=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 407 ===
Title: LDO 407 - Charged With Battery
Recorded: 2023-06-15
Hosts: Stephen "Belrik" Howell, Wayne "CurryKitten" Andrews, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash, Koel "Koala" Anderson, Andrew "Frank" Hyams
Guest(s): (none recorded)
Total audience: 1,375
Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfrlFucXQ8g); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/1542901585-letsdroneout-ldo-407-charged-with-battery.mp3)
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#letsdroneout #LDO #podcast #drone #fpvpodcast #FPV

[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!
[16.0] Jack: Art Faulkner.
[17.84] Stephen: Sam Dahmer.
[19.68] Stephen: On with the show.
[20.68] Jack: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Let's Drone Out.
[57.46] Jack: Right, we are joined by our lovely Mr. Art Stephen.
[63.26] Jack: Hello, good evening.
[66.18] Jack: Everyone's favourite curry kitten.
[68.22] (squeaky voices): Hello!
[69.22] Jack: I'm trapped in the boot of someone's car, Cole.
[75.34] (squeaky voices): Help me!
[76.42] (squeaky voices): Help me!
[78.1] Stephen: Cole is coming to us live from a little bit of work he's been doing.
[82.58] Jack: Yeah.
[83.58] Stephen: Yes.
[84.58] Stephen: And I am bright to the left light.
[87.22] Koel: And this week on Let's Drone Out, we are…
[91.78] Jack: Car noises with Cole.
[93.78] Koel: Car noises with Cole.
[95.78] Stephen: Oh, I was going to say I've got like the cutest little power supply that someone made
[100.98] Stephen: where they put one of these little boards into a 3D printed case and it's so small.
[107.7] Stephen: It runs off an XT30 or it's got a USB power delivery port in the back.
[111.7] Stephen: It just arrived before the show and I'm monkeying around with it.
[115.06] Stephen: It's like 30 quid.
[116.74] Stephen: The display is way too bright, which always happens with cameras, but it's got a little
[120.1] Stephen: LCD and it's got a potentiometer, a little clicky one rotary encoder there.
[126.9] Stephen: And it's got a switchable output so you don't have to just fry stuff.
[130.26] Stephen: You can actually change the setting and then bing.
[132.82] Stephen: Turn it on, little LED comes on when the output's on, which is nice.
[137.46] Jack: Is that from like…
[140.02] Jack: My life was ever changed when Frank got me my power supply because he was sick of me
[150.26] Jack: testing stuff and then all of a sudden the bench power supply would give out?
[157.94] Stephen: I mainly just need stuff to power up an ESC and flash it or to power up a VTX and flash it.
[164.1] Stephen: So it's nothing fancy.
[166.18] Stephen: It only goes up to 35 volts, so it's not enough for the 10S rig.
[170.18] Stephen: It's not really enough for the…
[172.42] Stephen: Does it do A-test?
[173.38] Stephen: Yeah, it's kind of doing mid-cell voltage on A-test, but it's good enough.
[177.78] Stephen: It's just something that's configurable so I can go down to like 8 volts if I've got a 2S capable
[184.18] Stephen: board and still be able to give it a bit of a spin.
[188.66] Stephen: It's a 3D printed case in the UK, by the way.
[191.46] Stephen: Test clips made it.
[193.3] Stephen: So it's really cute, so small compared to most power supplies.
[197.7] Jack: Yeah, mine takes bit up on the bench, but I don't think I had ever lived without it now.
[202.82] Jack: I'm very attached to it.
[204.5] Jack: Curry, it appears that you've had a little bit of a change around in your room.
[210.3] Curry: It's utter chaos, quite frankly.
[213.5] Curry: I decided I needed a clear out, which involved that piano coming upstairs,
[219.02] Curry: which means all the stuff that was in all that has been displaced.
[223.1] Curry: So we've got the amps over here.
[228.06] Curry: That's not in the right place.
[230.22] Curry: And it's all okay there, 3D printer, and then we've got storage boxes, which isn't great.
