=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 361 ===
Title: LDO 361 - W Special Guest Quan Gan Of ZTAG
Recorded: 2022-07-28
Hosts: Stephen "Belrik" Howell, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash, Andrew "Frank" Hyams
Guest(s): Quan Gan
Total audience: 1,995
Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FVkRRMv31o); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/1314710743-letsdroneout-ldo-361-w-special-guest-quan-gan-of-ztag.mp3)
=====================================

#letsdroneout #LDO #podcast #ZTag #ZTAG #QuanGan #DroneLaserTag #lasertag #drone #mulitrotor #quadcopter #fatshark #impulseRC #ethix #brightontillifly #TeamBlackSheep #FPVUK #BLHeli #lipo #KISSULTRA #KissESC #esc #FlyDuino #JoshuaBardwell #Skitzo #Alien5 #ImpulseRCApex #HD #MrSteele #FPVRacing #MiniAirShow #LondonFPV #UKFPV #betaflight #fpvdrones #FPVRacing #MiniQuad #podcast #fpvwing

[0.0] Jack: Hello, and you're listening to Let's Drone Out, a special thank you to our lovely patrons
[6.28] Jack: that help donate so that we can pay the editor to remove the swear words and silly things
[11.36] Jack: we say.
[13.0] Jack: Massive thank you to…
[14.4] Jack: Carlos Campos!
[16.12] Jack: Art Faulkner.
[17.84] Frank: Sam Dahmer.
[19.68] Frank: On with the show.
[20.68] Quan Gan: Let's drone out now.
[51.96] Jack: Hello, and welcome back.
[54.68] Jack: You're listening to Let's Drone Out.
[56.88] Jack: It's so nice to do the intro once again, and I hope you all are doing well and safe,
[63.36] Jack: and thanks for tuning in.
[65.0] Jack: Tonight, we are joined by Stephen.
[67.4] Jack: Hello there.
[68.72] Jack: Kuan Gan from Azitag.
[71.24] Jack: I hear that you are working on a laser tag system for quartz.
[79.08] Jack: Is that right?
[80.68] Quan Gan: Yes, and that's actually one of many things we've done research in.
[85.68] Quan Gan: Yeah, this is one of many branches, but I'd love to dive deep with you guys on that.
[91.16] Jack: No worries.
[92.16] Jack: And I'm Jack, right until I fly, and start the show.
[96.4] Jack: Yeah, I don't know how long I've got in me, but…
[101.6] Stephen: Jack's running on an empty tank, so I have to excuse him if he needs to step away, but
[108.92] Stephen: let's dive in.
[109.92] Stephen: You've got a whole bunch of stuff on Z tag, or I guess Z tag.
[115.04] Quan Gan: Yeah, American English, we call it Z tag, but you could call it Z tag.
[119.28] Quan Gan: That's cool, too.
[120.32] Stephen: So you want to kind of explain where it came from, because it looks like this has been
[124.24] Stephen: a long unwinding path to get here.
[126.68] Quan Gan: Absolutely.
[127.68] Quan Gan: I've only been working on it for about six years, and prior to that, my lighting company
[131.56] Quan Gan: – you see the logo in the back – we've been in the themed entertainment world for
[136.0] Quan Gan: the past 13, 14 years now.
[139.72] Quan Gan: So my first company was actually a lighting company for theme parks.
[143.82] Quan Gan: So we design interactive technologies that go into all major parks across the world.
[149.1] Quan Gan: And because I was working on these interactive tech, it kind of spun off into this piece
[156.86] Quan Gan: of gear where I could actually get the guests to interact with the show through infrared.
[163.3] Quan Gan: And the initial product was actually this gag flashlight you would walk through a haunted
[167.94] Quan Gan: house with.
[169.14] Quan Gan: So you think it's a normal flashlight, you're pointing at different objects, but we can actually
[173.18] Quan Gan: shut it off right before we scare you.
[175.14] Quan Gan: We're using infrared beacons inside the walkthrough to trigger the effects that are in the lights.
[182.38] Quan Gan: We can turn them off and even have it vibrate in your hand.
[186.5] Stephen: And is the flashlight triggering jump scares and things?
[189.54] Quan Gan: It can, too.
[190.54] Quan Gan: Yes.
[191.54] Quan Gan: The second version, it also beaconed outwards.
[193.18] Quan Gan: So in some scenes, it's almost like a shooting gallery where you point it at an object, it
[196.94] Quan Gan: will get the thing to pop out.
[199.54] Quan Gan: So it was a very back and forth type of thing.
[202.14] Quan Gan: And we created this product to make shows be less so of a just a walk and see type of
[208.34] Quan Gan: show.
[209.34] Quan Gan: We wanted people to be fully immersed in it like a real video game.
[212.8] Quan Gan: And so the logical next step was, OK, how can I actually get guests to interact with
[217.9] Quan Gan: other guests, not just between the show and the guest.
[220.76] Quan Gan: So we're trying to bring people into it much more like an immersive video game.
[225.86] Quan Gan: So over the years, we developed the next product, which was a zombie tag product.
[231.86] Quan Gan: And that's actually where the Z originally came from.
[235.22] Quan Gan: But right now, we actually don't say a zombie because there's so many other purposes, even
[239.66] Quan Gan: like Z for the vertical axis, right?
[241.74] Quan Gan: So it kind of works out.
[244.42] Quan Gan: But the initial game was you have some people with red badges, which are zombies, and everybody
[250.46] Quan Gan: else green badges, which are humans.
[253.62] Quan Gan: And it was almost like a social experiment where we would put everybody into a room
[257.54] Quan Gan: and then just see how quickly the infection can spread.
[260.8] Quan Gan: And the largest game I hosted was 600 players in a 10 story building in St. Louis.
[265.82] Quan Gan: This is like a big party we sponsored.
[269.18] Quan Gan: And let me tell you, like within 10 minutes, everyone was infected.
[274.26] Quan Gan: Everybody was red.
[275.4] Quan Gan: So we essentially simulated COVID.
[277.82] Stephen: Yeah.
[278.82] Stephen: So how do the badges work?
[279.82] Stephen: Well, you said you had red and green badges, but what do the badges do?
[282.82] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[283.82] Quan Gan: So these badges had basically a tiny little pick processor with an RGB light on it.
[288.42] Quan Gan: And it had infrared transmission and reception.
[291.46] Quan Gan: So just really simple.
[292.46] Quan Gan: It was like a bare bone circuit board.
[295.26] Quan Gan: You might be able to even just if you look up Z tag on Google, you might be able to find
[298.58] Quan Gan: some of the old badges.
[300.58] Quan Gan: And they were sold really cheap.
[301.58] Quan Gan: It was just basically a printed circuit board with a little sticker on there.
[306.34] Quan Gan: And it was like a like a trade show souvenir where it would hand out.
[310.7] Quan Gan: But what was really unique about that was I started seeing some of the psychological
[315.98] Quan Gan: impact I had on the players.
[319.18] Quan Gan: One time we hosted this game and this guy came to me and he was like, thank you so much.
[324.38] Quan Gan: I've never been approached by so many women in my entire life.
[327.02] Quan Gan: And I was like, okay, that's cool.
[329.26] Quan Gan: You can actually use this as a like an icebreaker.
[332.98] Quan Gan: And then a fast forward another year, I hosted this game at a comic convention.
[338.54] Quan Gan: And there was this boy named Logan.
[339.94] Quan Gan: He was probably nine or 10 at the time.
[342.9] Quan Gan: And I just remember him playing this game for four days straight, nonstop, about six
[346.9] Quan Gan: hours a day.
[347.9] Quan Gan: And I'm like, whoa, I've never seen a kid just so active and engaged in this game.
[352.66] Quan Gan: Like it's just a dumb blinking light, really.
[354.58] Quan Gan: But he was very engaged.
[356.66] Quan Gan: And it wasn't until the last day that I met his dad that I found out something really
[361.5] Quan Gan: interesting about Logan.
[363.66] Quan Gan: His dad told me that his like his son is normally not like this son is actually normally really
[369.7] Quan Gan: shy and not engaging because he gets bullied at school.
[373.14] Quan Gan: And it's hard for him to make friends.
[374.82] Quan Gan: But somehow we put this like video game into real life.
[377.62] Quan Gan: And it got him to come out of his shell and he was like engaging with people.
[381.54] Quan Gan: And that was kind of my aha about five or six years ago, I'm like, wow, okay, if it
[385.34] Quan Gan: has this much impact, I think we have the potential to really bridge the digital world
[390.34] Quan Gan: that kids or other players already love with a really physical and social type of game.
[395.9] Quan Gan: So we started diving deep into developing a much more robust version of it.
[401.38] Quan Gan: And then fast forward to COVID times, which meant no more face to face interaction.
[407.34] Quan Gan: I personally was always interested in drones.
[410.66] Quan Gan: And so I was like, random spitballing, like, what can I do to like, make something interesting?
[416.1] Quan Gan: So I ended up sending this, this version of one of our latest products to rotor riot.
[421.66] Quan Gan: I'm like, hey, what would happen if you distract this to drones and see what happens, right?
[426.06] Quan Gan: And they made an episode out of it and it seemed like it got a decent amount of traction.
[430.66] Quan Gan: And that led us to diving into a drone specific version of the product, which is, you know,
[437.7] Quan Gan: what you see now, which is a little circuit board here.
[441.22] Stephen: Okay, so that's gone from being it looks like an armband with the Z tag human version, almost
[448.3] Stephen: like a large wristwatch that you stick to an arm.
[451.38] Stephen: And I'm guessing it just fires a constant stream in the forwards direction or all around
[456.94] Stephen: something.
[457.94] Quan Gan: Yeah, it's basically like we call it gunless laser tag, because it essentially uses similar
[462.7] Quan Gan: tech as the laser tag.
[464.5] Quan Gan: But by removing the guns out of it, you're no longer trying to aim and shoot an individual,
[468.78] Quan Gan: you're just trying to get someone by proximity.
