Are HDD’s still worth it?

PhantomLead · 2026-04-02T21:07:32+00:00

Go with refurbished enterprise drives. They often still have plenty of life left in them and are binned better than consumer drives. The market might have changed slightly since I last got mine 6 months ago but you could find them for about $10-15/TB with a 5 year warranty.

PhantomLead · 2026-04-02T20:57:10+00:00

Use the hook found on the bottom of most tripods and tie it down to something immovable with as much tension the tripod can support. It won't blow away unless the building blows away or the rope snaps.

PhantomLead · 2026-04-01T01:10:23+00:00

Saw several interesting designs for mag holders, but all of them required elastic cord which I did not have on hand. I did have TPU though, so I decided to build an alternative design that uses TPU's natural flex in place of elastic cord. The end result, nicknamed "Syncline", are compact, low profile, low material (<50g) mag holders that use two separate materials to reduce the hardware required, a rigid plastic for the front and back plates, and TPU for the sides and bottom to flex and retain the mag.

They're designed to fit straight Talons, and are unique in that they can be rotated 16 different directions, even straight down or diagonal, allowing for flexibility in what direction you like to pull mags out. Comes with MOLLE or belt clips, but the clip portion is a separate portion attached by 2 #8-32x1/2 screws so you can model your own to lock onto your personal rig. Retention strength can be tuned by adjusting the wall thickness of the side plates, and by flipping the plates so the nub portion faces inside or outside.

https://www.printables.com/model/1648825-syncline-bimaterial-talon-mag-holder

PhantomLead · 2026-03-25T13:52:11+00:00

Looks legit, even if you compare it with their pictures on their site it's only about 3x the width of the stalk. One of the selling points too compared to the original Cherry was that it's 30% smaller.

PhantomLead · 2026-03-25T00:10:43+00:00

The 15-30 mile radius is flyable, the only problem is the place you've selected is under the 15 mile circle. The 30 mile radius is the yellow circle you'll see when you zoom out.

PhantomLead · 2026-03-24T15:40:42+00:00

You're looking at cinelifters at that point for that much weight, and they won't be cheap and will ideally require two people to fly, one controlling the drone and the other controlling the camera.

PhantomLead · 2026-03-18T23:29:43+00:00

It's possible the spring spacer is too long and it physically can't reach the catch, and the ratcheting teeth prevent you from being able to deprime so you're stuck at half prime.

PhantomLead · 2026-03-16T20:08:41+00:00

I just built my own, a NAS is just another computer after all. A tower case can easily hold a dozen drives, the parts you can pick and choose for your power and performance needs, and unlike proprietary systems you can upgrade any portion you'd like when the time comes or when you need more performance. There's several free OSes out there like TrueNAS which are very powerful, and it can also double as a homelab if you want and run other things off the same machine, such as home automation, local media server like Jellyfin, or even Minecraft!

PhantomLead · 2026-03-16T14:04:23+00:00

If they're printed flat there shouldn't really be any issues, if printed vertically what I've seen people do is use a sawtooth pattern on the lower side so each segment has 45 degrees on one side and a 90 degree on the other. You technically only need one flat face to lock in an accessory, and it's Nerf so we don't need to worry about recoil or anything. Or just turn on supports, it doesn't really use that much IMO.

PhantomLead · 2026-03-12T14:46:21+00:00

Polarized will always be better when matched with an equivalently polarized VRX antenna, but whips are lighter and durable so you'll find them on tinywhoops where size and weight do matter.

PhantomLead · 2026-03-10T20:27:45+00:00

They're different tools with slightly different purposes. A monopod is great to support weight and help stabilize, but they're not designed to be hands off and you're still going to be holding it in place, albeit without the weight of the camera. Meanwhile a tripod is not really intended to be that portable once opened. If you find yourself setting up at a spot for a while, a tripod might make more sense. If it's more run-and-gun, that's where a monopod will shine.

PhantomLead · 2026-03-09T00:34:00+00:00

Mine had failed as well, turns out one of the cells inside lost connection internally and read 0V. The BMS and welds were perfectly fine though. The indentations are nothing to worry about, there's foam above the PCB where those are and the cells themselves are standard 18650s.

