- When you allow the Google Chrome browser to save your passwords, it now compares your usernames and passwords against known lists of breached login data and tells you which ones were part of the breach. You used to have to do this manually. By the way, if you ARE letting Google Chrome remember your passwords, your Google login password best be strong.
- In Canada, the Chevy Spark can be had for as low as $9,998 MSRP. 5 speed manual, no air conditioning, manual windows. But it does have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
- "The stray shopping carts of eastern north america: a guide to field identification" is a real book. Current (used) asking price on Amazon: $208.15 + shipping
- Canadian e-commerce company Shopify just announced that it will permanently allow all workers to work from home now.
- The egg came first. Species that were around long before the chicken also laid eggs. End of discussion.
- CIA agents were known to pass messages to each other based upon how their shoe laces were tied.
No monthly fees, no equipment to install
Friday, May 29, 2020
Things I learned lately 29 May
J.S. Bach - Toccata & Fugue in D-minor
This is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard in my life. Toccata & Fugue in D-minor by Johann Sebastian Bach. But played on a real pipe organ.
The way he plays the pauses too so you can hear the reverb of the hall. Outstanding. When you see all the valves being opened up, you know something big is coming.
To think that this was written in the 1700's. Nobody knows for sure, but it may be as old as 1704.
Songs that are 40 years old this year (2020)
Blondie - Call Me
Pink Floyd - Another Brick in the Wall, Part II
Olivia Newton-John - Magic
Michael Jackson - Rock with You
Captain & Tennille - Do That to Me One More Time
Queen - Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Lipps Inc - Funkytown
Billy Joel - It's Still Rock and Roll to Me / You May Be Right
Bette Midler - The Rose
Rupert Holmes - Escape (The Piña Colada song)
Gary Numan - Cars
Elton John - Little Jeannie
Christopher Cross - Ride Like the Wind
Diana Ross - Upside Down
KC and the Sunshine Band - Please Don't Go
Styx - Babe
Commodores - Still
Christopher Cross - Sailing
Kenny Rogers - Coward of the County
The SOS Band - Take Your Time (Do It Right)
M - Pop Muzik
The Pretenders - Brass in Pocket
The Brothers Johnson - Stomp!
The Rolling Stones - Emotional Rescue
Herb Alpert - Rise
Little River Band - Cool Change
J.D. Souther - You're Only Lonely
Pete Townshend - Let My Love Open the Door
Eagles - I Can't Tell You Why / The Long Run / Heartache Tonight
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Don't Do Me Like That / Refugee
Irene Cara - Fame
Genesis - Misunderstanding
Linda Ronstadt - Hurt So Bad
Pat Benatar - Heartbreaker
Supertramp - Take the Long Way Home
Fleetwood Mac - Sara
Boz Scaggs - Jojo / Breakdown Dead Ahead
George Benson - Give Me the Night
Joe Walsh - All Night Long
Small things 29 May
- Still searching for gummisharks....
- What would be cool is if when they taught history, they taught historical events from several perspectives. For example, India's independence would be explained from India's, Pakistan's and England's perspective.
- A patent means that if you invent something, you own the idea. Even if you suck at bringing the idea to fruition.
- The interesting thing about Doctor Who Hallowe'en costumes, is that you are probably working with the same budget as the people who started the show in the first place.
- Why do people scratch their head when they try to remember something?
- Dumplings sound pretty good considering they have the word 'dump' in them...
Thursday, May 21, 2020
Some of my first drives did not go well
When I joined the military in 1979, I did not have my driver's license. But in the military, they train you how to drive and give you a special qualification on a piece of paper called a DND-404. It's basically a military vehicle driver's license. It lists the kind of vehicles you've been trained to operate and to start with, I was allowed to drive a staff car (black military sedan), a jeep and any truck up to (I think) one and a half ton. Before I get to the embarrassing part, let me just say that my training included a defensive driving course, whose principles have definitely saved my life a few times. One thing they didn't teach, as you will see, is off-road driving.
