tech related – Page 22 – Richard's blog

Mavic 2 Pro – For When I fly More Often

Byrichard 28 August 201816 April 2020

The Mavic 2 Pro just came out and people are euphoric about the drone because of its one inch sensor, it’s ability to zoom and it’s omnidirectional systems keeping an eye on the environment below, behind, above and ahead of it. It also has a flying time of 31 minutes.

I’m happy with the DJI Spark. Last Autumn as the nights shortened and work got in the way of flying the drone I felt disappointed that I would have to suspend the passion whilst waiting for the next summer to arrive. This summer came and it is now approaching an end and I haven’t flown as much as I would have expected to. It’s partially due to having to get the charger out, charge all the batteries and fly somewhere new that slowed me down. NFZs limit the number of places where you can fly.

The issue with DJI drones is that whilst they are excellent camera drones they are not as versatile as FPV drones. If you don’t have a video project in mind they’re limited in scope.

This being said I did get nice footage of the Swiss flags with vineyards in the background. You can tell how windy the conditions were by how taut the flag is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7WN41loH-4

I also got footage of golden crops yesterday. I had the sun behind me and I stayed on the grass between the field and a road. You get a nice view of the crops in the foreground and the Mont Blanc and the Alps in the background.

https://youtu.be/wxpTAHDzT7I

social media | tech related

An e-book morning

Byrichard 25 February 201825 February 2018

This morning rather than use the phone, check twitter, look at Facebook, or look at Instagram I took one of my two e-book readers. I have a Kobo and a Kindle device. I have both because I don’t want to lose all of my books if one company goes out of business.

Twitter and Facebook are filled with pushed content that we are not interested in. When we’re browsing our timelines it used to be to see what friends were doing or thinking about. For months now it has been re-shares and other impersonal content.

Twitter recently expanded the character limit and with this move, they also added threading, things that we had right from the start with Jaiku. I wouldn’t mind threading if it was designed in the way that forums had threading. Instead of writing a threaded tweet sequence why not take fifteen minutes to half an hour and write a blog post? With a blog post, you immediately say “I want to be verbose about what I’m thinking about”. It is also an opportunity for us to take back our right to the content we create because the adverts beside our content generate revenue for us.

Instagram is the latest “social network” to increase the amount of noise we get in our streams. They show images from strangers and companies instead of content from our friends. They also start to push hashtags to encourage us to follow topics rather than acquaintances.

Facebook,
twitter, Instagram and other social networks, by encouraging the mass following of certain accounts and individuals are turning a social medium
in to a broadcast medium,
in to a passive medium. By making social networks passive, rather than active, they are turning social networks into books, newspaper articles and radio.

The Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) that we felt in the past has been replaced by NAGO. ;-). We’re being nagged to follow specific accounts. Specific accounts post the same content in the morning and the afternoon, sometimes multiple days in a row. In so doing we have no compulsion to check our feeds.

We can dedicate hours to reading a book without interruption. We can leave aside our mobile phones and pick up the e-reader knowing that we are not missing out by not checking our feeds.

mobile | observation | reviews

A theoretical Seven Minute Workout a day

Byrichard 9 January 2018

Seven Minute Workout for 36 days

For about six weeks I have been trying to do at least one seven-minute workout every single day. I eventually fell out of the habit for a few days because I had to fight a little virus. I’m feeling better again. Time to see if I can beat my old maximum of 36 days.

At least one circuit a day

The Seven-minute app I was playing with is by Perigee. The app provides you with the opportunity to train for fitness, for strength or to lose weight. I tried to last for seven days on the Fitness program and suffered. I managed to stick with the routine for a week once as a challenge. Now I choose the routine that I feel I am most in the mood for. On some days I choose a stretching routine and on others I choose to push myself. I tried a chest workout and I found it hard. Yesterday I went for an animal routine and it was easy.

Workout to your day’s energy level

The beauty of these apps is that as you get familiar with them you can give yourself different intensity workouts depending on the time of day and how you’re feeling. You can start with one of the morning routines if you like or an office chair workout. When you’ve finished with a run you can stretch or you can do the post workout routine.

