Comment by Paul Marsh on January 21, 2012 at 6:11am

Trappy, your vidoes are great, of course.  But to keep it germane to this site, why not do a project with an autopilot?

Comment by trappy on January 21, 2012 at 6:13am

I don't think a drone requires an autopilot ... :) at least last time I got busted for flying a "drone" the argument that mine didn't have an autopilot didn't do any good :)

Comment by Paul Marsh on January 21, 2012 at 6:20am

My concern is that this site, which really is about autopilot and autonomous flight, not RC drones (i.e. radio controlled model aircraft) in general, is becoming a manual-fly quad copter and FPV site.  I guess it's up to the moderators and this is just my opinion.  Your work is fantastic to be sure.  My suggestion is that you put your obvious talents to work on a project that involves an autopilot, at least once.

Comment by trappy on January 21, 2012 at 6:34am

why? I find autopilots boring. what could I do with an autopilot that I couldn't do with FPV? in my opinion this place is about unmanned aerial vehicles, aka "drones". If my videos are no longer welcome here, I'm sure the moderators will tell me about it.

Comment by Paul Marsh on January 21, 2012 at 7:37am

I have an answer for you.  You have married the technology of FPV with the art of film making.  You have asked this community which, in my opinion, is about autonomous flight to watch and enjoy those videos, which it does.  I for one would love to see someone with you abilities marry the technology of autonomous flight with film making.  Prepare a flght plan with preplanned shots, use autonomy is some heretofore not seen creative way, then show us a film made from such a completely autonomous flight.  The flight itself might be boring--the excitement is in the planning, execution and seeing the final product.

Every once in a while we see a video here that clearly states when the flight is autonomous and when it isn't.  That happens far too infrequently for me.  I rarely know if what I'm seeing is really autonomous or not.  My own plans have been to make such a video.  I challenge you to beat me to it (which won't be hard since it will be a while for me and I lack your talent).   :-)

Comment by trappy on January 21, 2012 at 7:57am

Like I said, the shots would be worse because a autopilot does not have feeling, nor a brain. It keeps a pre-planned flight path. To date I am not aware of any autopilots used for film making, neither commercially nor for hobby purposes. The reason for that is pretty simple: they suck for that. I welcome your effort to try it, but the only time I will use an autopilot is to increase the safety for the people on the ground. Maybe I'll make a video about that some time ...

Comment by Chris on January 21, 2012 at 10:20am

I for one like your videos.  and since alot of people will be using a FPV setup on their "drones" then it still applies.

keep up the good work trappy...  and if you ever get over to the east coast of the US again, let me know, would LOVE to meet you in person  (ok ok  I only really want to check out your zephyr and your FPV setup :) )

Developer Comment by Sandro Benigno on January 21, 2012 at 10:53am

Hi Trappy, what beautiful shots. I agree with you that an "autopilot" is more suitable for geographic processing than for criative shots. At least on fixed wing it looks clear to me.

However, there are some interesting things on the drone's universe --excluding autonomous flight-- that I'm pretty sure they are nice for FPV. A good example is the stabilized flight. It would be super-boring for you, of course... but for non-skilled guys, like me, it helps a LOT to keep the plane leveled in certain dangerous situations like flying near the ground, etc. It's kinda "don't worry be Trappy"... LOL

There is also RTL... if you video-link suddenly is gone, so you can activate that "come to papa" resource until get your video signal back or visual contact, etc. So, I think it's just a tool like many others. But, I agree with you that it will NEVER replace the talent and freedom of a skilled flight.

Comment by trappy on January 21, 2012 at 5:15pm

haha. believe it or not we have experimented with stabilized flight. it's not working well enough unfortunately. We are heavily experimenting with RTL. In fact, the new APM2 has started to make things interesting ... :)

Comment by trappy on January 21, 2012 at 5:16pm

Chris, not sure that will happen anytime soon. Just spent half of December in the states ... and still not sure I can come back lol

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