So here I am, still wet behind the ears in my first posting in an Army unit, and they actually trusted me with my own vehicle, a 5/4 ton 4 x 4 truck with a repair office pod mounted on the back where the cargo bed would go (such as what's pictured).
When I joined my first unit, we weren't scheduled to go on any exercises out in the boonies (military training areas in the middle of nowhere) for a long while, so the only driving experience I had was our semi-weekly road convoys that our squads would organize on Friday mornings to keep the trucks from seizing up sitting in a parking lot for weeks on end. But these road convoys were the epitome of boring. I needed to stretch my driving legs.
So one morning I decided, without permission, to take my 5/4 ton out for some off-road experience. I'm 20 years old and I have a 4 x 4! So I casually drive out of the vehicle compound. I don't even recall how I pulled that off because every time you leave the compound with a vehicle, you have to explain at the main gate to a duty guard what you're doing. I said I was headed to the POL point (military gas station) to fill the tank. It worked, because off we went. Me and my truck.
I head to the POL point, because well, if you say you're going somewhere, you should at least be able to prove that you did at least that much. Then I headed to the northeast corner of the base, down a road that leads past a garbage dump into a mostly wooded training area. The road ended and turned into a dirt track with very deep ruts where the wheels of hundreds of heavy military vehicles had been. And in very short order, I got stuck. 'High-centred' is the term. My differentials were nicely hung up onto the high points between the ruts and my wheels no longer had enough traction to go anywhere. Well done. I had barely even made it far into the training area and I was already hosed.
So, tail between my legs, I walked the kilometre or so back to my compound, leaving the truck where it was, all the while trying to figure out how I was going to get myself out of this mess. I figured I should just go straight to the guys with the recovery vehicles (military tow trucks) and get help. The fewer people involved, the better. That was the right call, because they felt sorry for me and helped me out without telling my superiors. We drove out in the recovery truck and hauled my 5/4 ton out of the ruts and he followed me back to the compound to make sure I didn't get into any more trouble. I quietly parked the truck in its reserved spot and that was the end of the adventure. I did go back out into the training area eventually, but the next time I made sure to go with other colleagues in their trucks. And I made sure to stay out of the ruts.
So here I am, still wet behind the ears in my first posting in an Army unit, and they actually trusted me with my own vehicle, a 5/4 ton 4 x 4 truck with a repair office pod mounted on the back where the cargo bed would go (such as what's pictured).
So one morning I decided, without permission, to take my 5/4 ton out for some off-road experience. I'm 20 years old and I have a 4 x 4! So I casually drive out of the vehicle compound. I don't even recall how I pulled that off because every time you leave the compound with a vehicle, you have to explain at the main gate to a duty guard what you're doing. I said I was headed to the POL point (military gas station) to fill the tank. It worked, because off we went. Me and my truck.
I head to the POL point, because well, if you say you're going somewhere, you should at least be able to prove that you did at least that much. Then I headed to the northeast corner of the base, down a road that leads past a garbage dump into a mostly wooded training area. The road ended and turned into a dirt track with very deep ruts where the wheels of hundreds of heavy military vehicles had been. And in very short order, I got stuck. 'High-centred' is the term. My differentials were nicely hung up onto the high points between the ruts and my wheels no longer had enough traction to go anywhere. Well done. I had barely even made it far into the training area and I was already hosed.
So, tail between my legs, I walked the kilometre or so back to my compound, leaving the truck where it was, all the while trying to figure out how I was going to get myself out of this mess. I figured I should just go straight to the guys with the recovery vehicles (military tow trucks) and get help. The fewer people involved, the better. That was the right call, because they felt sorry for me and helped me out without telling my superiors. We drove out in the recovery truck and hauled my 5/4 ton out of the ruts and he followed me back to the compound to make sure I didn't get into any more trouble. I quietly parked the truck in its reserved spot and that was the end of the adventure. I did go back out into the training area eventually, but the next time I made sure to go with other colleagues in their trucks. And I made sure to stay out of the ruts.
