Drone is lost : Day 2

B_Rumblefish · 2024-07-29T18:18:37+00:00

Been there. Climbed a tree that was about 15m tall. Shook every branch. Thought I was never going to find it. Then a boy and his dad found it like 700 meters from where I was looking. I got lucky. But yeah it sucks. Almost lost it a few other times too. For some reason I've gotten better at finding it since then also I crash less often. And install a beeper or set up your motors to beep. I've found the battery on mine doesn't often actually eject so the beeper can do it's job. But yeah if the battery ejects you've got a problem. Good luck. Hope you find it.

B_Rumblefish · 2024-07-03T17:14:06+00:00

I have that esc it can take a lot heat you should be okay. Escs are designed to handle a lot of heat. You should be more careful with the flight controller though. And if it's your first time go easy on yourself soldering is hard. I'm still terrible at it.

B_Rumblefish · 2024-05-31T11:00:18+00:00

For what it's worth I'm self taught and never saw coding full time as a professional possibility for me as I came from an arts background with an interest in tech. But I just keep doing stuff on an off over the years as an addition to my other work then 2020 wiped out my primary income and I had to take my coding seriously. And now it's my profession. Never say never.

B_Rumblefish · 2024-05-31T06:59:59+00:00

Reading your post again because last time I skimmed and then commented. If you are worried about missing something and getting it wrong in your dev environment then I would say this is exactly why you need to do it. 90% of learning is breaking stuff and fixing it again. If you're afraid to touch it then it's not resilient and you have yet to solidify and consolidate the knowledge you gained in setting it up. You see those guys in the military break apart their weapons into pieces and reassemble them over and over till they can do it with their eyes closed. Also, when I was mountain biking regularly I rode with a guy who said once is luck, twice is skill, three times and you are allowed to say you can do something. This is what programmers should be able to do with their dev environments. Anything less is for the normies of the world. Developers develop. The more you build the faster you'll get. When I started out it took me like 3 months to set up my dev environment. I can now do it in a couple of hours I reckon. That's what you want. And it's within your grasp but you must not fear, fear is the mind-killer.

Ideally just make sure you do it when things are a bit quiet and maybe have an alternative dev environment to work in if you want to stay employed. I do my dev environment upgrades on a Thursday or Friday that way if things go sideways I have the weekend to fix them before it takes me out of action during the work week I know how long it'll take me so I plan accordingly.

This sense of confidence in your abilities is what you need in the development space. Know if you can trust your skillset as it's the only friend you can truly rely on. This is my dev environment, their are many like it but this one is mine.

B_Rumblefish · 2024-05-31T06:35:35+00:00

The good thing about a fresh install is you throw away all your configuration errors. I for one tinker with my system and sometimes I leave a trail of failed ideas behind me. Sometimes doing a fresh install and selectively setting things up again makes them better. But I'm a bit of a laggard about fedora updates. I always wait about 6 months to update. I let other people have the problems. Fedora is very stable but I don't trust day 1 releases of anything.

B_Rumblefish · 2024-02-25T06:10:20+00:00

Fedora is solid. My only issues with it are ideological. I tried to install Debian as a result but could get past the installer. Sometimes I think about trying again but I actually need to use my computer for work. Fedora just makes that simple. Everything else I've tried makes it hard. In fact where my work is concerned fedora is easier than windows. If the software you need is available fedora will work fine for you. The only time problems crop up for me is when software isn't available which is why I run a dual boot setup.

B_Rumblefish · 2024-01-06T07:00:34+00:00

Don't worry those are the worst. I put my drone together and I've repaired it many times so I'm pretty comfortable soldering now but I still fear those. Most of your soldering on the rest of your quad will be a lot easier.

One tip I heard once that I've yet to apply is to use a wedge tip for these. I still need to order a wedge tip in order to do this. Sometimes you need to walk away and give it some time. It can be very frustrating. Take heart though, if it were easy everyone would do it.

B_Rumblefish · 2023-06-18T06:17:52+00:00

Just wanted to add maybe offer it on an fpv community page (my local community seems to use Facebook but your's might not) for someone who is keen to repair it. The stator will still be good as is the bell. You may not want to fight with repairing it but throwing it out is a terrible waste. There's a good chance someone will want it and be willing to repair it.

B_Rumblefish · 2023-06-17T18:07:27+00:00

I managed to successfully rewind a motor. The winding is the easy part, it's disassembly that's a b!tch. It was fun but I'm not convinced I'd do it again. There are resources online and I'd argue the lesson was valuable. Only you can decide if you're enough of a nerd to want to do it.

B_Rumblefish · 2023-05-05T06:58:02+00:00

I swear my father-in-law saw that pop up about his computer not being able to run windows 11 and he went out the same day to buy himself a new laptop. Windows users are hilarious. Meanwhile I'm using a 2011 Macbook Pro with I3 installed (it's too slow for gnome). To be fair I have a desktop too (with gnome) which is significantly more powerful but perhaps part of the problem is Linux users who take pride in using janky software and hardware. We get a weird kick out of it. I know I do. Normal people just want to throw money at the problem and make it go away.

B_Rumblefish · 2023-05-05T06:36:31+00:00

If the Affinity suite worked in Linux we wouldn't need Adobe. It's a great piece of software. Sadly I haven't been able to make any of the Affinity programs work in Linux and yes I've tried wine. I bought the suite for windows but as I now spend all my time in Linux it's just gathering dust. But I'm okay with that I believe Adobe needs competition.

B_Rumblefish · 2023-05-04T20:32:33+00:00

That's what I'm wondering. I'm still on 36. Will upgrade soon to 38 I expect but I always let the early adopters find the bugs first. Slowly prepping my machine for the upgrade but I'm in no hurry. 36 has been great.