[235.34] Curry: And then there's a giant robot in the way, and then there's new shelves there.
[238.46] Curry: But if we could see down here, there's floor space.
[242.54] Curry: It's clear.
[243.26] Curry: It's amazing.
[243.82] Curry: Outrageous.
[245.58] Curry: I know.
[246.06] Curry: And now we've got wings up there.
[249.98] Stephen: Is it going to feel better once everything's got like a quarter inch of dust on it?
[255.18] Stephen: Are you just waiting for it to settle down?
[257.9] Curry: No, I mean, I'm only midway through.
[260.78] Curry: There's there's much to do.
[262.62] Curry: I need those boxes gone.
[264.94] Curry: So I need to sort through findhomes things, which means getting rid of more stuff.
[269.42] Curry: So yeah, it's it's a bit of a disturbing background for people used to seeing other things.
[274.78] Curry: Sorry.
[275.98] Stephen: I mean, you say disturbing background, but like,
[278.54] Stephen: we get to see whether Jack's made his bed or not.
[280.94] Stephen: And I've just got a huge heap of crap.
[282.62] Stephen: So I think you're still in the lead in terms of backgrounds.
[288.78] Curry: I missed a garrison and a Buffy.
[290.86] Curry: So what about it?
[292.78] Jack: You upset about the piano being moved into the RC space?
[297.42] Curry: Not really, because I I was the one that liked the piano.
[300.46] Curry: The piano was downstairs as a bit of a sort of feature.
[304.22] Curry: Everybody sort of used to tinker on it when we first got it, which is about 10 years ago.
[308.78] Curry: It is a Yamaha electric piano.
[311.26] Curry: So you don't have to have the hassle of like it being noisy.
[315.5] Curry: So I can just turn around and play it if I want to,
[318.06] Curry: instead of having to faff around and go downstairs and plug head venting.
[322.06] Stephen: Did you have a cape?
[323.34] Stephen: So you can do your midnight Rick Wakeman sort of moments.
[328.86] Stephen: Do I have a cape?
[330.38] Curry: Yeah, I don't have a cape.
[332.62] Curry: I feel I'm missing out now.
[334.14] Curry: Do you have a cape Steven?
[336.78] Stephen: No, no, no.
[337.5] Stephen: But I play electric guitar, which is less of a cape related instrument.
[340.78] Stephen: Although there are some aficionados who go that way.
[344.14] Stephen: For me, it's more like standing at the window.
[346.54] Stephen: And maybe I put a fan on to blow my blow my mustache, you know.
[351.18] Curry: Sounds fair.
[352.3] Curry: Yeah.
[353.34] Curry: It's looking very light in Jack's room.
[355.26] Curry: Have you got the sun coming into you or something?
[357.1] Curry: Is it is it mainly coming through the window?
[360.46] Jack: Yeah, I am fully close to the window.
[362.86] Curry: I've never seen it so illuminated before.
[364.62] Curry: It's a bit disturbing.
[366.46] Curry: Normally, you're just in this dark shroud,
[368.46] Curry: and there's a tiny little illuminated Jack in the middle.
[373.74] Stephen: It's not been.
[374.86] Stephen: Go ahead.
[375.9] Stephen: No, carry on.
[376.86] Stephen: I was just going to ask you what you've been up to.
[378.3] Stephen: That's all.
[380.7] Jack: Not too much kind of been doing a lot of venture repair stuff.
[386.14] Jack: Digby Dan's had the kids for the last couple of weeks.
[392.06] Jack: And I haven't really been invited out to fly with anyone.
[395.9] Jack: So it means looking after Tony.
[398.78] Jack: I think so.
[400.46] Jack: Speaking of my darling wife, I did complete the X class.
[407.98] Jack: And what happened?
[413.84] Stephen: Oh, did he did he bin it?
[418.18] Jack: Do you want photos of the outcome first?
[422.02] Stephen: We yeah, we want.
[423.3] Stephen: Yeah, full narrative.
[425.3] Stephen: So is this the test?
[428.58] Stephen: He was always the same.