Small things 21 May
- Best urban dictionary entry of the month: Boomer holes. When you move into a house previously owned by a Boomer, and the floors have holes for cable TV wires, the wall has a phone jack for a landline, etc.
- Why Subway doesn't sell ice cream sandwiches, I'll never know.
- Where is the capital of the USA? In the offshore banks of the 1%.
- Next time you watch a movie and there's a car scene, notice if they removed the headrest or not for visibility's sake.......
- When the CDC says your city is a hot-spot, they're not talking about city-wide Wi-Fi.....
Boxhead
If you've seen any of the other videos featuring Maru, you know he has a thing for boxes (but what cat doesn't, really). Well, now Maru has found a box that he can fit his head into and wears it around like a catcher's mask.
Crazy, I tell you. My favourite part is toward the end. Not satisfied with a box on his face, well...... you'll see.
Things I learned lately 21 May
- There's a guy at work who for the fun of it, likes trolling any social media platform he's not yet banned from. It's like his hobby.
- The IKEA Duktig doll bed is meant for dolls. But people find they work great as cat beds. $24.99 at IKEA Canada.
- Elon Musk's new son is named X Æ A-12. Or X Ash A Twelve as it's pronounced.
- A 2007 report points to modest energy balance results for corn ethanol produced in the US: one unit of fossil-fuel energy is required to create 1.3 energy units from the resulting ethanol. The energy balance for sugarcane ethanol produced in Brazil is more favourable, with one unit of fossil-fuel energy required to create 8 units of energy from the ethanol.
- There are four times as many CEO psychopaths per capita than the general population.
Thursday, May 14, 2020
Coldplay photoshopped!
I've never seen Chris Martin this jubilant. In fact, as the video description puts it:
"Chris Martin cut off the opening song Cry Cry Cry, right in the middle. He asked [the choir] to take "Cry Cry Cry" one more time. When one of the singers asked if there was a problem, Martin replied, "No, I'm just in fu***** heaven right now!"
Some families know how to create
The whole family did a shot by shot remake of Journey’s Separate Ways video.
It is amazing! The commitment. I'd dare say it's better than the original.
Things I learned lately 15 May
- David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame, heard Kate Bush's earliest demos and helped her get a proper demo tape made.
- If you upload a picture or scan of a document into Google Drive, then right click it and open it with Google Docs, it will perform an OCR (Optical character recognition) routine and try to parse the text into the new Google doc. I even tried handwriting on paper and it did an OK job.
- Google can not only OCR text into one of its doc formats, but Google search can read text in any pictures you store in Google Photos and Google Drive.
- Georgia and Wisconsin have allowed many thousands of teens get their driver's license without having to do the road test to clear a backlog of pending licenses.
- Single person households in Sweden, as a percentage of total households, was over 50% in 2016. The EU average was 33%.
- AMA says if you haven't done your seasonal tire swap yet, as a perk for being a member, they can send a crew to do the wheel swap at your house. For $139.99
Contact tracing app - smoke and mirrors?
Then it completely falls apart. If you're thinking of using one, don't bother. Read this article for a great explanation why from one of the leading authorities on information security, Bruce Schneier.
Some of the comments are great too.
[Update] It has come to my attention that Google and Apple are jointly working on an app that could solve many of the problems in Schneier's article. But for now, the apps created by our local governments likely do not measure up to the same standard as the one being worked on by Google and Apple.
Small things 15 May
- You may have to wear a mask to go to a retail store soon. No, not the kind the Lone Ranger wore.....
- Now that I think about it, when people say "I'm not going to Costco until they stop their madatory mask rule." that's exactly what they want......
- Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.