[471.22] Quan Gan: So this instead of like a very narrow beam shooting a long distance, it's more like a
[476.54] Quan Gan: very wide shotgun beam at a close distance.
[479.98] Quan Gan: So we just tune it.
[480.98] Quan Gan: So when two players are within about two meters or so, the tagging happens.
[486.18] Stephen: Okay.
[487.58] Stephen: And with the drone one, it looks like you've got the beam on the front, but you've got
[492.98] Stephen: the collector actually on the rear of the drone.
[495.26] Stephen: Correct.
[496.26] Stephen: Got to like get into a dog fighting position and get behind someone.
[499.06] Quan Gan: Absolutely.
[500.06] Quan Gan: And that's actually what we learned was wrong with just strapping this to a drone, because
[505.1] Quan Gan: on the video for a rotor riot, they had to have it facing a camera so you can see what
[508.62] Quan Gan: the readout is.
[510.34] Quan Gan: But then your sensor is facing backwards, and you're also shooting backwards.
[513.86] Quan Gan: So if you looked at the first episode, you'll realize the only time they were able to tag
[517.54] Quan Gan: each other was when like two drones just collided and landed on top of each other and the signal
[521.46] Quan Gan: bounced.
[522.46] Quan Gan: Yeah, it wasn't actually shooting forward.
[524.66] Quan Gan: So that was the most obvious thing we had to do was to flip the emitter onto the other
[529.58] Quan Gan: side.
[530.58] Quan Gan: So it's actually shooting forward.
[531.58] Stephen: So it looks like you've gone the whole hog and you've got injection molded parts and
[534.9] Stephen: everything for this then.
[536.46] Quan Gan: I absolutely well, it depends on which product the drone stuff like we 3d print the housing
[542.46] Quan Gan: just to make it you know, flexible and expendable in a way we know is going to crash.
[548.9] Quan Gan: The reason why we made it into this form factor was I realized, in order to have a good experience,
[556.4] Quan Gan: it needs to have kind of like a readout.
[560.52] Quan Gan: But I've tried analog systems and with the lights in front of the camera, it's just so
[564.6] Quan Gan: horrible.
[565.6] Quan Gan: Like you can't tell the difference between the different colors on the resolutions low.
[570.06] Quan Gan: So we designed it for an HD system.
[573.28] Quan Gan: But at the time, this is, you know, a year and a half ago, you just didn't have access
[578.44] Quan Gan: to go into the the OSD for the HD system.
[582.14] Quan Gan: So that's why we were forced to strap this in front of the camera.
[585.08] Quan Gan: Otherwise, I would have really wanted it to be just part of the stack, it's all protected,
[588.84] Quan Gan: and then just feed info into the OSD.
[591.92] Stephen: So right now, it just needs like a five volts and ground from the from the flight controller
[596.64] Stephen: or something like that.
[598.08] Quan Gan: We we made it so like, one of my initial thoughts on this design was how can we make it as adoptable
[605.84] Quan Gan: as possible, meaning that very low friction anyone with a standard clock should be able
[610.6] Quan Gan: to strap this on and without soldering.
[613.76] Quan Gan: You know, if you have to solder to a flight controller, that means you have to open up
[617.52] Quan Gan: your quad and you know, get access to it.
[619.88] Quan Gan: So instead, this will take I believe from five to 30 volts.
[623.88] Quan Gan: So you could put it on most batteries.
[625.82] Quan Gan: And we just give you a little balance lead thing.
[628.08] Quan Gan: So this just clips to the other end of your battery.
[631.84] Quan Gan: Usually you're you know, you've got a dangly loose balance lead anyways, from you could
[635.36] Stephen: just give us a close up on that one.
[637.24] Stephen: Yeah.
[638.24] Stephen: So we have a device with two holes that looks like it screws on to is that the front stand
[642.88] Stephen: offs or rear stand offs?
[645.6] Quan Gan: So these will be the yeah, the front stand offs on your quad.
[648.68] Stephen: So so there's two holes and they they screwed to the front stand offs.
[652.1] Stephen: And then that gives you a display that you can read through your camera.
[656.12] Stephen: And then a wire comes from that, which has a balance lead connector.
[659.56] Stephen: So you attach that on to the battery.
[662.0] Stephen: And I'm guessing it's got a counterpart that goes on the rear, which is a collector of
[666.2] Stephen: some sort.
[667.2] Quan Gan: Well, actually, no, the it's, it's all in one.
[671.48] Quan Gan: So the the receiver is on the backside of the circuit board facing down.
[676.96] Quan Gan: So that way, for the most part is pretty exposed as long as there's just two screws to fit
[681.42] Stephen: it then two screws and attach the balance lead and you're off.
[684.36] Stephen: So yeah, people could arrive at a match and not even have this pre installed, they just
[688.6] Stephen: need to take out two bolts underneath the front two stand offs screwed on to the bottom
[693.16] Stephen: of the front two stand offs and a five inch and off they go.
[696.44] Quan Gan: Yeah, it takes about five minutes.
[698.48] Quan Gan: And actually, the installation is not the most time consuming, it's more coordinating
[703.28] Quan Gan: the pilots to launch at the same time to play the game.
[707.24] Stephen: Okay, so how do you coordinate that?
[710.64] Stephen: How do you track scores and stuff as well?
[712.64] Quan Gan: Well, the the scoring is actually stored in here.
[715.32] Quan Gan: So this is very similar to Mario Kart.
[719.98] Quan Gan: So you have five lives to start instead of three, we found having five lives made, you
[724.56] Quan Gan: know, makes it last a little bit longer.
[726.76] Quan Gan: And then each time you get hit, you may lose a life until you run out.
[732.24] Quan Gan: And then that means you know, you're no longer emitting and you come back down.
[738.28] Quan Gan: And these also have a wireless transmission, which means when I start the game, whoever
[744.8] Quan Gan: wants to start it, they just press a single button.
[747.48] Quan Gan: And it does a countdown timer for all the players.
[750.52] Quan Gan: And on the countdown, initially, you'll see the the lights kind of blink, sequentially
[755.64] Quan Gan: and just kind of like, you know, you're starting timer for a race.
[760.28] Quan Gan: And once it goes to the bottom, it does a stroke.
[762.22] Quan Gan: That means everybody's time to take off and start getting into the action.
[766.36] Stephen: Okay.
[767.36] Stephen: And do you have any kind of scoreboard or anything for bystanders who might be spectating?
[775.16] Quan Gan: I've done it in prototype, I don't have it as a product.
[778.84] Quan Gan: This system, it does keep score.
[780.6] Quan Gan: So once you land, you can look at the blink rate for the score, and it'll tell you how
[786.12] Quan Gan: many hits you've had.
[788.12] Quan Gan: But it's certainly transmitting that.
[789.66] Quan Gan: And so in R&D, I basically reprogram one of these, since it has a display to actually
[795.28] Quan Gan: show the scoreboard.
[797.28] Jack: What is that?
[798.92] Quan Gan: So this is our human version of the game, which is a better display.
[803.08] Quan Gan: Yeah, it has a display, it has the same chip, so they can talk to each other.
[808.0] Quan Gan: And so I just repurposed it to actually give me a score readout.
[810.72] Stephen: For audio listeners, the human version of the display is like a small project box with
[814.8] Stephen: a screen on the front and three buttons.
[817.08] Stephen: There's an armband attached on the back, so someone can wear this on their arm.
[820.88] Stephen: And it looks like you've got a pretty decent little OLED or LCD screen on the front.
[825.48] Quan Gan: Yeah, it's just a standard two-inch LCD screen there.
[830.48] Stephen: Excellent.
[831.48] Stephen: Okay.
[833.02] Stephen: So any plans to release that as a kind of adjudication device?
[838.48] Quan Gan: That's much further out, just because I don't see an immediate product market fit yet.
[843.72] Quan Gan: Like, can I do it?
[845.2] Quan Gan: Yes.
[846.2] Quan Gan: But is it worth my time to do it?
[847.76] Quan Gan: Currently not, just because even this product, it's very low volume in sales.
[852.72] Quan Gan: It's more of a side project.
[854.32] Quan Gan: Okay.
[855.32] Quan Gan: Just being completely honest, because my main focus is actually getting the human system
[860.36] Quan Gan: out.
[861.36] Quan Gan: In fact, I'm in the process of raising capital to turn this into a consumer product.
[868.44] Quan Gan: So my main focus has been the human game.
[872.44] Quan Gan: This, the reason why I've been very fascinated with this is actually, so I'm a technologist,
[879.88] Quan Gan: I'm kind of looking at long-term trends.
[882.52] Quan Gan: The long-term trend is video games are going to come to real life.
[885.24] Quan Gan: You've seen, you know, Ready Player One is going to be like an eventual scenario where
[889.56] Quan Gan: you have that kind of level of AI or augmented reality AR.
[896.32] Quan Gan: But one of the things to do that is if you have co-located people running around, whether
[902.52] Quan Gan: they're running around or flying a drone, high-definition wireless video transmission,
[908.96] Quan Gan: low latency is going to be very important going forward.
[912.56] Quan Gan: And this is why I've spent so much time on this, because this is kind of like drones
[917.68] Quan Gan: is at the cutting edge pushing that particular need.
[921.28] Quan Gan: Video games haven't currently pushed that need, because people are perfectly happy staying
[925.32] Quan Gan: at home playing on VR.
[927.52] Quan Gan: But once we want to get people outside, eventually that high-definition low latency wireless
[932.56] Quan Gan: is going to be very critical.
[935.84] Stephen: So what have your experiments shown you so far?
[938.84] Stephen: There's a number of systems, they're all buying, some are already going obsolete as we speak,
[943.96] Stephen: and it's all over the place.
[945.76] Quan Gan: Yeah, yeah.
[946.76] Quan Gan: So, you know, I'm not in the market to develop those systems because I think it's an eventuality
[951.96] Quan Gan: somebody will, but I'm always keeping tabs on what the state of the art is.