[429.54] Jack: So that's the worst.
[434.34] Jack: After the finisher build.
[439.41] Jack: So this video, we're in a field.
[443.65] Jack: Successfully takes.
[446.77] Jack: Believe it or not.
[447.49] Jack: He's not sat in that garden picture.
[453.34] Jack: He's got a camera on that.
[458.46] Curry: It sounds like you're spanking a really funny noise,
[460.38] Curry: but maybe that's just the.
[463.58] Jack: Oh, there it goes.
[464.54] Jack: And then all of a sudden flip of death.
[468.3] Stephen: Why is he cracked out?
[474.61] Stephen: Come on, he must have.
[475.33] Stephen: He must have plugged in a battery and seen what happened,
[477.97] Stephen: took the props off and give it a little whiz.
[481.89] Curry: Did he I mean, on the face of it, it didn't look that bad.
[484.69] Curry: But of course, these things have a lot of weight
[486.37] Curry: and inertia behind them when they come down, don't they?
[489.17] Curry: So is it arm snapping or have we got an after pick?
[494.75] Jack: I think we think it might be that might have something to do with it.
[503.28] Jack: Bit of a delam.
[504.48] Stephen: The motor just made lamination.
[507.68] Stephen: Yeah.
[508.8] Stephen: So it's got arms and then they've relied on some sheet carbon
[514.72] Stephen: for our audio viewers to hold the motors onto the arms.
[518.48] Stephen: And it looks like that sheet carbon straight up delaminated
[521.6] Stephen: and just ripped straight through.
[523.52] Koel: Yeah, I don't know that the made in play.
[526.64] Jack: Yeah.
[528.0] Jack: I don't know whether I am supposed to be sharing with this with you.
[532.4] Jack: But yeah, it was just, you know,
[537.6] Jack: was this an early version of the frame?
[539.52] Jack: Because yeah, it's still I'd like to point out in defense.
[543.6] Jack: It is a prototype.
[545.84] Jack: So I think that's what frame design is all about.
[549.36] Stephen: You've got to find that balance between weight and strength.
[552.16] Stephen: And sometimes it ain't strong enough.
[555.2] Jack: Yeah, you know, so I think that that might be changed to metal.
[561.68] Jack: So all fading out, it's just, you know, carbon fiber is is a sort of tricky vixen.
[570.48] Jack: And, you know, you get some parts that are good carbon fiber,
[574.88] Jack: and you get some parts of other car fiber that isn't as well.
[580.4] Jack: You know, the layers aren't adhered, because you are kind of the process of material.
[585.84] Jack: Yeah, composite material.
[587.68] Jack: And you know, you are soaking in trying to impregnate it with with
[595.52] Stephen: I suppose if you're being fancy, you'd get some like,
[599.52] Stephen: SLS like an aluminium and stops for that, right?
[603.36] Stephen: And just put the motor mounts on aluminium mounts.
[607.68] Stephen: That would probably make it bloody expensive to fabricate.
[611.84] Curry: Well, previously, it was what aluminium arms and
[616.96] Curry: mounts that clamped around the arms was net and they were fairly simple.
[620.24] Curry: But is this the idea of saving weight or making more streamline?
[625.12] Jack: I don't know. I'm not part of the design process.
[629.04] Jack: I just kind of built what was given to me.
[634.8] Jack: So and it appears the thing is, is like the ESCs and the flight controller,
[644.72] Jack: like everything's kind of been brought back to real sort of like basics.
[649.68] Jack: And we might have a little look at the the black blocks log if it works
[658.4] Jack: and saved because it's got like a little bit of flash memory on there.
[662.0] Jack: And hopefully that should tell us more.
[664.56] Jack: But personally, I think it would have been much better if if we had a 360 camera on there
[671.92] Jack: for a bit whilst testing so that you can sort of look at
[677.12] Jack: each motor or double up the
[681.84] Jack: the GoPro so that you could kind of see on both sides.
[686.64] Jack: What's what?
[689.76] Stephen: I'm sorry to hear that. It's a shame.