- Most of you will never know what it's like to push an 8-track cassette into a car stereo....
- Things they don't teach you in driving school: How to counteract road rage.
- Things they don't teach you in driving school: Where to get long straws so you can sip coffee while driving with both hands.
Thursday, May 07, 2020
Things I learned lately 8 May
- Contrary to what I'd been led to believe, there are still international flights coming and going to and from Canada. Not many, but they're still flying. Brazil, Israel, Hong Kong, Incheon, Tokyo, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles.
- Peanut butter is a Canadian invention, patented in 1884 by Montreal pharmacist Marcellus Gilmore Edson.
- People have been living in Montreal (Ville Marie) since 1639, but the first incorporated city in Canada was Saint John New Brunswick in 1785. But people were living in St. John's Newfoundland as early as 1583.
- The US and South Korea discovered their first Corona virus case on the same day. On 2 May 2020, the US had over 29,000 new cases. South Korea had 13 new cases. Even Sweden, which never went into lock-down, had only 562 new cases. FYI, this is an observation, not a judgement or conclusion.The Pentagon has declassified and released some videos of pilots chasing what can only be described as UFOs.
- Teslas now recognize (and can react to) stop signs and traffic lights.
"Mississippi moon, won't you keep on shinin' on me?"
They got together to perform one of their classics live - in isolation. Beautiful!
I decided to buy a drone (part two)
The next step was buying the chosen drone. I had seen enough videos from Mavic Mini owners to know that this was the drone for me. The problem was that this model is so popular, stores can’t keep it in stock. I finally found a store that would commit to ordering me one and I got it in early January. I was hoping for a mild day to give it its maiden flight, and then Calgary got hit with a week-long arctic cold spell. I made the decision not to test fly the drone until the weather got milder, as the batteries don’t do well in cold and the manufacturer doesn’t recommend flying in sub-zero temperatures.
Even though I couldn’t fly right away, I still wanted to unbox the thing and do any software related things that needed to be done. I bought the ‘fly more combo’, which in addition to the drone, a battery and the controller, gets you 2 spare batteries, a smart charging station with fast charge brick, spare props and joysticks, a prop guard, and a case. It’s a great value to get the combo. I’m glad I unboxed on a day I had no intentions of flying, because some things were not exactly intuitive.
The batteries have a weird locking mechanism that I could not figure out without reading the manual. Manuals. Who knew? But seriously, even videos online didn’t talk about proper battery removal. Maybe I’m just getting old. Once I understood how it worked, the rest was easy.
Turning the controller and the drone on and off was not intuitive either. And it’s not just me. I saw many people complaining online, wondering why they weren’t able to turn the things on. It turns out that there is a trick to it – of course. Once I figured out the trick, I was able to do it. You would think the manual would give you some hints on what to watch for, but no. Just in case any Mavic Mini owners are reading this post (the rest of you can skip to the next paragraph), it requires a quick 2 second press of the power button, followed by a one second pause and then pressing and holding the button and watch the power LEDs sequence on to an audible beep. The same goes for shut down, except that the LEDs sequence off.
I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to remember all of this, so I started my own manual of tips for old guys like me.
Once I had charged one of the batteries enough, and charged the controller, I turned the drone on to try pairing the drone to the controller using the phone app (DJI Fly). The app paired the drone to the controller and I made an account with DJI. The first order of business was a firmware update for the drone, which took about 3 minutes.
Based on the countless videos I had watched, I knew I would probably have to do a compass calibration. I was correct. Thankfully, even though the instructions don’t make it perfectly clear how to do that, the videos I had watched helped a lot. In essence, you have to, when prompted, rotate the nose of the drone around all points of the compass, then rotate the belly around all points of the compass (nose up).
So now I’m ready to fly, as soon as the weather improves. While I waited for the weather to get above 0 C, which is the recommended minimum for flying this model, I watched a lot of owners of the Mavic Mini give their tips on what to watch for when flying this drone.