[957.36] Quan Gan: And right now, you know, just based on the community, I see these different digital systems
[963.48] Quan Gan: and they're being jailbroken, essentially, to allow us to tap into the MSP protocol and,
[970.72] Quan Gan: you know, generate OSD elements.
[972.84] Quan Gan: So I think that was a big breakthrough, because prior to that, if DJI is completely closed,
[978.36] Quan Gan: the only thing we could do is really just stick this in front of your camera.
[983.56] Stephen: So you're looking for kind of the lowest common denominator, I guess, which is some sort of
[988.52] Stephen: MSP-driven DisplayPort or Canvas mode that you can hijack.
[994.28] Stephen: You can...
[995.28] Stephen: Yeah.
[996.28] Stephen: And I saw you make some posts where you're talking about, oh, can I buffer the commands
[998.84] Stephen: going to an MSP DisplayPort device and then inject my own command in there?
[1003.84] Stephen: That's right.
[1004.84] Stephen: And how plausible is that?
[1005.84] Quan Gan: Yeah, I'm trying to just take the lowest hanging fruits.
[1008.12] Quan Gan: I don't want to be doing anything that someone else eventually is going to do.
[1012.32] Quan Gan: You know, we want to be able to add our own elements, but once we do, I think it opens
[1016.6] Quan Gan: up a lot of creative outlets for other applications to come in, because high-definition, low-latency
[1023.24] Quan Gan: video, like, that's not just for drones, that could be for so many different things.
[1028.24] Stephen: Yeah.
[1029.24] Stephen: Yeah.
[1030.24] Stephen: Or at the very least, a system like this would also be a lot of fun on radio-controlled ground
[1034.24] Stephen: vehicles as well.
[1035.24] Quan Gan: Absolutely.
[1036.24] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[1037.48] Quan Gan: I had a little version mocked up, just you could tape this to the top of an RC car, and
[1042.8] Quan Gan: you could just tag it that way, line of sight.
[1044.8] Stephen: Yeah.
[1045.8] Stephen: Just read around, find an empty basketball court or something, and just go crazy.
[1048.6] Stephen: Yeah.
[1049.6] Stephen: Exactly.
[1050.6] Stephen: Nice.
[1051.6] Stephen: Yeah, so I saw you talking on the Betaflight forums, Betaflight forums, depending on which
[1056.56] Stephen: side of the Atlantic we are.
[1058.32] Stephen: And yeah, the idea resonated with me at least, and I was wondering if this could potentially
[1064.88] Stephen: open up a lot of UI development, because your product, FPV Combat, is also interested
[1071.92] Stephen: in this, and I think you've got a kind of relationship with those guys already.
[1075.12] Stephen: And then on the racer's side, there's people who are interested in getting display output
[1079.36] Stephen: from things like lap timers, so they can see how the times are improving without taking
[1083.64] Stephen: the goggles off or without listening very carefully for this audio prompt that's hard
[1088.54] Stephen: to make out at a busy event.
[1091.16] Stephen: And so I think there's some sort of opportunity there for developers to perhaps either allow
[1096.28] Stephen: products to inject MSP directly, which might turn into a kind of free-for-all, or at the
[1101.7] Stephen: very least offer a couple of customizable fields, like you could have a user one and
[1106.58] Stephen: user two field that you could show ammunition and lives, or you could show lap times and
[1112.92] Stephen: things like this, and place those on the UI without having to hack them in into another
[1118.14] Stephen: field.
[1119.14] Stephen: I've got a little patch that hacks data into the craft name field, but that really is just
[1125.16] Stephen: an ugly way of getting to that conclusion, because what you actually want to do is to
[1130.16] Stephen: have a customizable data field that your product can use in the same way as, I don't know if
[1135.6] Stephen: you're familiar with beta flight, but there's custom user modes, so if you want to toggle
[1140.2] Stephen: a firework so it launches off the quad or something and you put a relay on one pin,
[1145.38] Stephen: then you can use pin IO, and you can have a toggle off that and set it to toggle off
[1149.44] Stephen: a switch and boom, activate some device based on that, and I think it'd be kind of neat
[1156.18] Stephen: to have something with an OSD field, so I know, oh, I'm going to expand my OSD, I'm
[1164.4] Stephen: going to go and assign this to one of the user-defined OSD fields or something, but
[1169.64] Stephen: we have to see how that goes.
[1170.8] Stephen: I think that there's a lot in the pipeline, and there's some renewed interest around canvas
[1175.2] Stephen: mode as well, I've noticed.
[1178.74] Quan Gan: I think canvas mode or just being able to customize the display at all is a huge breakthrough,
[1185.26] Quan Gan: especially given the past two months of development with the new HD system and the fact that we're
[1190.46] Quan Gan: able to actually crack open the system and put our own things in there, that's huge.
[1196.06] Stephen: Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
[1199.82] Stephen: I enabled the MSP OSD patch on DJI to give it a go.
[1204.78] Quan Gan: I got it working on this, so in a few days, I'm going to see if I can actually buffer
[1208.56] Quan Gan: some output and start putting things on the display.
[1212.2] Stephen: Let us know.
[1213.2] Stephen: Yeah.
[1214.2] Stephen: It'll be intriguing.
[1215.2] Stephen: I wonder what will happen if you have a constant stream of output, like at what point can you
[1218.12] Stephen: actually inject something if the line's busy all the time?
[1221.08] Quan Gan: Well, you see this, I've been tapping into the signal, and I see there's actually quite
[1226.98] Quan Gan: a bit of empty space in between the packets, so I'm hopeful that I can inject something
[1232.34] Quan Gan: without it disrupting too many things.
[1234.3] Stephen: You've just got to tell your users not to enable every single OSD element, like the
[1239.34] Stephen: beginner quad user, when you look and every inch of the screen is covered with OSD elements.
[1245.26] Quan Gan: Or I mean, we could just disable the ones that we don't think are necessary.
[1250.1] Quan Gan: We'll give you your battery readings, we'll give you some of the basic readings, but at
[1253.94] Quan Gan: the end of the day, since it has to pass through us, we can tell exactly what goes out.
[1258.42] Stephen: You can just filter it out, it's very smart.
[1261.62] Stephen: Very interesting, Quan, very interesting indeed.
[1265.52] Stephen: That's quite a development, that's cool.
[1268.56] Jack: What's your take on this, Jack?
[1271.36] Jack: I am really curious how durable that thing is on the front of your quad.
[1275.88] Jack: Oh, it's not.
[1276.88] Quan Gan: That's why we have to protect it, and this is also why the MSP is so significant, because
[1282.4] Quan Gan: it allows us to make this part of the stack, instead of sticking it out like a Pinocchio's
[1286.68] Quan Gan: nose.
[1287.68] Quan Gan: So, yeah, we've talked to many of these boards.
[1290.3] Quan Gan: I try to design the 3D print module to be as robust and impact resistant as possible,
[1297.74] Quan Gan: but still, even the one you've seen here, things are smashed on there.
[1302.82] Quan Gan: The LEDs are smashed.
[1303.82] Quan Gan: Is that PETG?
[1304.82] Quan Gan: What's that?
[1305.82] Stephen: PETG, around the frame?
[1308.06] Quan Gan: Yeah, this...
[1309.06] Quan Gan: No, it's not...
[1310.06] Quan Gan: What is...
[1311.06] Quan Gan: TPU.
[1312.06] Stephen: Yeah, TPU.
[1313.06] Stephen: Oh, it's TPU, and you're still...
[1315.06] Stephen: Yes, TPU.
[1316.06] Stephen: Especially electronics, not the actual print.
[1318.06] Stephen: The print is fine.
[1319.06] Stephen: It's the board that gives them.
[1320.52] Quan Gan: Yeah, what ends up happening is, during a crash, this thing will actually flex, and
[1326.24] Quan Gan: the front of your quad might run into some of the elements and pop off chips.
[1329.76] Stephen: So that's just going to go straight into carbon and metal and just be...
[1333.0] Quan Gan: Yeah, exactly.
[1335.2] Quan Gan: It does happen, but there are plenty of sessions where it doesn't happen, because you're trying
[1339.6] Quan Gan: to get behind people.
[1340.68] Quan Gan: You're not trying to just like joust and run them out of the air.
[1343.72] Stephen: Well, you say you, I mean, maybe I want to do that.
[1348.76] Stephen: Maybe I'll get an easier shot if I knock the guy on the floor first.
[1353.14] Jack: Yeah.
[1354.14] Jack: Yeah, it might be worth getting some epoxy resin on those chips and LEDs, you're just
[1361.5] Jack: going to have to...
[1362.5] Quan Gan: Well, by the time you put it into the stack, it solves all of those problems.
[1367.74] Quan Gan: So we only produce a limited amount of these boards, because I know as a matter of time,
[1373.34] Quan Gan: if we can get into the MSP, it just removes the whole need for this to be sticking out.
[1378.96] Quan Gan: So only your sensors need to be exposed, but even that can be tucked into the quad.
[1383.56] Stephen: Well, that could be a little LED board like Jack here designed to go on the back of the
[1387.96] Quan Gan: quad.
[1388.96] Quan Gan: Yeah, exactly.
[1389.96] Quan Gan: And actually, I have here, one of the things I've demoed...
[1392.24] Quan Gan: So actually, Bob Ruby designed this frame.
[1397.04] Quan Gan: We try to make it as small and nimble as possible, because if it's smaller, then the impact's
[1401.8] Quan Gan: going to be a lot more manageable.
[1404.54] Quan Gan: And also you're flying...
[1405.54] Stephen: What's with the camera position?
[1406.54] Stephen: That's a really odd camera position.
[1407.78] Quan Gan: Well, you have to put it here, because this thing, I wanted this to stick out.
[1411.42] Quan Gan: Oh, right.
[1412.42] Quan Gan: If the camera were up in the front, then this thing would be further out.
[1416.04] Quan Gan: So we purposely...