[692.08] Stephen: It's easy to laugh at Tony, but it's a shame to see something like that happen.
[695.44] Stephen: And I hope the rest of the quad escaped unscathed because
[698.96] Stephen: some of that heavy coming down tends to not just damage one thing.
[703.84] Jack: Yeah, I mean, it broke all the props.
[707.6] Jack: And that's 50 pounds worth of props.
[710.96] Jack: And that's that's just, you know, what what is visible.
[716.64] Koel: Must not be a very happy camper, is he?
[719.84] Jack: No, it wouldn't be.
[720.8] Jack: But, you know, these things happen.
[722.96] Jack: And, you know, I don't know whether I was supposed to talk about it on the show or not.
[726.88] Jack: Hopefully, hopefully they don't mind.
[730.16] Jack: But it's kind of sad because, like, you know, I built it to like the best of my ability.
[735.84] Jack: And it was quite a challenging build.
[739.12] Jack: And I took I took my time.
[742.56] Jack: And sort of like moved everything around to how I would have, you know,
[747.36] Jack: the best sort of like configuration I could make.
[751.12] Jack: And sort of, you know, I did connectors, I did tape.
[754.24] Jack: So things are able to be changed out quite quickly and replaced and like sort of like tested.
[761.36] Jack: But yeah, I mean, you know, I even had to, like, make, you know,
[769.2] Jack: connectors to change from from those those connectors to XT 60.
[776.56] Jack: So at least the batteries will be able to be charged and stuff.
[782.0] Jack: Was that the 80 150s or whatever that they were using?
[785.2] Jack: I can't.
[786.0] Jack: Yeah, 150s.
[787.2] Jack: Something funky.
[788.08] Jack: Yeah, they're big.
[790.56] Jack: I mean, the call of the void of like trying not to plug them into each other.
[795.76] Jack: Battery explodes is unbelievable.
[799.92] Jack: And you guys have witnessed the I mean, I don't know whether I want to show it on
[808.24] Jack: the show, but like at least he talks about it on my windowsill.
[812.64] Jack: But I did start building the cigarette discarded vape batteries.
[821.6] Curry: We saw we saw the dodgy battery connectors.
[825.28] Curry: This is going on in Jack's house and not ours.
[835.68] Stephen: Throughout the picture, because the thing that stood out to me was like,
[838.48] Stephen: those are nichrome strips.
[840.24] Stephen: How the hell have you stuck these together?
[842.24] Stephen: What's going on there?
[843.76] Jack: I strip wire in in set places and then solder them on those bits.
[854.08] Stephen: Sounds fine.
[856.32] Curry: You can technically do solder on those instead of the little.
[860.64] Curry: Yeah, I mean, that's real quick.
[863.76] Jack: Yeah, because there's, you know, the sort of, I can't remember what they call it,
[868.8] Jack: the fire paper or whatever it's called.
[871.36] Jack: So that protects the cell from the heat, because obviously it's stuffed into like
[876.4] Jack: a little tube that's like drawing a ton of current, heating up a nichrome wire.
[884.0] Stephen: Any tricks to like getting sold a joint right first time and not overheating the cell?
[890.16] Jack: No, just be quick, really big flat.
[893.76] Jack: You know, a thinner gauge wire really would have been like the ultimate thing,
[900.0] Jack: but obviously we want to kind of draw a good bit of current.
[902.56] Stephen: Well, you've got to heat up the top of the cell as well, haven't you, to get an action?
[909.12] Jack: So yeah, I don't know what to do with it really, because like,
[915.12] Jack: obviously each one of those batteries is 550 milliamp hour.
[923.04] Jack: So like, you know, that's half an amp for like one, you know, like half,
[930.32] Jack: yeah, half an amp for one C, I believe is the mass.
[933.68] Jack: Sorry if my maths isn't great.
[935.76] Jack: So doubling them up is like you can draw one amp out of them.
[941.44] Jack: And then obviously that because there's four, technically you do two amp.
[946.0] Jack: So, but I don't know whether that's continuous.