It quickly became obvious to me that flying a drone is not as easy as you might think. You have to really be fully conscious of the area you intend to fly in. You have to be aware of tall objects, power lines, trees, transmission towers, cell towers, bridges, etc. You have to be aware of other aircraft in the area, even other drones. You also have to be in tune to the weather.
What makes this particular model tricky is its low mass. Unlike a drone that weighs several kilograms, a 249 gram drone is going to get thrown around in more than 15 km/h winds. In fact, the Mavic Mini can only resist wind speeds up to a maximum of 28 km/h. So you have to be aware of the current wind conditions in your flight area and also take into account that the higher you fly, typically the windier it gets. Thankfully, the drone will let you know through the controller and software when the conditions are not good for flying, but once you're up there, if the wind gets unexpectedly strong, you need to know what to do to safely get your drone back to where you are. This typically means getting the drone to a lower altitude fast, hoping that the lower altitude doesn't interfere with the signal to the drone, and making a beeline to your location without hitting anything. Needless to say, it is always a good idea to situate yourself downwind from your intended drone flight target, so that you can return WITH the wind rather than against it. I watched a few videos of pilots thinking there was no wind and then painfully watching as their drone fought headwinds trying to return to base. I have heard countless tales of pilots who have crashed or lost their drone in bad wind conditions. There is an app for that by the way. The UAV Forecast app gives you fairly accurate weather conditions for your current location and a synopsis of whether conditions are good for flying. I have also heard people offer the practical advice of getting a cheap anemometer to check actual wind speed where you plan to launch from. I think it goes without saying that you probably don't want to risk flying your drone on anything other than a full battery in windy conditions either, as the amount of power needed to fight the wind is substantial.
DJI did a few things to make the Mavic Mini as light as it is. They did away with any collision sensors that you would find on a bigger drone. It has optical sensors on the underside for sensing ground movement, ground distance, and landing conditions, but there is nothing stopping you from flying your Mavic Mini right into a tree, or bushes, or a building, or tower, or power lines. So total awareness of the drone's surroundings is a must. Considering how far this drone will fly from you and the controller, people can get cocky and try to see how far they can wander. This is incredibly risky, as you would have no idea if you were getting close to any physical obstacles. They recommend keeping your drone in visual range and there's a good reason for this.
Based on what I've seen from reports of crashes of this drone, the biggest mistake pilots make is not adjusting the return to home altitude before they fly. The drone has a safety feature called 'return to home'. The idea is that if you encounter trouble, getting the drone home is a button push away. While this sounds fantastic, there is a bit of preparation to pull this off successfully. Before I get to that though, there are some things that will trigger a return to home (RTH) automatically. Low battery will prompt you to RTH, but you initiate it manually according to the manual. Needless to say, you never want to get to this point. If the drone loses connection with the controller for more than 11 seconds, it will initiate its own RTH sequence. If you lose the video link, you'll be prompted to initiate a RTH, manually. You can choose to fly the drone home based on the map and compass indicator.
What makes the RTH feature work properly are 2 critical settings. You have to set the home point. Every time. The drone has to know where to go when the RTH is initiated. You can change the home point mid-flight, but you have to have one. But you also have to properly set the RTH altitude. For every flight. Because if the RTH gets triggered and the RTH altitude is 20 metres, and there's a 22 metre tall tree, or a 40 metre tower, or a high bridge between the drone and the home point, the drone is going to fly right into it. So the RTH altitude has to be set high enough to get over every tall obstacle in its RTH path. You may not get to choose when the RTH feature will be triggered, so you really have to have your act together. But you also have to consider wind. The higher the RTH flight will be, the windier it will be as well. Situational awareness is key.
