital signal and a decent phone with direct processing should be the main thing... This might mean if you are doing long range flying beyond 500m or in a urban environment with lot of wifi signal interference...You should invest in a modified antenna that will help filter and booster the signal... Itelite or 4 hawks or Titan antennas would help a lot...
Broadcasting itself is a simple matter of going on the 3 dots page and scrolling down to the live streaming settings and choosing a platform broadcast from... The Facebook is very simple and you only need to add a title or description to setup and perform... Weibo and QQ zone, are similar but from a Chinese social network...
While you-tube has the flexibility to live steam via ts own platform option or via RTMP... Using RTMP, you can obtain a stream address via your medias setting... For example you can use periscope directly using a phantom 4 or inspire 1or osmo connecting the controller in and  straight from the App... Or for a Mavic or similar modern drone... You can go into periscope setting then periscope producer and obtaining the RTMP address and the stream key called stream name sometimes... But using RTMP address has the disadvantage of relying on a second monitor to receive the viewers  comments or questions... Meaning you will be doubling your data usage to  basically have the same functionality as Facebook live...

In the end Live streaming is great fun and you definitely feel a nice community of droners or viewers in general when you stream... The down side the flight times and the data usage on your phone can cost you money to broadcast live... The best thing to do is to fine a social event or sport to have as a subject to follow, that way even if your viewer numbers are low you still get a lot from flying / live streaming the event... Even though from experience I cant say live streaming has expanded my follower numbers... Its still a thrill to showcase the local kite sporting talent down at my local beach...

Drones used in movies and television and the small divide of professional and consumer flying platforms...

To be honest I dont know much about the entertainment industry beyond the Audio aspect for recording bands in a studio situation... This is part of the drone business seems prestigious and enviable... As millions of dollars go into the equipment and the daily shooting of the performances, not to mention the composition and the effects and stunt coordination as well as the organization of the whole production and the logistics of location shots...  
Since September 2014 drones have been gathering up steam, when in the US, the FAA allowed the film industry to use drones in film production for commercial purposes... From them on 6 aerial production companies the right to use drones... Compared to the old way of filming via helicopters which can rack up the costs on fuel and equipment alone...
The drones that are required for this type work need to handle a large 8K camera...

A RED Raven or  RED weapon something similar... Having these cameras include a follow focus and a variable iris for complete control of focus and exposure... While the cheaper systems have manual or a fixed iris... The professional cameras have a Auto or P-iris (P stands for Precise), which is expensive but is important for variable light conditions such as entering a Forrest canopy... or complete 360 panning shot in bright sunlight...
As well as the complete control over the focus and exposure, the resolution needs to be larger then standard 4K so that t can be cropped to size and fit with other film clips... This might include the quality filmed in, as some people prefer to film in analog film prints and digitize at a higher quality...(usually analogue film sampled at 8K to digital format)
Lenses and their styles may vary too as zoom and prime telephoto lenses may come into play to satisfy the different shots needed for one particular scene... In the end a typical drone and camera set-up for the film industry may set you back £100,000 or lenses at £200,000 alone... (hourly rent of Helicopter and RED weapon camera @ £11,000)

As action in films need to include aerial shots to provide a idea of the local area, but more increasingly the director of Photographer or cinematographer... would ask for a drone to replace a JIB or crane or a set of equipment that covers a vehicle chase... ( likely to be a helicopter at a price of roughly £2.5 million to get the shot)... Dji Advertise their equipment to fit in the margins of small and light drones compared to the larger professional Matrice 600...
As size and cost cutting will soon allow DJI's inspire 2's, 35mm cameras to fill up the gaps of independent films and student film projects at a fraction of the price at around £10 - 15,000 recording at 6K resolution...
In my opinion the consumer market has opened up the floodgates of blogging cameras, and has allowed the you-tube plebs to carry on filming their life stories to such a degree... That constant traffic of peoples internet watch times now interferes with peoples TV watched times...

Granted successful Video bloggers improve their equipment with each success... buying at least a 4K drone camera and blogging camera, with a decent auto focus to allow a intimate relationship of presenter and their audience which reaches numbers on a global scale... 
These online stars compete with the television networks and the film industry to grab your attention...
The film industry's strength is the quality of its presentation, the script and overall production, editing and its popular stars... While the internet can provide very niche subjects of everyday folks wanting to share or get recognition for their efforts...
Television with their brand production have modest budgets compared to the film industry can still make quality programming with shows like Game of thrones or the mentalist, or myth-busters etc etc... But as a viewer its usually a delicate balance of story script and camera work that makes a show great... Drones have a place in the industry but only as a tool in the tool kit of a filmmakers repertoire... Its hard to have a show with drones that is filming all the time... even though the public have a fascination with a different perspective...
The technology of drones will no doubt get smaller and lighter and with better quality of film... As well as safety when collision avoidance and possible 360 sensors come online with tracking...