[950.32] Stephen: It's only 500 Mar cells then.
[952.88] Jack: Yeah.
[954.24] Jack: So what size of the cells?
[957.92] Jack: What like physical dimensions?
[961.68] Stephen: Yeah.
[962.96] Stephen: They're like 1450 or something tiny.
[967.68] Jack: They are small.
[968.64] Jack: It would mean measuring them and I don't have one to hand.
[971.76] Curry: It could be tricky to find a quad that's going to fly at two amps is the only way there.
[977.68] Jack: That's why I was thinking maybe a wing.
[981.92] Curry: Yeah.
[983.36] Curry: With a run up and like a hill to launch it off.
[986.64] Curry: So you don't have to get that launch throw.
[989.2] Stephen: Yeah.
[989.52] Stephen: Are you sure they can, they're only good for like a one C discharge then?
[997.44] Stephen: I don't know.
[998.48] Curry: Oh, this is true.
[999.36] Curry: I mean, one C is normally the charge, not the discharge.
[1003.92] Curry: I mean, they're not, they're not very good,
[1006.0] Curry: but one would expect, let's say you got five C out of them.
[1010.32] Curry: That would give you, you know, five.
[1014.24] Stephen: So I bought cheap lithium ions from GMB.
[1019.44] Stephen: There's two classes.
[1020.4] Stephen: There's the Sony VTC six based ones.
[1022.72] Stephen: And then there's the, you get what you get and they get what you get ones.
[1026.72] Stephen: They say you can do up to 10 C.
[1029.28] Stephen: So 2,500 Mar cell is good for 25 amps.
[1033.76] Koel: I saw, I was watching a video on YouTube of someone.
[1038.4] Koel: I think that was messing around with them.
[1040.16] Koel: And they were having a really hard time on a quad just even to get to a hover.
[1047.44] Koel: I can't remember what I was watching though.
[1049.6] Koel: It was forget what it was, but I think they had to, they had to put so many of them together
[1056.08] Koel: just to get enough, you know, just to get enough to hover.
[1060.64] Stephen: It's a total lottery as well, because there's no guaranteed quality in any of this stuff.
[1065.76] Stephen: It's all just total unbranded cells.
[1069.52] Stephen: You know, they come with like dot matrix printing on a bunch of plastic shrink wrap.
[1075.6] Stephen: And that's all there is to identify them.
[1078.0] Stephen: They're just, you know, could come from anywhere.
[1081.6] Curry: It'll be, it'll be a fun test to do.
[1083.44] Curry: And again, I'm just thankful that they're in Jack's flat will be on his windowsill
[1088.4] Curry: and not anywhere near me, just when they burst into flames.
[1092.72] Koel: Yeah, I'm I'm afraid of batteries.
[1094.88] Koel: I would rather them be at Jack's than mine.
[1097.6] Curry: Yeah, it seems it seems like the place to put all the dangerous stuff.
[1100.72] Curry: Well, it's a charitable crowd we are.
[1104.88] Koel: He's just to know what he's doing.
[1107.2] Stephen: And he and he works right next to a window.
[1109.92] Stephen: So, you know, worst comes to worst.
[1112.16] Stephen: It's out there.
[1112.72] Koel: What could go wrong?
[1114.64] Stephen: Just fling it.
[1116.32] Koel: Yeah, fling it out onto a car.
[1119.12] Stephen: Yeah, I have no idea where that came from.
[1123.92] Stephen: I do not know how something managed to burn so hot that it melted through your windshield.
[1131.6] Koel: It wasn't me.
[1133.44] Koel: It wasn't me.
[1135.04] Stephen: The shaggy defense.
[1136.96] Curry: Well, we're getting suggestions of Foxtar for a good line on cells.
[1143.28] Stephen: Oh, yeah.
[1143.76] Stephen: Caroline Tyler, who is doing an video on building those.
[1147.12] Stephen: I honestly think that for the trouble Jack's gone to, he, you know,
[1151.76] Stephen: doing research and checking these cells that he probably just could have burned like a fiver
[1156.64] Stephen: and picked up some dirt sheet cells online.
