Bandwagon's Drones Thread

Water impedes signals right? Was just thinking with the revolution in fpv camera quads. Why has no one been making water proof rc subs? Little fpv camera in a dome. Ideally multiple direction props.

Strangely came about thinking about it thinking how is love a very close to camera view of things in my reef tank and be neat to drive around like a fish amongst the others.

Drone supposed to arrive today, boss is willing to give it a shot and if it works the way it should, i'll get 100% reinbursed. even have a new job for it to try on ..in boston-dorchester ave between banton and tilman st.

here is google map picture of the site-locus is...the dirt area in the middle- 18 unit apartment/condo is proposed driveway access will be from banton street: the paved opening, not the grassed one where there is no house..though that would be a good spot for a 2 family. looking at the official city layout of Banton St- there is a 8' difference in grade from the entrance of banton[email protected]/* <![CDATA[ */!function(t,e,r,n,c,a,p){try{t=document.currentScript||function(){for(t=document.getElementsByTagName('script'),e=t.length;e--if(t[e].getAttribute('data-cfhash'))return t[e]}();if(t&&(c=t.previousSibling{p=t.parentNode;if(a=c.getAttribute('data-cfemail'{for(e='',r='0x'+a.substr(0,2)|0,n=2;a.length-n;n+=2)e+='%'+('0'+('0x'+a.substr(n,2)^r).toString(16.slice(-2);p.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(decodeURIComponent(e,c)}p.removeChild(t)}}catch(u){}}()/* ]]> */ave to the end @ the mbta tunnel.

Sure i got drop box and googledrive np i can toss it to you, for control points, we have not surveyed it yet, but the original existing conditions plan(and the official city layout of the streets have offsets to the nearest 100th of a foot to the existing dwellings and elevations for the street) has the building offsets to the property lines and the MH's in the street have the rim elevations- which should be on city of boston base. it is a simple datum adjustment to get from navd88 to boston city base and vice versa.

"MassDOT appendix a2 - relationship to datum planes (ngvd29 and navd88)
city of boston -1.968m(-6.456ft) so elevation "70" boston city base is the same as 63.544 navd88.

https://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Port...appendixA2.pdf

you have to love explaining to a client that the Flood plane for your proposed 2 family is elevation "11.0" according to fema...and your house entrance is in the flood plane by 2ish feet --and they go but the grade of the driveway is 13.5.... and you have to explain the difference in datums(they never understand it)

Bandwagon_sl said:

I'm not sure I understand it, either.

Well if you give me something I can see in a coordinate system I can use, I'll put a few GCPs in there.

Click to expand...

heh difference in Datums

NAVD88 elevation ZERO (0) is 6.456' city of boston base... city of boston elevation 0' is elevation -6.456 navd88 its the same spot elevation just different "benchmark"


for example all our surveys we do right now, our very first point is..elevation 100. doesn't matter the datum, where it is, etc, it is ALWAYS 100. we do the topo based on that..then once we find the benchmark in the area we adjust our datum to match.
alot of the cities in ma require THEIR city datum for plans. thus that appendix i mention above that gives the adjustment needed.

one long term project i have for the work we do in boston is to...have it all match, we do a lot of work in south boston, eventually i want to put in ALL of southie from~ 2nd st to say broadway(maybe a bit farther south), & from a to n streets. and then put our survey date into One master plan that way when we get a job in that area, i can just toss it ON the master plan do the work needed, then block out that section so that we can get the city a plan- occasionally we get capital improvement plans from the city that shows EVERYTHING they have for underground utilities in the street- in CAD format.

Nad83 is horizontal datum. The grade plane projection setup, each state is based on one of 2 formats. Transverse Mercator and lambert.

Most states use transverse mercator. Mass uses lambert, since lambert is better for areas that are more east west than north south. Using the GPS from the drone I should be able to get the mass state plane coords to 1 decimal place (about an inch) I am charging the remote and tablet now. I have an Asus 10" tablet I didn't like hooked up for the display. Tablet was great for video not so good for reading. Tablet i use normally is a galaxy tab 2 nook that I rooted.

looking at your plots and what few i have done, if i can get the appropriate scale factor in to make it right on known distances i should be able to get a better topo than my field guys do- mostly due to spacing of shots typically a topo does- major features of sites, ledge outcrops, trees etc and where it is open ground, a shot every 20-30 feet,,, this way i can have a "shot" every foot.

i have yet to look at the telemetry of the flight plans but the gps "lock" has been pretty much within 1 foot of where i had the drone- so if i can get the lat and long to enough decimal places, i can get it to an inch or so. mostly i want this for vertical stuff.

fired the drone for the first time- extra tablet i have does NOT like either drone deploy OR pix4d capture- crashes every time i hit the mission setup button. so using my nexus 5

should i have the drone hovering when i hit start for the missions or have it on the ground ready to take off?

drone deploy looked good to start but the one time i tried it and it attempted to send the drone on a mission the drone took off angled FAST and crashed (it was on ground with props on)

pix4d capture using my nexus has been fine except for getting the mission to load- and even on my nexus, the program crashes A LOT --i have to restart my phone in order to get the crashing to stop.

i also have to do a area larger than needed in order to get the locus encompassed (about 50% larger for the smaller site i was on (lot 15000 sq.ft.- my house)

also have to contact dji, i pressed the home button and the button detached from the housing.

the good news is- i bought this thing opened box - never used- and it was all pristine still had all the wraps on etc...

and the camera had a 16gig sd card inserted in it already.

We'll see. Some of the stuff I have come up with in cad for scaling images to my boss is magic. I can take pdf's get them to 1 scale in cad to copy features, I can and do take Google map images and get them to within an inch. And that is me just using cad and known distances between buildings snd/or street width.

I did fly the drone around manually about 6 feet off ground and it was easy.

Nice.. glad it was a hit. Properly used, drones are fine to be around.

Been wanting to get into FPV racing but looking for a good kit to start out with. Any recommendations?