Chose the trainer

I tried the drill sergeant for a while but he frustrated me so I tried the hippie and the kung fu master (or whatever name they used for the app). I have settled for the cheerleader. If I met someone that cheerful in real life I’d probably avoid them but for the workouts it’s nice. I’m usually working out either an hour before bed or more recently before dinner. This is the best time when I can decompress from the commute.

Complimentary

These workouts are complimentary to the rest of my day. I have started training with the c25k app once again and I’m trying not to push too hard. Eventually I want to get to 10km runs and beyond but only when my body can keep up. During week days I walk at least 2 and a half kilometres to work and back as well as walk during my lunch break. Today was an average day and I walked up the equivalent of fifty floors. The 7 minute app is just a bonus.

Motivation

I’ve tried a few of these apps and after less than a week I usually stop using them because they’re either too expensive or they’re a good challenge but not much more. With this app I like that you get badges for the challenges you accomplish. I My goal with this app is to go for seven months without missing a single workout. I managed for 36 days and now I have to start all over. I’m on day 8 of the current challenge. When I finish typing this blog post I will have accomplished day 9.

If you threw in some running between workouts then it would be just like parkour vita. That’s what they should do next.

12 exercises with three or four minutes of running between routines. By the end, you’d be exhausted. With perseverance, you’d be fit. Or you could just do crossfit.

observation | tech related

A book on Sleep and Sleep Tracking Apps

Byrichard 9 January 2018

Why We Sleep

Sleep is something that we do almost every day and yet explore it only superficially. We either say “I should go to sleep” or “I wish I had slept longer”. Recently I read “Why We Sleep”. It’s an interesting book because it explores the topic in such depth. I learned that birds sleep on power lines and the birds on the right and the left of the group are sleeping with one eye open. Half of their brain is sleeping whilst the other half is awake. Half way through the sleep cycle they hop around and the other eye is opened and that half of the brain takes over. Sleep is a fascinating topic.

Sleep As Android

I have been playing with two apps for over a year now. One of these is Sleep As Android. When I first started using this app it required being placed in the bed to detect when I moved. Over time they developed technology so that it uses “sonar” to detect when we move during the night. Thanks to the “sonar” feature I can keep the phone up to a metre away from me.

I might have tracked up to 576 nights of sleep with this app. With this app I can see the duration, the irregularity, how much of my sleep cycle is deep, how efficient it is and how I rate it. It shows my how bad or good my sleep deficit is and what my chronotype is. According to the app I am a morning lark.

This app gives advice. This app believes that to maximise sleep I should go to sleep at 23:15 and that to maximise deep sleep I should sleep 8hrs 10.

Sleep Cycle

Another app I have played with extensively is Sleep Cycle. I used this app to track my sleep for several hundred nights of which six months was whilst working as an aircraft deicer. This is relevant because I was trying to go to sleep for 1800 and waking for 2am. Of course, I usually went to sleep around 2000 or so. I mention this because if any sleep specialists read this blog I am ready to share the data. Since then I have gone back to sleeping more pleasant hours.

This app provides you with a sleep graph per night, the time you went to bed and got up, sleep quality, time with noise, sleep notes, wake up mood, heart rate, step count and total nights tracked. I have tracked 303 nights of sleep with the app.

When you look at the trends tab you can see sleep quality and you can compare it with entire countries. You can track how regular your “went to bed” graph is, how much time you spent in bed, the time at which you woke up, what factors result in better sleep, decreased sleep, weather effect, air pressure, moon and location. You can also track your heart rate when you wake up. My average is currently 47 bpm, average in Switzerland is 67, Denmark, 65 and Turkey 73. The heart rate measurement comes from shining light through your finger and the phone detecting the change in colour per heartbeat.

Apparently, my best night of sleep is on a Tuesday and it gets progressively worse as the week wears on.

reviews | tech related

The Suunto Spartan Wrist HR

Byrichard 31 December 2017

Suunto Spartan Wrist HR

My latest Suunto device is the Suunto Spartan Wrist Hr. This is a practical device that finally includes two features that I really wanted to see in a suunto device. The first of these is the Wrist heart rate monitor function and the second is a step counter that tracks physical effort on a daily basis and that can be reviewed later.