[1159.28] Stephen: Oh, yes.
[1159.76] Curry: Well, then it wouldn't have been as fun because the whole idea of this one is finding old vapes,
[1167.04] Curry: disposable vapes, taking the battery out.
[1169.76] Curry: Like, I don't know what this looks like.
[1171.76] Curry: Jack wandering around the streets, picking up old vapes.
[1175.6] Curry: You know what I mean?
[1176.24] Stephen: Like every RC car comes with some like piece piece of crap cell like these.
[1180.96] Stephen: And they've always got Dean's plugs.
[1182.64] Stephen: There's awful plugs that are just like, really easy to short.
[1186.96] Stephen: And so put xt6 xt30s on them.
[1190.32] Stephen: But yeah, they're just two a penny these that I think they're like three each line.
[1195.12] Curry: But if he did that, it wouldn't have been the fun project of finding batteries.
[1199.44] Curry: That's the only issue.
[1201.44] Koel: Yeah, well, so I've been in the process of repairing two old camcorders from the 90s.
[1207.76] Koel: And I ripped apart the viewfinder on the one and I found basically,
[1214.88] Koel: you know, a broken cap that spewed out a bunch of nastiness and and
[1221.28] Koel: basically corroded a chip next to it, or at least the whatever.
[1226.24] Koel: And I went to this random electrical shop.
[1229.36] Koel: It's basically the only electronic supply store anywhere near where I live that actually has like
[1235.04] Koel: little components and caps and resistors and all that good stuff.
[1239.28] Koel: And I'm pretty sure he was the shop owner, but he was actually saying the same thing.
[1243.84] Koel: He's like, hey, you know, those like those like disposable vapes,
[1248.32] Koel: those have rechargeable my own batteries in there.
[1251.44] Koel: He's like, like when I find he actually said that one time he found one.
[1257.04] Koel: And I guess he was trying to do something with it and charge it up.
[1260.32] Koel: Well, apparently, well, his his thought process was moisture got in and it wasn't good.
[1266.24] Koel: And he put however many, you know, he put however much current through it,
[1270.64] Koel: kind of to charge it.
[1272.16] Koel: And it just got so hot, so fast that he basically almost burnt himself and
[1279.36] Koel: just had to throw it as quickly as possible because it was it just, you know,
[1285.84] Koel: it could have been very dangerous.
[1287.12] Koel: So it's it does seem like I'm sure there's a lesson in that somewhere.
[1291.6] Curry: But yeah, and once again, this is this is why these batteries are in Jack's flat and not
[1296.96] Curry: we're not doing it.
[1298.72] Koel: Jack, any views expressed in this podcast may not reflect the views of others.
[1306.56] Curry: Also, rule zero, don't be on fire could get broken here.
[1310.24] Koel: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[1314.08] Stephen: Absolutely, the cause for a little rules error right there.
[1316.96] Stephen: That's a slap and roll.
[1318.48] Stephen: Yeah, I'm a little bit alarmed because it's one of those things you do because you can do it.
[1323.52] Stephen: But I'm much more pragmatic.
[1326.4] Stephen: And I think just because I can do it doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to do it.
[1330.48] Stephen: Like, there needs to be some kind of system of values that steers me to that conclusion
[1336.56] Stephen: rather than just it's on the table as an option.
[1339.36] Koel: Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
[1342.0] Curry: I think it makes for an interesting YouTube video,
[1344.88] Curry: although Jack's very bad at actually producing videos.
[1347.76] Curry: So we'll see how that goes.
[1350.0] Stephen: So yeah, just wait another seven or eight years and
[1352.88] Stephen: call or let us know when the edits ready.
[1354.72] Koel: Right.
[1357.04] Koel: You know, what's funny is for all the experiments and odd things that back does,
[1364.56] Koel: if he did make content for all of it, I think he would be be honest something with it.
[1372.9] Stephen: There's one word in there that's doing a lot of lifting, Cole.
[1376.82] Koel: If.