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The closest thing to that is the Skydio R1 which has 11 cameras surrounding its propellers guard rail... Its artificial intelligence together with the complex array of cameras can dodge through a leafy forest path with relative ease...Although the cost of one is over 2 grand for a follow drone... its technology with no doubt be embedded into more commercial or even professional drones for a cameraman replacement.... Who knows what the next 5 years drone technology might bring... its certainly gonna effects us all one way or another...

Augmented reality the new era to Drone racing and mimicking the real FPV drone pilots...

As one might believe... Augmented reality is the next big thing... Or is it? I find that in the past the use of such technology fell flat on its face... Its close brother Virtual reality can have mixed results... But I guess for anything to take off you need constant and ever improving content...

The interface using tracking technology such as the Wii game console for a virtual tennis was a good idea... and for a while I would try such games as it doesn't require much of a story other then hit the ball to the other side of the court... Other games like driving ones and shoot them ups have a cartoon like appearance... But beyond the older wii technology, the VR has progressed slowly, but after a few years on Sony play station has slightly better gaming system...
I played a few one in particular was a game called "Rush of blood", where you are immersed in a carnival ride armed with two guns of varying calibers to fend of zombie clowns and various ghouls design to scare you in a dark twisted Victorian fairground setting...


After that I was very well addicted to the loud scares and reality warping roller-coaster ride, for which I tolerated even though I dont like such things... But even now the variety of VR games are few and far between... Although I think its a steadily building to a possible explosion of VR culture... Since earlier this year we saw the film "Ready player one"... Its feels like the whole industry is now gearing up to VR and the technology for head displays and tracking your movements...


The technology is still expensive as the Occulus rift and gaming PC for VR would be a thousand pounds or more... While the HTC and Play-station systems at slightly at roughly half the price...
But for most folks its still is classed as luxury items for what is still classed a gimmick...
But immersive story based games and social interaction on a platform, its small wonder why the futurists are seeing that our lives can be occupied by such things...

So why mention this on a drone blog?... its literally the opposite to VR as real places are captured and photographed with no need for computer simulations... The fact that drone flying in a open space leads to the imagination of some gamer to come by and utilize this for a possible game...

One of the first popular Augmented reality GPS based game was the game Pokemon... Love it or hate it... It uses your phones advanced computer hardware to generate a virtual map with real locations tagged with wild Pokemon creatures for you to catch with a special ball, in which you throw to collect in your virtual zoo... Along with virtual arenas to fight your pets in with other people its popularity grew for a time... Although I didn't really see the point in this sort of thing... As you always need a internet connection and your phone switched on to walk down to some location to capture a cartoon creature... The positive thing it gets people walking outside for exercise but I personally see this as a fad for the millennial's or someone much younger then my self...

But then came the you-tube video hacks, whereby someone would attach their Pokemon game or rather their phone, to a drone and fly in real time to a real location... The hack is basically make your drone do all the work of traveling while the phone records GPS data in its Pokemon capturing state...
While this alone opens up the potential for a drone game... The whole idea of adding a phone your drone could be a expensive failure... Come to 2 years later and you have a Augmented Reality game that's specifically for the Drone...

Drone Prix is a virtual race track that you can place anywhere you chose to fly... You still need internet connection... presumably to login your locations and your track scores... But you set up your start point and fly around a track with your location as a backdrop in your camera view... I started with the DJI go app to set up my cameras exposure but other then screen capturing a couple of games I played the game with relative ease... I personally had done terrible because the drones flight characteristics was setup for kite surfing and my expos made me over shoot the corners too much but I found the game to be engaging and that the camera view didn't take away anything from the game... In fact the sharp corners of the race track makes me think I could improve my pilot skills if I set my expos properly and retry this game again...

The only bad thing is that you have to have your drone on and flying to make this game to work... This makes it more annoying as you cant practice with controller in hand, with the hard race tracks with a strict time restrictions... Possibly at a later date you could... But for the time being you have to charge your batteries and fly to 30% for the app to register your scores on the leader-board... And since its a global board your initial ranking will be very  very low...
Other then improving your stick work on the controller the Drone Prix game is for me a gimmick which is fun but not for me... I would prefer a shoot them up game...

But I can see this as a possible training thing for pilots who fly First person view... Not in direct comparison of the speeds and thrilling rides as the FPV drone races... But a distant relative... as the track is still on a single racing plane not like the intricate 3D gravity defying tracks of a official drone track... The race is one now for more AR games as so fare this is the first of its kind...
from humble beginnings of Pokemon to sophisticated hardware of drone and mobile phone computering with a cloud based internet server its possible that Drone AR games might grow in a few years time...