[1417.04] Stephen: So for all the audio viewers, instead of having a camera in between the front standoffs, it's
[1421.1] Stephen: kind of mounted in the middle of the frame on a tower.
[1424.14] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[1425.14] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[1426.14] Quan Gan: Yeah, but even this can be completely reconfigured once the Z tag board is part of the stack.
[1431.1] Stephen: I'm glad you've kind of thought through all the permutations.
[1434.2] Quan Gan: We've done a lot of experiments.
[1435.56] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[1436.56] Quan Gan: I mean, last year during COVID, I had no other business.
[1439.88] Quan Gan: So I spent a lot of time on this.
[1442.28] Jack: How did you get into quads?
[1445.08] Quan Gan: Actually, I've been in drones since 2003, before drones were even quads, through university.
[1456.26] Quan Gan: So my initial research was on micro-mechanical flying insects, so bio-inspired robot flies.
[1463.66] Quan Gan: And so this was a UC Berkeley research project.
[1465.9] Quan Gan: I was in the lab for about three years.
[1468.5] Quan Gan: And my colleague, Rob Wood, he got his PhD at Berkeley and became a Harvard professor.
[1475.26] Quan Gan: And he led the RoboBee project.
[1477.82] Quan Gan: And they ended up on Nature magazine, the front cover, maybe five years ago.
[1482.9] Quan Gan: And they were finally able to get the device to take off.
[1486.32] Quan Gan: So I've always been fascinated with micro-flying vehicles.
[1491.2] Quan Gan: And then fast forward to six or seven years ago, you started seeing that coming into the
[1497.1] Quan Gan: consumer space.
[1499.56] Quan Gan: And I started seeing just the vantage point of the camera being able to go through objects
[1504.56] Quan Gan: that your normal cameras wouldn't, and you get an out-of-body experience.
[1507.44] Quan Gan: I'm like, hell yeah, sign me up for that.
[1511.64] Jack: There was a question from wildhogs.
[1515.26] Jack: Is it possible playing between drones and airsoft players?
[1519.7] Quan Gan: Well, you wouldn't really want to be shooting the drones, although you can.
[1525.1] Quan Gan: But we've done games between humans where they basically strap this on their wrist and
[1532.26] Quan Gan: they're pointing at the quads.
[1533.8] Quan Gan: And then the quads have their Z-tag drone module, and they're circling around.
[1538.98] Quan Gan: Obviously, the quads have an advantage.
[1541.02] Quan Gan: They're a lot more maneuverable.
[1543.26] Stephen: I guess if the airsoft player had some kind of infrared beam attached to the gun, they
[1548.32] Stephen: could do something like that.
[1550.06] Stephen: Maybe they get more range, but more precision, which suits the human player.
[1554.14] Stephen: And the quads are much faster, so they could just be screaming around and circling people.
[1560.14] Quan Gan: The thing that I think most people don't realize, unless you actually do the development, is
[1564.9] Quan Gan: the concepts of video games rarely do any of those land well in the real world.
[1572.62] Quan Gan: People who are used to playing first-person shooters, they think they're a really good
[1575.42] Quan Gan: shot in real life.
[1577.14] Quan Gan: Not so much.
[1578.14] Quan Gan: If you wanted to take a gun, people are like, oh, can you make the laser sharper, narrow
[1584.14] Quan Gan: beam?
[1585.14] Quan Gan: What's the beam?
[1586.14] Quan Gan: No, we actually want to give you really big slop, like 30 degrees.
[1589.2] Quan Gan: So you actually feel like you're hitting something effective instead of getting so frustrated
[1593.62] Quan Gan: that a laser sharp beam, like I did some gun training, and they say most interaction
[1600.14] Quan Gan: happens within like three to four meters.
[1603.02] Quan Gan: And most of the time, people still miss, even at that close range with a bullet.
[1607.94] Stephen: Yeah.
[1608.94] Stephen: But I'd assume airsoft players have probably practiced a bunch.
[1612.22] Stephen: You'd hope they have, right?
[1614.06] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[1615.06] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[1616.06] Quan Gan: The thing about this is, in order to get it adopted by a lot of people, we have to make
[1621.98] Quan Gan: it very low friction for the adoption and the gameplay.
[1626.22] Quan Gan: Just putting it on the quad is not the only barrier.
[1630.22] Quan Gan: It has to give you a very good, immersive experience and a good fun experience that
[1635.58] Quan Gan: is relatable to video games.
[1637.98] Quan Gan: But since it's real life, there's a lot of real life considerations that most players
[1641.14] Quan Gan: haven't even thought about.
[1643.58] Stephen: What type of areas work best?
[1646.06] Stephen: A big open space could be not the best for something like this.
[1650.22] Stephen: I guess you want something you can hide behind, you want to break the sightlines a little
[1654.14] Stephen: bit so you can surprise people.
[1656.14] Quan Gan: Absolutely.
[1657.14] Quan Gan: We try to play, or at least set the boundary ahead of time, probably to no bigger than
[1663.42] Quan Gan: half a soccer field.
[1665.54] Quan Gan: Just so, like the way I see it is the interactions are almost like molecules in a chamber.
[1673.26] Quan Gan: And the smaller the chamber, the higher the pressure.
[1676.08] Quan Gan: So the pressure is equivalent to the interactions you have.
[1679.06] Quan Gan: So if you have a very large chamber that's low pressure, then you're not really having
[1683.06] Quan Gan: too much engagement between the players.
[1685.02] Quan Gan: So if you can find them, it works out a lot better.
[1688.62] Quan Gan: And then just having some texture, trees or objects so you can kind of loop behind and
[1693.42] Quan Gan: pop out, that makes it very interesting.
[1696.02] Stephen: So where have the most successful matches taken place?
[1700.06] Quan Gan: Honestly, it's really just been me and my buddies here.
[1704.14] Quan Gan: We just kind of go to an empty parking lot.
[1708.98] Quan Gan: And you do need an open space, especially for new players that haven't been so tuned
[1715.24] Quan Gan: to maneuvering in tight corners.
[1718.06] Quan Gan: So you want to give them places to just punch out and go high.
[1723.42] Quan Gan: So actually, open space tends to be the most forgiving because, yes, it might seem nice
[1729.1] Quan Gan: to have a lot of texture and things to go through.
[1731.94] Quan Gan: But if the worst player out of your group ends up just crashing and being out for most
[1737.94] Quan Gan: of the game, then you actually kind of lost the engagement.
[1741.66] Stephen: And do you always play on five inch?
[1743.26] Stephen: You showed us a four inch kind of lighter quad there.
[1745.78] Stephen: Is that more suitable, do you think?
[1748.02] Quan Gan: Well, I think five inches is the most common.
[1750.78] Quan Gan: So that's what we designed the 3D print files for.
[1755.34] Quan Gan: But ideally, I want to make just a ready to fly that is completely integrated.
[1761.62] Quan Gan: And then you can just buy a whole bunch of these and start playing.
[1765.54] Quan Gan: Because the thing is, when you start strapping this onto other people's equipment, even though
[1768.9] Quan Gan: we try to make a little friction, everyone's equipment is still different.
[1772.5] Quan Gan: So there's a lot of finagling happening right at the field versus if I had all of these
[1777.38] Quan Gan: ready to go, here's one, here's one, here's one, just sit down and fly, it's a lot easier.
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[1802.9] Frank: Find out more at patreon.com forward slash let's drone out.
[1807.86] Stephen: So what was the smallest quad you've flown it on then?
[1810.58] Stephen: What do you think is the ideal kind of the smallest?
[1813.38] Quan Gan: Well, the smallest is not the most ideal just because of the payload, it becomes pretty
[1818.74] Quan Gan: heavy.
[1819.74] Quan Gan: I've done it on a A85, I think, as I fly HD, yeah, but it's very, you know, just slow
[1827.82] Quan Gan: and wobbly.
[1828.82] Quan Gan: But that means other people may be flying the same things.
[1831.5] Stephen: Well, I suppose if you've got ducks on it, that's even better for beginners because they
[1836.7] Stephen: can bounce off stuff without mangling the props.
[1839.74] Quan Gan: Yeah, absolutely.
[1841.14] Quan Gan: And I think, you know, if it's for a general audience playing this in stable mode, maybe
[1847.34] Quan Gan: even indoors, but everything's slow, super slow and mellow, that might be a much more
[1852.74] Quan Gan: engaging game.
[1854.42] Stephen: Hmm.
[1855.42] Stephen: Hmm.
[1856.42] Stephen: Yeah.
[1857.42] Stephen: So someone's here's mentioned these I've got this image of doing it in redwoods and having
[1862.66] Stephen: the epic Star Wars music in the background, you know, the classic speed of bike scene,
[1866.82] Stephen: of course.
[1868.98] Stephen: Could you kind of encourage people to flow around a track and do a circuit while they're
[1873.98] Stephen: doing this?
[1874.98] Quan Gan: We've done it before.
[1875.98] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[1877.62] Quan Gan: Johnny Five has done that with his squad.
[1880.7] Quan Gan: So yeah, you.
[1882.98] Quan Gan: So imagine this.
[1883.98] Quan Gan: If you're doing a regular race, you're still trying to win the race by being the fastest
[1888.98] Quan Gan: around the laps.
[1891.04] Quan Gan: But we're going to add an additional challenge where you have to be alive.
[1895.56] Quan Gan: So that means you can't lose all of your your lights.
[1898.82] Quan Gan: So imagine if you're taking the lead, you're actually also the most vulnerable because
[1903.38] Quan Gan: somebody can get you.
[1904.38] Quan Gan: Exactly.
[1905.38] Quan Gan: And now there's the strategy of, yeah, who can cross the gates and still keep all their
[1909.38] Stephen: lives.
[1910.38] Stephen: You got to hang back and then shoot the guy in the lead and snatch victory at the last
[1914.38] Quan Gan: second.
[1915.38] Quan Gan: Certainly.
[1916.38] Quan Gan: That can that can happen.
[1917.38] Stephen: Yeah.