Another thing many people don't truly understand is how the drone communicates with the controller. Again, unlike more capable drones with fancy radio links, the Mavic Mini uses good old fashioned WiFi. Although the higher WiFi frequency of 5.8 Ghz is pretty decent, it still can suffer from too much interference from other WiFi sources. So if you're trying to fly in a crowded urban environment, you may have sudden interference that will render your drone temporarily orphaned from its controller. You can go into the settings and manually choose a quieter WiFi channel, but this is a dynamic situation. One thing you can definitely do to make things a bit easier on your drone is to turn the WiFi on your cell phone off. You are typically using the phone attached to the controller as its video screen, and transmitting on WiFi right next to the controller's antennae is not the best idea.
Another thing people need to know about WiFi is radio frequency propagation. I've watched a few people online complain about WiFi interference with their drone, but witness the real reason they are experiencing signal issues. Don't get me wrong, if you're trying to operate a drone in an area with a lot of signal, you're going to have potential for problems. But you also have to do the drone a favour with your antenna direction. If you think about the antenna as a pole, the signal doesn't propagate out the end of the pole, it propagates out the sides. So, visualize a cell tower. If you look up at the antennas, you'll notice they are all vertical. Your controller's antennas should be vertical too. If you are holding your controller in a way that doesn't point the signal toward the horizon, you're going to have issues.
19 April 2020. That was the day of my maiden flight. I just couldn't wait any longer, I had to get this thing up in the air.
The first flight was short, fairly low altitude. I just wanted to get a feel for how it flies, how stable it is, and how it lands. I felt good about how that went, so I sent it up a second time and went a bit higher, but stayed close. Glad I got that out of my system.
I timed it perfectly in terms of not bothering anyone. A lot of people bring their dogs to the park I took off from. In future, I might have to get further away from the road so that I get more warning if people are approaching, so I can bring it in for a landing.
I took a couple of videos, here's a link to the second one.
So far, I'm cheating big time in my production choices, because I'm trying not to spend any money on video editing software. Little did I know, you can use Windows 10's built-in Photos app to make videos. I used it and was able to add a soundtrack (royalty-free music by www.bensound.com). The Photos app is definitely not as feature-rich as I'd like, but it's free. I finally got the audio fade-out figured out after 2 versions of this video. I have to do my video editing first, determine the final duration of the clip, then get a properly edited soundtrack file made separately with a proper fade-out before inserting it into the clip. Audacity to the rescue!
Even though I couldn’t fly right away, I still wanted to unbox the thing and do any software related things that needed to be done. I bought the ‘fly more combo’, which in addition to the drone, a battery and the controller, gets you 2 spare batteries, a smart charging station with fast charge brick, spare props and joysticks, a prop guard, and a case. It’s a great value to get the combo. I’m glad I unboxed on a day I had no intentions of flying, because some things were not exactly intuitive.
Turning the controller and the drone on and off was not intuitive either. And it’s not just me. I saw many people complaining online, wondering why they weren’t able to turn the things on. It turns out that there is a trick to it – of course. Once I figured out the trick, I was able to do it. You would think the manual would give you some hints on what to watch for, but no. Just in case any Mavic Mini owners are reading this post (the rest of you can skip to the next paragraph), it requires a quick 2 second press of the power button, followed by a one second pause and then pressing and holding the button and watch the power LEDs sequence on to an audible beep. The same goes for shut down, except that the LEDs sequence off.
I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to remember all of this, so I started my own manual of tips for old guys like me.
Once I had charged one of the batteries enough, and charged the controller, I turned the drone on to try pairing the drone to the controller using the phone app (DJI Fly). The app paired the drone to the controller and I made an account with DJI. The first order of business was a firmware update for the drone, which took about 3 minutes.
Based on the countless videos I had watched, I knew I would probably have to do a compass calibration. I was correct. Thankfully, even though the instructions don’t make it perfectly clear how to do that, the videos I had watched helped a lot. In essence, you have to, when prompted, rotate the nose of the drone around all points of the compass, then rotate the belly around all points of the compass (nose up).