The five factors of making a drone great... ( according to me)

As I was finishing my last drone video... Its occurred to me what made this drone I was flying great...
I constantly used the mavic a drone for my blogging setup because of the convenience and portability but also the dual IMU which make the mavic pro flight controller have a redundancy should it have a compass error...
From what I can tell the drones with this advance improved flight controller have a accurate Expo control...

1) Advanced flight control system... The older drone has a higher expo value which makes the controls more sensitive which make the turns less precise or general control a bit inaccurate... For example my older inspire one only had the single IMU and because there is no redundancy for  compass error I have to land the drone early in fear I might loss it... The compass error at the time wast a simple over heating issue for which I now let the drone cool off a little when the weather is more tropical in the summer...The expos for this older flight controller is from 0.2 to 0.9 My preference for the rudder expo is 0.2 which is ok but generally speaking the orbit turns are a bit crude... As I tend not to have a constant turning arc...

The mavic pro with its more advanced IMU and flight controller has a better turning circle... because its expo range is from 0.1to 0.9 This doesn't sound much from the value... But the very small exponential control values of the rudder is what needed to make the orbit a spectacular maneuver... In stead of the inconsistent mess my old inspire pro would make... I would say the mavic pro turns are not perfect and that's why I would employ the method of holding the rudder joystick with thumb and forefinger to reduce nervous finger twitches... The difference is that the expo of 0.1  gives the Mavic pro controller about 5mm movement difference from the joystick center of the rudder to reach to the faster moving turn threshold...
The rudder control is just about right as you maneuver the drone on a manual orbit...
The inspire 1 however, has the expo at 0.2 which in my opinion is a little too sensitive and is less forgiving when you try to film it for a camera friendly orbit...

2) The video latency is the main reason why most FPV racers dont use the mavic over their brand of FPV racer... When a 50 millisecond video signal is compared to the 200 millisecond signal of the DJI go4 system... You'll start to appreciate that the delay is the redistricting factor of the digital system... But the advantage is that the video feed along with the processing power of the video error correction system, can make a signal from a possible 7km look excellent... While the analogue signal of the FPV system will constantly emit signal interference lines and snow from its constant movement in the air, with not signal correction in its output... Although DJI are starting to push the digital occusync video system to FPV droners, Its likely that most of those pilots will not use this, as its delayed function will render the drone too slow for drone racing... But it could be a middle ground for freestyle or open FPV flying...

3) Speed is one of the things that hook a drone pilot to a drone, it might be because of the handling in rough weather conditions or the fact that they just want to go fast... Some pilots would prefer a faster drone of course because the exciting thrill of ride... But generally speaking in filming with a fast drone you have the ability to create exciting footage as it moves over the landscape...  While other drone pilots like myself would chase vehicles in all weather conditions... Dji have recognize that it is a drone selling factor and began to incorporate the multiple battery system to reduce strain on the flawed lithium battery chemistry...

4) Collision avoidance... is now a factor for dji's current generation of drones... In the past when drone manufactures used ultrasonic systems, DJI found that visual avoidance systems could win the war of commercial drone dominance... The sonic system had shorter range and can be unreliable with a slower operating speed then the visual system. It won over Yuneecs typhoon series simply because DJI's system was much more reliable then the sonic counterpart... And now with the next generation of drones. DJI have begun to incorporate the visual collision avoidance system with sensors on the front... and possibly next, a all around sensor array for the possible drone to come in the future...

5) The last factor, but by no means unimportant one is the Camera itself... Considering DJI has brought Swedish camera manufacturer Hassleblad... DJI can obtain Hassleblads technology and incorporate it in their drones... Also considering that men on the moon used Hassleblad cameras and has grown with its name and reputation over the years, its no wonder that DJI would now begin to push forward their brand by partnering with a camera company... Reinventing the flying camera with the inspire 1 Pro, the next generation inspire 2 has increased its sensor size from a micro 4/thirds 20.8 megapixel spec to a X7 camera or a 35mm sensor or a 24MP sensor... Its quality is almost matching the professional cameras used in professional films like a red weapon 8K camera... Where the cost of mounting up a camera to a platform, would reach up to tens of thousands of pounds to put it in the air with a larger multirotor drone... Compared with a Inspire 2 whose cost is just over 10 thousand to get very similar results...

Dji have implemented all five factors into some of their drones... The second generation of inspire professional drone has started to become a real contender for film crews to use this type of camera over the traditional methods... But even for its lesser drones such as the mavic pro and the P4P to be able to output good quality of footage to blog decent content... Its likely that DJI will push out multiple drones of varying consumer groups to obtain the market share... Its only a matter of time when a new factor will come along and push the current leading drone out of the way... As flaws in the video transmission or battery systems, or present flying laws will challenge us pilots to move on to something else...