[1918.38] Stephen: Excellent.
[1919.38] Stephen: So Mateo of FPV Combats saying he's still trying to figure out how different FPV pilots
[1924.42] Stephen: could join the same experience.
[1926.78] Stephen: And he's thinking about both drones and fixed wing pilots fighting together, which are two
[1932.08] Stephen: totally different craft.
[1933.46] Stephen: A lot of fixed wing craft can easily top 100 mile an hour.
[1936.9] Stephen: They've got the speed.
[1937.9] Stephen: But the turning circles gigantic, whereas drones a bit more like flying gun turrets
[1944.74] Stephen: than.
[1945.74] Stephen: Yeah.
[1946.74] Quan Gan: I think I see like in my imagination, my wildest imagination, I could see all different classes
[1952.18] Quan Gan: of drones or even tanks or things on air, on the ground, fighting each other in this
[1957.8] Quan Gan: epic battle in order to do that in real life.
[1961.38] Quan Gan: It's very difficult to coordinate that many people.
[1964.56] Quan Gan: So one of the experiments I started doing last year, and this is just purely to see
[1969.84] Quan Gan: maybe this is a better way to get people to adopt it, is actually using simulators.
[1973.92] Quan Gan: So actually building an environment in sim, building the vehicles in sim and then allowing
[1979.48] Quan Gan: the tagging to happen in sim to actually simulate, hey, is this even a good game before I try
[1984.02] Quan Gan: it in the world and build it into a bunch of hardware?
[1987.32] Stephen: So you could understand like how the beam widths and the emitter strength play off against
[1992.18] Stephen: each other when you're going to the swing versus drones and just testing game balance
[1996.82] Quan Gan: and game mechanics.
[1997.86] Quan Gan: It's way better to do that in sim than put it into real life.
[2000.86] Quan Gan: And you have to call up your buddies, make sure they're all charged, we've got to manage
[2004.02] Quan Gan: them and they got to get there at the same time.
[2006.1] Quan Gan: Like there's a whole bunch of real world, you've got to tell them to all flash a specific
[2009.78] Stephen: firmware version before they get there.
[2011.98] Quan Gan: Pretty much.
[2012.98] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[2013.98] Quan Gan: All of this stuff.
[2014.98] Quan Gan: Right.
[2015.98] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[2017.32] Quan Gan: So putting it into a sim is a much easier controlled environment where you can actually
[2020.96] Quan Gan: do the real tests for the gameplay.
[2022.96] Stephen: It's a good idea.
[2025.28] Stephen: So speaking of that, is the sim an open effort?
[2029.12] Stephen: Do you want to try and invite more people to part?
[2031.24] Quan Gan: I would love people to come help me.
[2032.96] Quan Gan: So here's the thing, just like anybody who wants to work on this, I'm happy to just share
[2037.12] Quan Gan: with you my current progress on that.
[2038.8] Quan Gan: Like I can even open source that if people want to do it.
[2041.6] Quan Gan: I've approached existing sim companies.
[2044.36] Quan Gan: We had some talks, but it never really led to anything.
[2048.48] Quan Gan: But hey, like, you know, between me, Matteo and Alex Grieve, like us three, we really
[2054.28] Quan Gan: want to see this thing happen.
[2056.8] Stephen: We do know a guy who has a sim with both quads and fixed wing, but he decided he didn't want
[2062.24] Stephen: to come on today, but perhaps feeling threatened that the quad versus fixed wing combat market
[2068.16] Stephen: was going to blow up and be taken away from him.
[2071.34] Stephen: We can have a word with Curry about that and see if he's interested.
[2074.46] Stephen: He's got a sim where you can have planes and quads and cars, in fact, but currently they
[2080.24] Stephen: can't shoot each other.
[2081.26] Stephen: Maybe that's a feature we can ask him about.
[2084.14] Quan Gan: We want to approach whoever is willing to spend the time and effort to develop it because
[2089.6] Quan Gan: we're finding like currently our efforts is not always in alignment with other software
[2094.5] Quan Gan: developers pipelines.
[2096.52] Quan Gan: So if that doesn't line up, then, you know, and we're not professional in developing sims.
[2101.4] Quan Gan: It's just hard to make it come together.
[2102.76] Quan Gan: But whoever is watching this, hey, if you guys want to help us, that would be a fantastic
[2107.52] Quan Gan: effort.
[2108.64] Jack: Yeah, I think you should go back on Roy Roy and make a better impression once you get once
[2117.96] Jack: you get the stack done.
[2119.24] Quan Gan: So there is.
[2121.84] Quan Gan: I think that's possible.
[2123.74] Quan Gan: It is a challenge because the first time we did it, that was a novelty.
[2127.14] Quan Gan: So Roto Riot wanted to push it the second time.
[2129.94] Quan Gan: It's a product.
[2130.62] Quan Gan: So now we're kind of like a sponsor, you know, so it's a little bit of a different
[2134.58] Quan Gan: relationship, right?
[2137.1] Quan Gan: We need them to want to do it.
[2139.06] Quan Gan: It has to be a thing that people are asking for, for it to be good content.
[2143.98] Stephen: Well, if you can integrate with like MSP display boards or something that would play
[2148.54] Stephen: well to their new walk snail thing, you do.
[2150.9] Stephen: Yeah, certainly.
[2151.96] Stephen: Talking co-promotion before you know about it.
[2154.56] Quan Gan: Yeah, that will work out really well.
[2156.44] Stephen: Yeah, it's interesting from the audience point of view as well, because that first one
[2160.84] Stephen: looked almost like a basic Tamagotchi strapped in front of the quad.
[2164.68] Stephen: And then you had like a clearly a custom design thing with the array of LEDs and going
[2169.66] Stephen: from that to native OSD would be interesting to really show the evolution of the product.
[2174.64] Quan Gan: Yeah, yeah.
[2175.52] Quan Gan: And I even wonder, I don't know if it's supported now, but can we add color to OSD?
[2180.9] Stephen: I think it's the font sets can actually be colored.
[2184.9] Stephen: Yeah.
[2185.18] Stephen: Okay.
[2185.42] Stephen: So well, certainly on the DJI MSP, you can choose what color you want the font.
[2191.02] Stephen: It's RGBA with the alpha channel for transparency.
[2194.66] Stephen: So you could do within a font set, you could have some things different colors to others,
[2199.86] Stephen: but people just don't, I guess, because it would look distracting, perhaps.
[2204.58] Quan Gan: Okay, that's promising.
[2206.96] Quan Gan: I think multi colors for a game application is definitely needed.
[2211.48] Stephen: And there's definitely a couple of spaces.
[2213.16] Stephen: If you look at the beta flight font, there's some, there's multiple blank characters.
[2218.84] Stephen: Okay.
[2219.08] Stephen: There's the beta flight logo, which well, nice to have isn't strictly necessary.
[2224.44] Stephen: And so there's, there's stuff you could overwrite to put your own like glyphs in there if you
[2228.92] Stephen: wanted to do so, I think.
[2231.02] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[2231.18] Quan Gan: And I think the, the use paradigm is different because in your current OSD, it's much more
[2237.38] Quan Gan: of a peripheral piece of information.
[2240.1] Quan Gan: So they don't want to be distracting you from your actual flight, but when you're making
[2243.86] Quan Gan: a game, you're going to be looking at that and monitoring it a lot more.
[2247.22] Quan Gan: So having a highlighted with some UI design might be necessary.
[2252.42] Stephen: That's interesting.
[2253.02] Stephen: I think there's definitely a way to pursue this with the FPV WTF project because they
[2258.58] Stephen: expose so much of the innards of the OSD and changing font files is as simple as swapping
[2265.04] Stephen: a file on the DJI goggles.
[2266.96] Stephen: And they're all just in there as a raw bitmap.
[2269.32] Stephen: I checked out the format because I was annoyed and wanting to see kind of how I could make
[2275.08] Stephen: the font a bit more readable because it's just super blocky and chunky.
[2278.56] Stephen: Yeah.
[2278.84] Stephen: And it turns out all the characters are rendered just in a vertical ribbon one after the other.
[2283.84] Stephen: Interesting.
[2284.34] Stephen: And they're just purely a grid bitmap image in a vertical ribbon.
[2288.22] Stephen: I think you can look at the way it's assembled.
[2290.98] Stephen: Okay.
[2291.42] Stephen: So you could probably draw your own if you really wanted.
[2294.42] Quan Gan: Yeah, that's a good hint.
[2295.3] Quan Gan: Okay.
[2295.5] Quan Gan: I'll take a look at that when I get there.
[2297.6] Stephen: So if people want to try a Z tag, where should they go?
[2301.98] Stephen: How can they get involved?
[2303.38] Stephen: How could they find someone to have a game with?
[2306.1] Quan Gan: Well, to buy it, you can go to RotoRiot.
[2308.94] Quan Gan: They have stock.
[2310.64] Quan Gan: You could go to our website, although we kind of taken it down from mainstream because we're
[2316.2] Quan Gan: mostly pushing the human game.
[2318.36] Quan Gan: But our website is drones.ztag.com.
[2321.88] Quan Gan: Whereas if you just go to ztag.com, that's our human game.
[2325.92] Quan Gan: But RotoRiot would probably be the best distributor of it.
[2329.1] Stephen: There's still a buy now link, is that?
[2331.36] Quan Gan: Yeah, I disabled it because it was trying to get money and we weren't actually selling stuff.
[2334.84] Quan Gan: So I'd rather you guys just go to RotoRiot and get it.
[2339.34] Stephen: Okay, you need to sort out your shop hosting then.
[2342.66] Stephen: Yeah, exactly.
[2344.2] Stephen: Someone's trying to nickel and dine you for keeping things.
[2346.3] Jack: Or can I message you and just pay you direct by?
[2350.3] Quan Gan: Probably.
[2351.06] Quan Gan: Yeah, go to drones.ztag.com has all the details by purchasing.
[2357.1] Quan Gan: Yeah, send us an email and then we could probably do it off of the website.