So now I’m ready to fly, as soon as the weather improves. While I waited for the weather to get above 0 C, which is the recommended minimum for flying this model, I watched a lot of owners of the Mavic Mini give their tips on what to watch for when flying this drone.
It quickly became obvious to me that flying a drone is not as easy as you might think. You have to really be fully conscious of the area you intend to fly in. You have to be aware of tall objects, power lines, trees, transmission towers, cell towers, bridges, etc. You have to be aware of other aircraft in the area, even other drones. You also have to be in tune to the weather.
What makes this particular model tricky is its low mass. Unlike a drone that weighs several kilograms, a 249 gram drone is going to get thrown around in more than 15 km/h winds. In fact, the Mavic Mini can only resist wind speeds up to a maximum of 28 km/h. So you have to be aware of the current wind conditions in your flight area and also take into account that the higher you fly, typically the windier it gets. Thankfully, the drone will let you know through the controller and software when the conditions are not good for flying, but once you're up there, if the wind gets unexpectedly strong, you need to know what to do to safely get your drone back to where you are. This typically means getting the drone to a lower altitude fast, hoping that the lower altitude doesn't interfere with the signal to the drone, and making a beeline to your location without hitting anything. Needless to say, it is always a good idea to situate yourself downwind from your intended drone flight target, so that you can return WITH the wind rather than against it. I watched a few videos of pilots thinking there was no wind and then painfully watching as their drone fought headwinds trying to return to base. I have heard countless tales of pilots who have crashed or lost their drone in bad wind conditions. There is an app for that by the way. The UAV Forecast app gives you fairly accurate weather conditions for your current location and a synopsis of whether conditions are good for flying. I have also heard people offer the practical advice of getting a cheap anemometer to check actual wind speed where you plan to launch from. I think it goes without saying that you probably don't want to risk flying your drone on anything other than a full battery in windy conditions either, as the amount of power needed to fight the wind is substantial.
DJI did a few things to make the Mavic Mini as light as it is. They did away with any collision sensors that you would find on a bigger drone. It has optical sensors on the underside for sensing ground movement, ground distance, and landing conditions, but there is nothing stopping you from flying your Mavic Mini right into a tree, or bushes, or a building, or tower, or power lines. So total awareness of the drone's surroundings is a must. Considering how far this drone will fly from you and the controller, people can get cocky and try to see how far they can wander. This is incredibly risky, as you would have no idea if you were getting close to any physical obstacles. They recommend keeping your drone in visual range and there's a good reason for this.
Based on what I've seen from reports of crashes of this drone, the biggest mistake pilots make is not adjusting the return to home altitude before they fly. The drone has a safety feature called 'return to home'. The idea is that if you encounter trouble, getting the drone home is a button push away. While this sounds fantastic, there is a bit of preparation to pull this off successfully. Before I get to that though, there are some things that will trigger a return to home (RTH) automatically. Low battery will prompt you to RTH, but you initiate it manually according to the manual. Needless to say, you never want to get to this point. If the drone loses connection with the controller for more than 11 seconds, it will initiate its own RTH sequence. If you lose the video link, you'll be prompted to initiate a RTH, manually. You can choose to fly the drone home based on the map and compass indicator.
What makes the RTH feature work properly are 2 critical settings. You have to set the home point. Every time. The drone has to know where to go when the RTH is initiated. You can change the home point mid-flight, but you have to have one. But you also have to properly set the RTH altitude. For every flight. Because if the RTH gets triggered and the RTH altitude is 20 metres, and there's a 22 metre tall tree, or a 40 metre tower, or a high bridge between the drone and the home point, the drone is going to fly right into it. So the RTH altitude has to be set high enough to get over every tall obstacle in its RTH path. You may not get to choose when the RTH feature will be triggered, so you really have to have your act together. But you also have to consider wind. The higher the RTH flight will be, the windier it will be as well. Situational awareness is key.