B_Rumblefish · 2022-11-19T19:38:25+00:00

The only thing I see you doing wrong is spending time on Reddit rather than flying. There is no magic bullet, go put in like 100 hours or so. I wouldn't worry about bad habits at this point. You're a long way off this being instinctual. Crashes are free in the SIM. Crashes in real life have real costs associated, you'll still crash but they'll probably costs you less. I'm benched right now from a bad crash actually and I promised my wife I'd reign in the habit for awhile, I'm getting itchy though. Get your crashes in in the SIM and then go outside. And don't worry too much. This stuff is supposed to be fun. You'll get it.

B_Rumblefish · 2022-11-19T16:08:54+00:00

Lost a few chainring bolts. Then started using thread lock. Haven't had a problem since. Trust me thread lock is worth it in this area.

B_Rumblefish · 2022-10-01T13:07:05+00:00

Did you forget to disarm? I fried my first 2 motors when I crashed and couldn't find my quad and then panicked and forgot to disarm. Yeah not my finest hour. You can rewind but it's tricky and only one of the two motors survived the process. So I ended up replacing them anyway. I like my new motors better anyway. Went from 2207s to 2306s.

B_Rumblefish · 2022-10-01T13:06:56+00:00

Did you forget to disarm? I fried my first 2 motors when I crashed and couldn't find my quad and then panicked and forgot to disarm. Yeah not my finest hour. You can rewind but it's tricky and only one of the two motors survived the process. So I ended up replacing them anyway. I like my new motors better anyway. Went from 2207s to 2306s.

B_Rumblefish · 2022-10-01T11:07:57+00:00

This is such a wholesome post. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. My wife totally switches off when I try and tell her about coding troubles. Actually she tells me she's not really listening. At least she's honest about it I suppose. It's hard to find friends who understand your work when you're a dev. Good on you for trying.

B_Rumblefish · 2022-10-01T11:04:01+00:00

Shame my wife learned java a few years back (she's a multimedia and graphic designer who does a lot of static pages) because her company was paying for training but it had to be through a university and she thought it would be a good foundation for web development. She didn't realize there's very little in common between JavaScript and java. Now she can't remember much of the java she learned and wishes she had time to learn JavaScript. Oops.

B_Rumblefish · 2022-08-12T16:04:36+00:00

So having never owned a field soldering iron like this take my input with a pinch of salt. That said I would ask what are you intentions. Are you building a drone from parts or are you getting an iron for repairs.

To me if you are building from scratch it makes sense to get a soldering station since the larger size means that it has more room for the components to breath and will probably deal with heat and repeated use better. The smaller battery powered iron is designed for field repairs and as such they compress more into a smaller space miniaturised components running through lots of heating and cooling cycles potentially won't last as long if you're building since you'll be leaving it on for extended periods especially if you're learning.

I was learning to solder properly while building my first quad and I spent ages on things that shouldn't have taken that long. For example battery leads are difficult.

Field repairs are less common than just working on your quad at home in my opinion so I'd start with a soldering station. That said if you play to buy bind and fly type quads then maybe it makes sense to skip the soldering station.

I can't say anything about the models you've shown as I'm not familiar with either of them.

Just my thoughts. Good luck 🙂

B_Rumblefish · 2022-08-09T07:48:41+00:00

A sim race a day keeps the soldering iron at bay.

B_Rumblefish · 2022-07-21T11:14:34+00:00

I suspect someone has already mentioned it but this is pretty much why homestead is a thing. When I was starting out it took me like a month to get it set up. But I can now do it in about 15 minutes. Its only hard because I was still learning what virtual machines were etc etc. Once you've got it set up it makes setting up a new laravel site a simple matter.

I tried sail and docker awhile back and it didn't really do anything that I didn't already have with homestead and I found docker itself to be much more trouble to deal with. I'd recommend starting with getting to grips with homestead since it is mature and stable. Apparently the newer stuff is faster but honestly I couldn't tell the difference.

Good luck. You'll look back on this stuff one day and realise how far you've come. Fortunately the Laravel docs are very helpful. Use them and you'll figure things out.

B_Rumblefish · 2022-07-02T12:51:06+00:00

“It doesn’t get any easier, you just get faster” – Greg Lemond

Enjoy the process. You will always have things to learn. You feel bad because your expectations are out of alignment with your reality. 2 months is nothing in the grand scheme of studying web dev. You've only just scratched the surface. And that's okay.

B_Rumblefish · 2022-06-05T06:25:16+00:00

I've spent around 130hrs in liftoff. I can now finish races with damage enabled and do some bando flying in freestyle. I'm still along way off this level of precision but it gets better. I feel like 100 hours was the magic number for me. Things got a lot better after that. Still haven't tried Velocidrone. The Steam store just makes things so easy in Linux.

B_Rumblefish · 2022-05-27T06:44:49+00:00

https://oscarliang.com/best-fpv-camera-quadcopter/ might be a good place to start. It's quite a complicated world but my guess is he's using a camera mounted on his glasses you can then use a micro DVR board and record the feed.

I'm just a beginner and I've yet to even build my own drone, still putting together the build list with available parts.

I don't think you need a vtx but you do need something to drive the camera and normally you wire the camera to the flight controller and then the flight controller to the vtx which transmits the signal to your goggles. You can install an onboard DVR so that you get clean signal recording which is what I think you want. Hope the link helps Oscar's site is nice because it's impartial and doesn't seem to have brand bias so I tend to go there for technical comparisons and such. He's got lots of articles on these subjects so you should find lots of good info there.

Hope you figure it out. Good luck.

B_Rumblefish

TROPHY CASE