[2361.38] Stephen: I see you have the STL files as well.
[2364.14] Stephen: So people could actually tweak that and size it to fit their quad.
[2369.4] Stephen: Yeah, that's nice.
[2371.36] Quan Gan: Oh, the Z tags, the agricultural.
[2373.76] Quan Gan: Yeah, like Z tag, I think is actually used in agriculture for like tagging cow ears.
[2380.28] Quan Gan: So they mark who the cow belongs to.
[2384.56] Stephen: It's not that.
[2385.72] Stephen: It's not that.
[2387.72] Quan Gan: Yeah, but we do have the trademark for ZTAG.
[2391.92] Stephen: I see it runs a five volt as well.
[2393.9] Stephen: So it says 2S to 6S, but it can run off five volts.
[2397.3] Stephen: It can run off five volts, yes.
[2398.66] Stephen: Yeah.
[2398.98] Stephen: So if someone has one of these little quads where they've got a five volt out
[2403.42] Stephen: for run cam thumb or something, then they can probably just clap that on as well.
[2408.3] Quan Gan: Yeah, the only consideration for five volts is you probably don't want to have too
[2412.7] Quan Gan: many external LEDs after this.
[2415.82] Quan Gan: So we have a port that allows you to put additional pixels onto it, up to 30 pixels.
[2421.44] Quan Gan: Um, but that's taking the load from the board, which is taking in the load
[2424.96] Quan Gan: from the, you know, the input power.
[2426.96] Quan Gan: So if you, yeah, if you draw too much current, you might burn out your board.
[2430.96] Stephen: So don't try and pimp your quad.
[2432.94] Stephen: Yeah.
[2433.12] Stephen: If you put it on the five volt rail.
[2434.76] Stephen: Okay.
[2435.46] Jack: Is there, is there a solution for analog scumbags like myself?
[2442.28] Quan Gan: You can do it.
[2443.56] Quan Gan: It just won't be a good experience.
[2445.24] Quan Gan: Uh, my experience with that is you can't really tell the color difference, especially
[2449.58] Quan Gan: at a distance between the different quads.
[2451.64] Quan Gan: So you just don't know who's team you're on.
[2453.9] Quan Gan: Um, and also it's hard to, uh, differentiate, um, like I guess, yeah, it's
[2460.92] Quan Gan: just super low quality video.
[2462.64] Quan Gan: It doesn't make for a good experience.
[2464.4] Stephen: Um, but in that situation mode, if you didn't have to worry about team colors,
[2469.0] Quan Gan: you could just play free from death match could work.
[2471.6] Quan Gan: Um, but also know that the challenge is you want to see, you want to see the
[2477.9] Quan Gan: other quad from a pretty far distance and analogs, just really not good at doing
[2481.78] Quan Gan: that, um, that's why HD has been like kind of our requirements since day one.
[2486.52] Quan Gan: I've tried it.
[2487.14] Quan Gan: I've tried putting this on, you know, just a tiny Hawk at home.
[2492.06] Quan Gan: And then when I pull this away, maybe like five meters away, it was already
[2496.5] Quan Gan: really a challenge to see something else.
[2499.26] Stephen: Interesting.
[2500.1] Stephen: Well, I guess FBV combat's got the analog site covered.
[2502.9] Stephen: They've got the full analog OSD as well.
[2505.14] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[2505.56] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[2505.88] Quan Gan: He, he has a great product.
[2507.8] Quan Gan: Uh, it, it's a slightly different market and the gameplay is quite different too,
[2513.16] Quan Gan: because you're designed to hit from a very far distance on another fixed
[2517.6] Quan Gan: wing, uh, versus ours is much more closer in proximity.
[2522.56] Stephen: So there's this, um, joining forces statement that you've got with, uh,
[2527.88] Stephen: FBV combat and video aerial systems as well.
[2531.44] Stephen: Can you tell us a little bit about that and what you're doing?
[2534.34] Quan Gan: Uh, so I, I think, um, in order for us to move this forward, I really believe
[2540.98] Quan Gan: that people who are actually pushing the technology needs to come together and
[2543.88] Quan Gan: work on a unifying theory behind it.
[2547.12] Quan Gan: Um, because that will give us more influence on the design decisions and
[2552.88] Quan Gan: also consider all the potential applications that could fit in under this
[2556.42] Quan Gan: umbrella, um, you know, we're, we're kind of doing each our own thing, but
[2561.3] Quan Gan: we have similar interests.
[2564.18] Quan Gan: And so if we can combine as one and also, um, like, uh, I believe the, the, the
[2570.56] Quan Gan: brand Z tag is pretty strong.
[2572.16] Quan Gan: It's something like as a, as a marketing vehicle, it's easy to share that with
[2577.02] Quan Gan: people and have them come to a single brand with a four letter.com.
[2580.64] Quan Gan: Right.
[2580.84] Quan Gan: So once you have that, uh, we can approach people and say, Hey, look,
[2585.52] Quan Gan: everyone in the space is already adopting this standard.
[2588.06] Quan Gan: Do you want to add this to your thing versus, Oh, you know, just
[2591.2] Quan Gan: one random company is asking you to add a feature.
[2593.28] Quan Gan: Like who's going to listen to us?
[2595.2] Stephen: Right.
[2596.32] Stephen: I should point out, I guess that, uh, video aerial systems also have, uh,
[2601.72] Stephen: it looks like they've got some patent on it and they've got an ACE combat system,
[2606.24] Stephen: which, um, we hadn't featured, but appears to be broadly similar to FPV combat.
[2613.08] Stephen: Yes.
[2613.38] Quan Gan: And analog says, so Alex Greve owns the us patent for, um, basically.
[2621.14] Quan Gan: A laser tag system where once you get hit, it affects your Sermo controls or
[2625.9] Quan Gan: some kind of controls to your vehicle.
[2627.98] Quan Gan: Okay.
[2629.26] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[2629.66] Stephen: So he doesn't have OST then he's just, he doesn't have OSD.
[2633.58] Quan Gan: Um, but his, his basic patent is saying, you know, once you get hit, affect
[2638.14] Quan Gan: the mechanics of your, of your vehicle.
[2640.7] Quan Gan: Uh, so that that's a key component.
[2643.16] Quan Gan: Um, our product actually, uh, doesn't infringe on that patent because
[2647.8] Quan Gan: it's an external product and it's strapped on.
[2650.12] Quan Gan: It has nothing to do with the actual flight characteristics, but we all
[2653.8] Quan Gan: see each other having really beneficial technologies that should be combined
[2658.32] Quan Gan: into an overall unified system.
[2660.2] Stephen: Yeah.
[2660.76] Stephen: If you take all three small communities, you've got one bigger community.
[2664.8] Stephen: Exactly.
[2665.28] Stephen: Put it all together.
[2666.36] Stephen: Yeah.
[2667.8] Stephen: That's a nice idea.
[2668.84] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[2669.08] Quan Gan: I've actually spent quite a bit of time with Alex.
[2671.28] Quan Gan: Uh, so we, uh, uh, he hosted me at a flight fest out in Ohio.
[2677.5] Quan Gan: Um, so I, uh, me and my son went there, had a lot of fun.
[2681.62] Quan Gan: We were sleeping in his campers.
[2682.82] Quan Gan: So we got a lot of time to chat and talk about, you know, the future of this thing.
[2687.62] Stephen: It looks like you've talked about a virtual ball that can be passed between people.
[2691.64] Stephen: So like, is that going to be capture the flag?
[2694.66] Quan Gan: It can be, it's basically the, the, uh, the essential elements of capture the flag.
[2700.62] Quan Gan: And this is something that, uh, came to me during testing.
[2704.8] Quan Gan: So, you know, you guys were talking about, uh, being spectator friendly,
[2709.88] Quan Gan: you know, seeing the score.
[2711.64] Quan Gan: Well, at the end of the day, if you just have a bunch of random
[2714.22] Quan Gan: quads flying around and tagging, it just looks like a bunch of, uh,
[2717.64] Quan Gan: like gnats, like chasing each other.
[2719.92] Quan Gan: It doesn't really tell a story or have anything for you to follow.
[2723.72] Quan Gan: But if you look at what is fundamentally spectatable for both the
[2727.72] Quan Gan: players and the spectators, you have to have a center of focus.
[2731.4] Quan Gan: And that's essentially the foundation of any ball sport.
[2734.1] Quan Gan: The reason why you have a ball, a physical ball is everybody's eye is
[2737.5] Quan Gan: paying attention to that one central object.
[2740.14] Quan Gan: And so by having this virtual ball instance, you're allowed to have, you
[2745.72] Quan Gan: know, the center of focus from both the spectator and the players
[2749.96] Quan Gan: talking about the same thing.
[2751.74] Quan Gan: Um, and that also makes it a better, uh, it makes it better
[2758.5] Quan Gan: content for you to live stream, right?
[2760.54] Quan Gan: If you have random objects just flying around, who's going
[2762.74] Quan Gan: to commentate on that, but if you have a single narrative that you can
[2766.76] Stephen: talk about, but you've got a quad.
[2769.64] Stephen: A has taken the ball from quad B and quad C has taken the ball and he's
[2773.72] Stephen: over the line and he passed to D and D crashed and C's got it back.
[2777.88] Stephen: And suddenly you've got something you can talk about.
[2780.18] Stephen: Yeah.
[2780.5] Stephen: I see.
[2780.8] Quan Gan: You know, we, we can basically create rocket league in real life with drones.
[2785.14] Stephen: That's a cool idea.
[2786.08] Stephen: Yeah.
[2786.8] Stephen: So you wouldn't see the ball, but there would be some kind of LED or marker
[2791.28] Stephen: on the quad that's going to say this quad has the ball.
[2793.86] Stephen: Exactly.
[2794.7] Stephen: Exactly.
[2795.52] Stephen: Okay.
[2796.04] Stephen: And you get the ball off by shooting that quad or you tag that ball.