Used for a multitude of sports.

I have used this device to track hikes, runs, indoor climbing, outdoor climbing, walks within cities and 7 minute workouts. Two of the devices strengths is that I no longer need to wear the heart rate monitor belt. This saves a few seconds and when you’re hiking or doing other activities with groups this is a nice feature. The second nice feature is that it detects GPS signals and provides a position within seconds. This means that you don’t need to wait or two like you needed to with the Suunto Ambit 3 and others.

Fitbit replacement

I have owned a number of fitbit devices and I liked that they tracked step count and heart rate 24 hours a day but I did not like that the data was siloed. I also disliked that most of their devices are not shower proof. This means that you need to take them off every single day. With the Suunto Spartan Wrist HR I can wear it 24 hours a day and keep track of my movements throughout the day for multiple days between charges. I can also keep track of data for the day, the week and longer periods of time. In effect it has allowed me to stop using the Suunto Ambit three and the Fitbit charge 2 in tandem. I am back to wearing just one device.

Movescount and Sports tracker combined

I am currently beta testing the Suunto Version 0.4.0 app and it now combines Movescount and Sports tracker, two apps that I have now been using to track fitness activities for years. I have been using sports tracker since it was available on the Nokia N95 8gb. I am now at over 1100 tracked activities and I like the data that both apps provide. Combining both apps is a nice move forward.

Drones and quadcopters

A list of drones I have tried this year.

Byrichard 30 December 2017

Trying various drones

This year I finally bought a few drones to play with and DJI and Hubsan are currently my favourite brands. The most fun to fly indoors is the Hubsan Nano Q111 drone, or something to that effect. At first this is a hard and temperamental little drone to fly. Just getting it off the ground is a challenge., This challenge comes from the fact that it has no pilot assistance. It slews to the right and the left and it has no altitude hold. This means that constant little inputs are needed. As the battery depletes you need to give the drone more power simply to hover. With practice the drone is really fun and best of all I didn’t break any props. I only burned out two of the motors when the drone got caught in something.

I tried flying the Q4 as well but the results were disappointing.

I tried flying the Demon something by some brand and this was a flop. The problem with this drone is that the props are well protected against colliding with things but the struts are too fragile. Within just a flight or two I broke the strut to one of the props and it is now great at spinning in place rather than flying.

DJI

Earlier this year I saw someone fly the DJI Mavic pro during the IFSC World cup and when I saw how easy it seemed to fly my interest grew exponentially. I saw that it could guide itself back to it’s take off point and was autonomous. For a while I hesitated about buying my own drone until I finally decided to buy the DJI Spark. This is a really fun drone to fly. It’s simple and intuitive to use and it provides great images. I have now flown it in France, Spain and Switzerland. What makes this drone so great is that it’s tiny, ideally suited for when I go hiking and to do other sports. I have 7 batteries for a total flying time of 105 minutes. I calculate three batteries per day and one spare. I am now at my 99th “flight” with that drone, My next flight will be number 100. We’ll see how I celebrate that.

Addressing the Stigma

There is a lot of stigma around drones. People are afraid that they will be used for spying, that they can be used as weapons, that they can interfere with aviation. The truth is that most drones are small and light and that the lens is wide therefore they can be heard from a distance. People refer to the sound they make as that of a large bumblebee. Not only can you hear them but you can also see them quite easily. Rules are in place to prevent us from flying above 120 metres in most countries, around cities and above crowds. We also have to fly them within visual range. This means that whenever people can see the drone they can see us. They can ask us to stop flying or they can ask questions.

As drone enthusiasts, we can work as ambassadors to show that drones are not the stigmatised devices that they were encouraged to fear. We can show them the beautiful images and videos we can get and we can also show them that some of them are relatively easy to fly. The better we behave as early adopters the fewer restrictions we will see implemented down the road. We have a moral duty to obey the rules and sensibilise the lay public to how much fun they can be.