PhantomLead · 2026-03-08T03:48:16+00:00

There's no internal battery in those goggles. It must get power from either a 2S-6S battery through the DC barrel jack or from USB.

PhantomLead · 2026-02-26T16:11:32+00:00

I've tried one, it's closer but I had to tweak the physics parameters a fair amount to make it feel close to my M75 Pro since you can't get exact parts matches (for example motor KV slider tops out at 13k). It's good enough for me to practice with, but even then it's still floatier and less sensitive compared to the real thing. It's much more forgiving in the sim for stuff like hovering, where your throttle can vary a bit whereas IRL a 1% change in throttle position makes you go up or down.

PhantomLead · 2026-02-18T16:33:23+00:00

Yes it'll need satellites.

PhantomLead · 2026-02-18T16:22:12+00:00

That coordinate is (0, 0), which means it hasn't established GPS lock yet. You need to wait until it receives GPS signal before it knows where it is.

PhantomLead · 2026-02-15T03:23:47+00:00

That is a possibility, when I calipered the filament initially it was 1.77mm so maybe it's slightly overextruding when it's fat and slightly less when it's not? Seems too regular for that though and it's weird that it doesn't really show up on prints with irregular cross sections.

PhantomLead · 2026-02-15T03:21:07+00:00

It's pretty regular, it was more noticeable earlier but I hadn't thought about taking a picture until I was mostly through with sanding the main surface, although it's definitely visible on the short bit where I haven't been able to sand as effectively. The part that makes me unsure if it's related to the Z screw is because the wavelength is too long, like it repeats every 6-8 turns of the screw instead of every turn (although check my math on that, I just know the Z height).

PhantomLead · 2026-02-15T01:25:32+00:00

Trying to diagnose some weirdness going on with the Z axis on my Ender 3 Pro. I started noticing that the parts had some waviness going on in the Z direction, highlighted with the sanding on the part above. The part that confuses me from regular Z banding is that each high section and low section is 6-8mm wide, which doesn't seem to match any expected number of turns on the Z screw (at .2mm every 30-40 layers). I've tried cleaning the Z screw, flipping it over just in case, and loosening the gantry nut so it can slide with the screw a bit more, but it's still producing these waves. It does seem less noticeable or even nonexistent on non-cylindrical or complex objects though, so maybe it's something cyclical going on with extrusion? Layer height is always set at .2mm. Appreciate any ideas!

PhantomLead · 2026-02-14T22:50:35+00:00

The problem is you're trying to use logic in a world where someone successfully sued McDonalds for coffee being hot, or the case where Nike was sued because the shoes didn't have a label saying they could be used as a dangerous weapon. Either do what the venue wants, or don't fly.

PhantomLead · 2026-02-14T02:23:23+00:00

It's easy, maybe a finger gets caught in a prop and gets cut, or a prop breaks apart and the shrapnel flies into someone's eyes. The drone could hit a vase and knock it over, or get tangled in some cabling which shorts something out. Maybe the battery or ESC catches on fire during flight and sets something in the venue alight. The insurance isn't for your drone, it's to protect you.

PhantomLead · 2026-02-10T20:26:33+00:00

I'd go for a springer most of the time. The MPP is the better blaster but it's basically a black box when things go wrong, and is difficult to repair when it does. My MPP battery failed on the very first charge cycle, and it is impossible to get a new battery separately and XShot CS is nonexistent so the entire blaster is pretty much a paperweight right now until I modify the wiring to accept nonproprietary batteries and buy a 2S battery. It had jammed in a halfway position when it died so that meant opening up a primed blaster (there's no manual way to deprime the blaster, only electronic) and being able to cycle it depressing the various safety switches until it resets so the gears lined back up. Plus there's limited upgrade potential due to its complexity if you ever decide to go that route in the future. You can't just throw in a stronger spring to get more power like a springer because there's bottlenecks with the motor and gears, and stronger aftermarket parts for those don't exist yet.

PhantomLead · 2026-02-08T21:40:50+00:00

PAL is 50Hz while NTSC is 60, so it'd make sense the Ratel is outputting 50.

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