[2800.56] Quan Gan: So if you're a, if you have the ball, you're flashing, everybody sees your
[2804.28] Quan Gan: flashing, your opponent gets behind you and tags the ball out of you.
[2808.1] Quan Gan: So you stop flashing and your opponent starts flashing, but your opponent,
[2812.18] Quan Gan: he can actually pass to his teammate by shooting behind his teammate
[2816.08] Quan Gan: and the ball will pass forward.
[2817.8] Stephen: So that could lead to some really interesting dog fighting as well.
[2820.82] Stephen: Absolutely.
[2821.38] Stephen: You can fight the incentive would be to immediately like flip back and try
[2826.38] Stephen: and immediately get behind the person who shot them.
[2828.62] Stephen: Absolutely.
[2829.54] Stephen: Yeah.
[2830.62] Quan Gan: I really want to see that happen in real life.
[2832.26] Quan Gan: Once we have some pilots who get used to how to fly it.
[2835.7] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[2835.86] Quan Gan: And imagine putting that on a live stream on a two versus two and you
[2840.64] Quan Gan: got, you know, red team on top blue team on the bottom and you can see where
[2843.9] Quan Gan: the ball is, uh, it is being passed and you might have my cooperation as well.
[2848.46] Stephen: Like you, you'd literally have a wing man.
[2850.32] Stephen: And if you got shot, then your wing man dive in and shoot the guy that shot
[2853.76] Stephen: you and things like that, that'd be totally kind of cool.
[2856.88] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[2858.52] Stephen: Very nice.
[2859.2] Stephen: Very nice.
[2860.28] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[2860.52] Quan Gan: And that's actually why I started developing the SIM because in order to
[2865.0] Quan Gan: get people to jump in the waters with us, I think it has to be so simple.
[2868.56] Quan Gan: They could just download it and see, do I even like playing this in this format?
[2872.66] Quan Gan: And if they do, um, then maybe it's time for them to actually buy the
[2875.96] Quan Gan: hardware to make it happen.
[2878.56] Stephen: Cool.
[2879.52] Stephen: Cool.
[2880.76] Stephen: I noticed there's been, uh, a trend of trying to get the HD zero system onto
[2885.6] Stephen: smaller and smaller quads, uh, there's now, I think the second or third
[2890.64] Stephen: bind and fly with HD zero, uh, a whoop they've got down to 65 mil, 75 mil.
[2896.26] Stephen: So this, this could be an adaptation that comes to, uh, to whoops as well.
[2901.32] Quan Gan: That that's really promising.
[2902.74] Quan Gan: Do you know if they're using MSP?
[2905.6] Stephen: Uh, it's an HD zero system.
[2907.32] Stephen: So yeah, that that's MSP display port.
[2909.76] Quan Gan: So if, if that's the case, then, and we can figure out the serial with our OSD,
[2914.88] Quan Gan: then yeah, if it supports it, that would be an amazing experience indoors.
[2918.64] Stephen: Yeah.
[2919.24] Stephen: Yeah.
[2920.28] Stephen: For a kid friendly, for easy on little fingers and things.
[2924.6] Stephen: You don't want them flying five inches around necessarily.
[2927.48] Stephen: Yeah.
[2928.76] Stephen: Cool.
[2929.64] Quan Gan: I am curious, what kind of features would you guys like to see?
[2932.92] Quan Gan: Like what would be the most important thing for you guys to,
[2935.9] Quan Gan: to see to make this work?
[2939.2] Jack: Hmm.
[2941.8] Stephen: I think having, having seen like four up race systems where you can
[2945.84] Stephen: see people's feeds in a race, having something like that, where you could
[2950.52] Stephen: scoreboard it in real time, that would be really cool.
[2954.28] Stephen: And then I can see the same crowd that goes to races wanting to have a batch
[2958.8] Stephen: of this in between a race, for example, and just get a few people on the race
[2963.8] Stephen: track, going crazy, shooting at each other, running through gates and things.
[2969.0] Quan Gan: Are they doing races with HD now?
[2972.24] Quan Gan: Is that common?
[2973.56] Stephen: HD zero has a race system, uh, cause DGI pretty much doesn't work well for racing
[2980.56] Stephen: because it doesn't hit the lap time as accurately, but HD zero released a
[2985.36] Stephen: tuner board, which is four tuners in one that lets you do a four up on four video
[2991.12] Stephen: feeds from HD zero.
[2993.12] Stephen: Um, and I think that seems to be gaining popularity.
[2996.12] Quan Gan: Very cool.
[2996.84] Quan Gan: Yeah, I could totally see, uh, even just like a race specific OSD, uh, that
[3002.44] Quan Gan: that can give you the lap time as you're talking about.
[3004.88] Jack: Yeah.
[3005.32] Jack: Yeah.
[3006.16] Jack: Um, my, my only request is cause I'm, uh, it's a truly demented request.
[3013.72] Jack: Cause, uh, I'm, I'm big resident evil fan.
[3017.92] Jack: One, two, three falls.
[3020.0] Jack: All right.
[3021.64] Jack: Um, after that, but, uh, I'd love a blood squib to
[3026.44] Jack: like blow in your camera, you know, fake blood, you know, just gore it right up.
[3033.84] Quan Gan: Oh, we could block your feet if you get shot too.
[3036.8] Jack: Yeah.
[3038.64] Jack: That's it.
[3039.12] Jack: Like, you know, you can no longer read when you're infected.
[3043.88] Jack: Yeah.
[3044.44] Jack: All your characters are messed up.
[3046.52] Jack: Oh, that'd be cool.
[3047.72] Jack: Or, or, or squids on, uh, squids on the actual pilot.
[3052.2] Frank: Yeah.
[3053.16] Stephen: Just, uh, they were talking about electrocuting the pilot last time with FPV
[3058.76] Stephen: combat, they're like, and we'll just give the pilot a small shock.
[3063.08] Quan Gan: So that, that score reader I had that I repurposed this on.
[3067.88] Quan Gan: So if you have this on your arm, it has a motor inside.
[3070.44] Quan Gan: So every time you register a tag, you can feel it too.
[3073.4] Jack: Oh, that's nice.
[3074.76] Jack: So that was offset, um, spinning motor.
[3078.44] Quan Gan: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[3079.6] Quan Gan: It's like a, uh, yeah, just wanted it as a phone vibrator.
[3083.68] Jack: Yeah.
[3084.64] Jack: It should have put like a small, um, worm gear motor that
[3089.24] Jack: tightens the strap until your arms fall out.
[3094.76] Jack: Well, no, not, it's not like a turn.
[3096.32] Jack: Okay.
[3100.24] Jack: Any, any questions, any, um, suggestions or feature requests in the chat?
[3106.88] Jack: Yeah.
[3107.68] Jack: Yeah.
[3108.24] Jack: Just let us know.
[3110.08] Jack: We're, um, we're competing right now with, um, uh, team fail safe podcast.
[3115.84] Jack: They're, uh, they're streaming as well.
[3119.52] Jack: Yeah.
[3119.88] Jack: There's a, there's a lot of our regulars over there.
[3123.16] Jack: So I know.
[3125.72] Stephen: So we'll often fail safe has any quads left.
[3129.0] Stephen: I think he's flying around concrete ruins in Croatia somewhere and seems to
[3133.44] Stephen: have smashed a couple of them into quite small pieces.
[3136.84] Quan Gan: We should do it together then.
[3138.52] Stephen: Yeah, I'll have to have a work with fail safe, get him on the show
[3140.8] Stephen: after his little adventure.
[3142.48] Stephen: We've got, um, FPV drone Fest coming up for people in the UK as well.
[3147.08] Stephen: Just a couple of weeks till that.
[3148.92] Stephen: So grab your tickets for that.
[3150.48] Stephen: Um, the meeting up with most of the LDO crew and also fail safe
[3156.8] Stephen: and company will be there as well.
[3159.04] Stephen: So promises to be a great time.
[3161.84] Stephen: Lots of opportunity to meet people IRL.
[3166.08] Jack: Yeah.
[3166.48] Jack: And we've got our seven year anniversary on the 17th.
[3173.36] Jack: So yeah, we've been going for a very long time.
[3176.36] Jack: Obviously we didn't start with like flying insects in 2003.
[3181.6] Stephen: He and I have to tell us more about the flying insects sometime.
[3184.6] Stephen: That sounds fascinating.
[3186.36] Quan Gan: Now I'll send you some links.
[3187.88] Quan Gan: It's amazing.
[3188.76] Quan Gan: Like I think five years ago, they got it to take off finally untethered
[3192.28] Quan Gan: because normally the battery was actually one of the biggest things.
[3195.76] Quan Gan: They didn't want to deal with the payload.
[3197.76] Quan Gan: So they just had like tiny little gold wires hang off of it
[3200.6] Quan Gan: so he can fly on his own wires.
[3203.44] Quan Gan: What's that bond wires?
[3205.88] Quan Gan: I think so.
[3206.6] Quan Gan: It might've been, um, just really tiny wires because they, they wanted
[3211.04] Quan Gan: to decouple the power system from the flight system.
[3215.08] Quan Gan: So they got the flight system working and then what got them on the nature
[3219.28] Quan Gan: of magazine cover was it basically put tiny little solar panels on the bottom
[3224.28] Quan Gan: and they blasted it with the equivalent of three sun's worth of energy
[3227.96] Quan Gan: on that surface just to get it to take off.
[3231.08] Jack: Oh yeah.
[3232.08] Stephen: That's cool.
[3233.64] Stephen: It's a very cool little device.
[3236.52] Stephen: I, I'm fascinated by ornithopters.
[3239.0] Stephen: I own a bunch of quads and I've always wanted to own an ornithopter,
[3243.04] Stephen: but most of them look like ugly pigeons waiting for where we can
[3248.52] Stephen: get a real nice ornithopter.