Drones and quadcopters

Flying the DJI Spark is fun

Byrichard 8 December 2017

My most recent flight with the DJI Spark was fun. As I forgot the miniSD card I decided just to fly it in sports mode over some empty fields. I ended up flying over 4km within visual range. It was fast, responsive and behaved just as I wanted it to.

Indoor flying

Flying the drone indoors is possible. Thanks to its downward facing cameras and proximity sensors it detects when it flies too close to objects and stops. It does have the weakness that if it detects objects below it or objects ahead of it it will back and rise. As it has no upward looking sensors and no sensors looking behind or to the sides the risk of collisions increases. For these reasons flying indoors is more demanding. It also displaces a large volume of air. It will shift light objects so be careful what you fly over.

Outdoor flying

Every September the cows come down from the mountains and I decided to fly over them to get an original perspective. The advantage of filming swiss cows with a drone is that they’re wearing loud and noisy bells. This means that the drone is not noisy enough to be heard.

As there are fewer flight restrictions I flew over the Jura mountains and the footage I got was nice. I often use PolarPro ND filters and tweak the images in post production. The reason for this is that the dynamic range on this camera is low compared to others and the ND filters help the camera cope. I bring the blacks up, lower the highlights and adjust the mid tones slightly. The result is images such as you see in the video below.

It takes practice to get smooth shots. The controls are not as gradual as I would like so I sometimes cut from shot to shot when the camera is already moving at the desired speed. With time and practice, I aim to start and stop shots smoothly.

Small and portable

This drone is small and portable. It can easily fit into your hiking bag and with a few spare batteries, you can get some nice shots whilst hiking.Each battery lasts for about fifteen minutes so having 3-4 batteries should give you the desired flexibility. I usually take off from the ground after it has acquired 10 GPS or more. I then fly it, get the desired shots and then land it in my hand. When landing I don’t use the return to palm control. I get it close to me and then select land. I let it come down on my fingers and let it throttle down. This is a useful feature for when you are flying on a mountainside as there may be no suitable landing spots.

Drone Rules and regulations

Before flying the drone I study the flight rules and regulations for the country where I am flying. If you are flying in Switzerland then I suggest using this website to quickly identify what restrictions are in place before you fly. I also use this website to see what rules and regulations are in place before flying in France. In theory, the DJI maps provide you with this information already but in my experience, they are not as up to date as the Government flight restriction maps for drones.

Drones and quadcopters | Uncategorized

The Hubsan Nano Q4 H111 drone

Byrichard 5 November 2017

The Hubsan Nano Q4 H111 drone is a tiny drone

The Hubsan Nano Q4 H111 drone is a tiny drone. It is not much more than a flying circuit board with four engines, a battery and a cowling. It is very light and fits easily on the screen of an iphone SE, along with it’s controller. Such a small drone requires practice to fly properly. This is because there are no flight assists. When you take off you need to apply just the right amount of thrust to hover and you need to make small adjustments to keep it from drifting. With practice you gain control of the quadcopter.

Constant adjustments

I found that when taking off it is good to get above the ground effect. This is because when it is within the ground effect zone it tends to skim in one direction or the other. Once you’re at 30 centimetres it becomes more stable. Keeping it at a specific height takes tiny thrust adjustements. As the battery depletes you need to give more thrust for it to stay at the same height or rise. Eventually it runs out of thrust and drifts to the ground.

When you turn the drone on the lights flash and when you turn the controller on the light on the controller flashes red for a few seconds. Once the controller and the drone are paired the light turns green. The thrust control does not spring back to neutral so if and when you feel that the drone is about to crash throttle to zero.

More demanding to fly than the Spark but a lot cheaper

Having a tiny drone like the Nano Qç H111 is fun to get to grips with flying a drone although it could be frustrating at first. With drones like the DJI spark you can get the drone to take off automatically and it keeps itself in place using GPS, onboard cameras, sensors and more. If you lose control with a spark you just let go of the controls. With the Q4 H111 you you have to compensate and counteract the issue.

At 30CHF you’re not taking a big financial risk and props are available if you break them.