Another thing many people don't truly understand is how the drone communicates with the controller. Again, unlike more capable drones with fancy radio links, the Mavic Mini uses good old fashioned WiFi. Although the higher WiFi frequency of 5.8 Ghz is pretty decent, it still can suffer from too much interference from other WiFi sources. So if you're trying to fly in a crowded urban environment, you may have sudden interference that will render your drone temporarily orphaned from its controller. You can go into the settings and manually choose a quieter WiFi channel, but this is a dynamic situation. One thing you can definitely do to make things a bit easier on your drone is to turn the WiFi on your cell phone off. You are typically using the phone attached to the controller as its video screen, and transmitting on WiFi right next to the controller's antennae is not the best idea.
Another thing people need to know about WiFi is radio frequency propagation. I've watched a few people online complain about WiFi interference with their drone, but witness the real reason they are experiencing signal issues. Don't get me wrong, if you're trying to operate a drone in an area with a lot of signal, you're going to have potential for problems. But you also have to do the drone a favour with your antenna direction. If you think about the antenna as a pole, the signal doesn't propagate out the end of the pole, it propagates out the sides. So, visualize a cell tower. If you look up at the antennas, you'll notice they are all vertical. Your controller's antennas should be vertical too. If you are holding your controller in a way that doesn't point the signal toward the horizon, you're going to have issues.
19 April 2020. That was the day of my maiden flight. I just couldn't wait any longer, I had to get this thing up in the air.
The first flight was short, fairly low altitude. I just wanted to get a feel for how it flies, how stable it is, and how it lands. I felt good about how that went, so I sent it up a second time and went a bit higher, but stayed close. Glad I got that out of my system.
I timed it perfectly in terms of not bothering anyone. A lot of people bring their dogs to the park I took off from. In future, I might have to get further away from the road so that I get more warning if people are approaching, so I can bring it in for a landing.
I took a couple of videos, here's a link to the second one.
So far, I'm cheating big time in my production choices, because I'm trying not to spend any money on video editing software. Little did I know, you can use Windows 10's built-in Photos app to make videos. I used it and was able to add a soundtrack (royalty-free music by www.bensound.com). The Photos app is definitely not as feature-rich as I'd like, but it's free. I finally got the audio fade-out figured out after 2 versions of this video. I have to do my video editing first, determine the final duration of the clip, then get a properly edited soundtrack file made separately with a proper fade-out before inserting it into the clip. Audacity to the rescue!
Small things 8 May
- What is an acquired taste and how do I acquire it exactly?
- Kids today will never know the experience of wanting to rent a popular movie and every physical copy is rented, but the clerk finds you one in the pile of returns.
- Two young lads were clocked doing 199 km/h eastbound on the Trans-Canada headed toward Calgary from Canmore. They must have been trying to distance from each other and the other kept speeding up.
- What word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it? Short. Or shore.
- The zoo animals are wondering where all the visitors are.
- When they advertise a bottomless cup of coffee, it doesn't mean the server isn't wearing any pants.
- Don't wait for the perfect moment. Take the moment and make it perfect.
- Some day, nobody will know what a coin return slot is.
- When someone says they don't have a cell phone, they're probably fibbing. They just don't want to give you their number.
- When talking to someone, if you touch them, it really leaves an impression on them.
Sunday, May 03, 2020
A real angel lives among us
She will be phasing this care program out over the next few week or so as she starts to get her cafe ready to soft open to the public again. However, she has identified and decided to adopt a few people who she has noticed are in serious need of continued meal support even after she reopens her cafe. So she is asking people to help sponsor these folks, who are mostly very elderly seniors, along with some homeless folks, to support the cost of the food for the meals she will continue to make for them.
She has been making some improvements to the cafe and is looking for donations of large artificial plants if anyone in Calgary has any.
I think the name Angel's is so appropriate, don't you?
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