[3251.72] Jack: I like the, did you ever see, it was an old RC groups thread, um, but some
[3258.48] Jack: guy built a, you could, you used to be able to get like this realistic
[3264.12] Jack: looking bird foamy and he made it in such a way that it looked like an actual
[3271.88] Jack: seagull and, um, he was out flying it and other seagulls would attack it.
[3280.0] Quan Gan: Oh, wow.
[3281.32] Jack: But like Paul, I remember, I wish I could find the, it was an old thread
[3287.28] Jack: that me and Dan Upton is a guy I haven't mentioned on the podcast for ages
[3291.48] Jack: about, but we were just like, man, if we had that, we would get it to like
[3296.16] Jack: poop on people, you know, and get mayo just, you know, just like surreptitiously fine.
[3304.52] Quan Gan: It's harder than you think to aim well and hit someone.
[3307.8] Jack: You're going to need a really good targeting system.
[3311.08] Quan Gan: You'll probably need FPV or something like doing a line of sight, um,
[3316.16] Quan Gan: quick tangent, but when we were at flight fest, you know, they, every two hours,
[3321.16] Quan Gan: they send like 200 fixed wings up in the sky and just ram each other.
[3325.24] Quan Gan: Oh yeah.
[3325.72] Quan Gan: The FPV combat.
[3326.68] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[3327.28] Quan Gan: So they, they do that, but like it's surprisingly hard to get two
[3330.88] Quan Gan: vehicles to actually come in and, um, you know, like, you know, like,
[3334.44] Quan Gan: surprisingly hard to get two vehicles to actually collide midair, right?
[3338.48] Jack: So if, if, if it's just you and your mate and you have two planes and that's it,
[3346.36] Jack: they, they magnetically, but as soon as you get to anything more like three
[3354.32] Jack: or five and you're deliberately trying to hit each other, it all of a
[3359.88] Jack: sudden becomes impossible.
[3361.16] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[3361.52] Quan Gan: It's very, it's very difficult, but just aiming in general,
[3364.2] Quan Gan: because you don't have that sense of depth, uh, it's very hard.
[3367.4] Quan Gan: So you want to poop on people that that's a non-trivial challenge.
[3371.6] Stephen: Well, I think you could do a strafing run and you just, yeah, dropping
[3375.96] Stephen: mayonnaise and you just basically line it up, you know, left, right.
[3381.28] Stephen: And you just go over someone's head.
[3383.76] Jack: Yeah.
[3384.36] Jack: The idea would be to do a beach run along the beach and just like,
[3390.56] Jack: just crop dust in a sort of like bombing run.
[3398.44] Jack: But then, you know, I was thinking like, you know, we will get in trouble.
[3403.56] Jack: You know, someone's allergic to it.
[3406.28] Jack: You know, like, should we use egg free mayonnaise?
[3409.56] Quan Gan: A lot of 21st century considerations.
[3412.0] Jack: Yeah.
[3412.44] Jack: But then they stopped making that realistic like, um, model.
[3418.48] Quan Gan: You got to be dropping organic mayo.
[3423.24] Stephen: I followed a thread, another really long on nasty groups.
[3426.8] Stephen: There was a guy in Japan who, who was building just tons of handmade ornithopters
[3431.48] Stephen: and he got them looking pretty good, but they were kind of eagle sized things.
[3435.6] Stephen: I really wanted one, but such a, you know, when, when you have stuff in that
[3440.08] Quan Gan: scale that flies completely different from a micro flying insect, right?
[3444.16] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[3444.4] Quan Gan: Cause when we were testing for bees, they're like, initially these should not
[3449.12] Quan Gan: actually fly according to traditional aerodynamics.
[3452.08] Quan Gan: Like, why is it able to fly?
[3453.8] Quan Gan: And the Reynolds numbers are very different, um, when they're at that scale.
[3458.8] Stephen: I think I saw a note in the article you sent over saying that they increased
[3464.4] Stephen: the thrust by, uh, upping the wing speed from 170 Hertz to 270 Hertz.
[3471.84] Stephen: So the thing's going 270 times a second.
[3475.08] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[3475.56] Stephen: That was just crazy.
[3477.4] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[3477.56] Quan Gan: Very different.
[3478.2] Quan Gan: You're not using Bernoulli's principle to, to keep it afloat anymore.
[3482.0] Quan Gan: Um, they, they've done a scaled model with the same Reynolds number,
[3486.6] Stephen: which is like essentially the, uh, Bernoulli's principle is that there is
[3491.88] Stephen: kind of a skin of air over an aerofoil surface, right?
[3494.6] Quan Gan: Right.
[3495.6] Quan Gan: And in this one, it's more like, um, the wing is so, uh,
[3502.4] Quan Gan: well, the air at that point when they're so small, the air has so much
[3505.6] Quan Gan: inertia compared to the actual wing that it's more like swimming through molasses.
[3510.64] Stephen: And so when you were one of those kids, ball pits.
[3513.4] Quan Gan: Yeah, exactly.
[3514.24] Quan Gan: So the wing actually comes in with like a 45 degree angle of attack, flip
[3518.44] Quan Gan: over as quickly as possible and sweep back with another inverse 45.
[3522.72] Quan Gan: But even that sweep generates more to seize that actually generates
[3525.68] Quan Gan: additional lift on the subsequent, uh, wing beat.
[3529.52] Stephen: That's crazy.
[3530.84] Stephen: Well, if you ever decide to follow up on a flying robot insects, I think
[3535.8] Stephen: we've got another show in the offing there.
[3538.44] Quan Gan: Certainly.
[3538.88] Quan Gan: I wouldn't be the expert, but I might be able to find someone to come in.
[3542.48] Jack: Yeah.
[3542.96] Jack: Yeah.
[3543.24] Jack: Let us know.
[3543.84] Jack: Shoot us an email.
[3544.92] Jack: We would, yeah.
[3547.16] Jack: Like we'd love to learn about that, man.
[3550.44] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[3550.88] Quan Gan: I mean, that's kind of one of the precursors to modern day drones because,
[3555.0] Quan Gan: um, you know, back then a lot of this came from, uh, a military research
[3559.16] Quan Gan: for a search and rescue and reconnaissance and, uh, drones at the
[3563.68] Quan Gan: time, probably were still on the order of like hundreds of thousands of
[3567.92] Quan Gan: dollars to develop because the sensors weren't available.
[3571.0] Quan Gan: You didn't have the accelerometers with that kind of, you know, high response
[3573.88] Quan Gan: rate, uh, digital, uh, your, uh, uh, your, uh, your processors weren't even
[3579.76] Quan Gan: that fast to do the control loop.
[3581.84] Stephen: Yeah.
[3583.52] Stephen: So you had to rely on auto stabilizing wing devices.
[3587.48] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[3588.2] Quan Gan: Yeah.
[3588.56] Quan Gan: So a lot of different industries pushed the boundaries of their technology
[3593.36] Quan Gan: to enable, uh, modern age drone flight.
[3596.8] Stephen: Very interesting.
[3598.36] Stephen: Well, we, we delve into the history of drones fairly regularly here.
[3602.96] Stephen: And I'm sure when Jack's feeling in good form again, we'll maybe get Frank and
[3607.88] Stephen: others on and we'll go back over exactly why we ended up with quads the way we
[3612.48] Stephen: are today and we'll ask the question once again, wasn't it all better when
[3616.64] Stephen: people were taking a part there, we remotes, uh, yeah, and using plain parts.
[3627.24] Jack: I mean, I remember I had to, I had to push the, um, shaft through the
[3635.96] Jack: outrunners in order to have the props on top.
[3641.32] Quan Gan: Oh, okay.
[3642.44] Jack: Yeah.
[3643.24] Jack: Yeah.
[3643.88] Jack: That's the level of insanity that I had to go through.
[3649.32] Jack: Um, right.
[3650.48] Jack: That is unfortunately all we've got time for.
[3653.4] Jack: Um, like thank you for being a guest on our show.
[3659.4] Jack: I hope you've been absolutely fantastic.
[3662.52] Jack: It's been a pleasure talking to you, man.
[3666.68] Jack: I wish you all the best in your human Z tag.
[3671.84] Jack: Quest.
[3672.44] Jack: And I hope that goes well.
[3674.28] Jack: And then we can kind of, you know, get, get the quads out of stuff up and
[3680.2] Jack: really sort of like have fun with that.
[3684.52] Quan Gan: Yeah, I really look forward to that.
[3686.44] Jack: Yeah.
[3687.08] Jack: And, um, I'd like to say a matter of thank you to Steven for like keeping
[3691.96] Jack: LDO going and finding loads of guests.
[3696.16] Jack: You've been working so hard behind the scenes, man.
[3700.68] Jack: Thank you.
[3701.84] Jack: Uh, working hard or hardly working.
[3705.2] Stephen: Yeah.
[3707.4] Stephen: It's been a lot of fun.
[3708.64] Stephen: Uh, thanks for, Juan, for coming on the show.
[3710.72] Stephen: Great to hear from you.
[3711.88] Quan Gan: Happy to be here.
[3713.04] Quan Gan: Thank you.
[3714.36] Jack: You've been listening to Lesher and now it's been supported by our lovely
[3717.44] Jack: Patreons so that we are completely impartial.
[3721.0] Jack: We can say what we want.
[3722.8] Jack: Um, you know, and everyone who tunes in, thank you guys.
[3728.72] Jack: Uh, our host tonight has been Steven.
[3732.88] Jack: Cheers.
[3734.04] Jack: I've been sat in the corner, brought to a fly and our guests.
[3739.16] Stephen: Everyone's been wishing Jack well.
[3741.24] Stephen: So get well, Jack, and I hope you feel better.
[3744.28] Jack: Thank you.
[3744.76] Jack: God, doctor's appointment first thing in the morning.
[3747.2] Jack: And, uh, thank you for coming on, uh, Quan from Z tag.
[3752.48] Quan Gan: Thanks for having me.
[3753.88] Jack: Cheers.
[3754.92] Jack: Thank you guys.
[3755.88] Jack: Good night.
[3758.28] Stephen: Telemetry loss.