[1377.22] (squeaky voices): If.
[1382.74] Stephen: There's breaking under the strain that if.
[1386.34] Koel: Yeah, that's true.
[1388.9] Koel: That is very true.
[1391.86] Koel: But it all has to start with an if or a Y, I guess.
[1395.62] Stephen: Yeah, absolutely.
[1397.54] Stephen: Very true.
[1399.54] Stephen: So how did your day shooting go?
[1401.7] Koel: I was good.
[1403.78] Koel: Just back at the baseball stadium.
[1406.66] Koel: Well, we started basically we were doing a bit of behind the scenes of these baseball players.
[1412.5] Koel: It's actually it's a bunch of like pro baseball players that are
[1418.5] Koel: I guess maybe ex pro baseball players or they were pro out in like South America and like
[1424.5] Koel: Latin America and stuff.
[1426.18] Koel: And they've come over to Canada and they're playing.
[1429.22] Koel: And yeah, a lot of these guys are from like Panama, Dominican Republic,
[1434.5] Koel: Columbia.
[1437.46] Koel: And basically we're kind of following them around.
[1439.38] Koel: And, you know, they're basically some of the stars of the team.
[1443.86] Koel: So we're following them around day to day stuff.
[1446.34] Koel: And then, you know, a little bit of practicing on the field and and some stuff.
[1451.06] Koel: But it was pretty cool.
[1451.78] Koel: I I got to fly the drone again today.
[1454.98] Koel: And I was chasing some guys around the around the diamond and just a little bit, a little bit
[1462.82] Koel: of throwing, a little bit of catching, a little bit lining up the timing better now, because
[1467.06] Stephen: last time you were like cursing how difficult it was to like track stuff that was happening.
[1472.34] Koel: Yeah, I started to get it actually, which was really cool because
[1476.5] Koel: so there was the three things that we did today was I was at beer.
[1481.94] Koel: Was it to let me think so.
[1483.38] Koel: It was guys basically just playing catch and then one guy hitting the ball and then catching it.
[1489.86] Koel: And I was able to actually get the timing where you sort of see the guy lining up for the throw.
[1497.22] Koel: And then then I'm basically like in line with the ball.
[1500.74] Koel: I was basically like neck and neck with the ball, like almost like in sync with it.
[1504.58] Koel: And it looked pretty cool.
[1505.78] Koel: And you see the guy catching it and I would have something like a go signal that you've
[1512.74] Stephen: organized. How does that work?
[1514.5] Koel: So well, the director basically said like, I tell the director, hey, like,
[1520.66] Koel: you tell the guys what to do and I'll tell you when I'm ready.
[1524.66] Koel: And then I mean, they're playing catch.
[1527.54] Koel: So I just have a back and forth thing.
[1529.46] Koel: This is more of like a B roll sort of like just like footage to cut in between stuff.
[1536.02] Koel: And I basically time it where I'm like, okay, I'm in the goggles.
[1540.34] Koel: I see the one guy through and the other is going to catch it.
[1543.3] Koel: So I line it up so that before the guy catches it, I'm ready for him to throw it
[1549.62] Koel: so that, you know, it's all a timing game.
[1552.42] Koel: It's all just like you kind of have to just feel it out and get into position
[1558.58] Koel: before they're going to do the action that you want to catch.
[1561.62] Koel: And then and then get the, you know, kind of time it up that way.
[1565.54] Koel: One of the things that was actually really cool today was
[1568.18] Koel: one of the one of the hitters where I was, I guess I say,
[1573.38] Koel: I was chasing him running the bases, but I was staying really low,
[1578.02] Koel: which would look really cool because I'm kind of like low.
[1580.18] Koel: But as a ground behind him, he's like, you know, run into the other bases
[1583.62] Koel: and I'm just kind of tracking him, following him through.
[1585.86] Koel: And yeah, it's pretty cool, man.
[1587.54] Koel: I mean, I looked at it back on the GoPro on my phone.
[1592.18] Koel: Look pretty sweet.
[1593.06] Koel: So I think it's going to turn out well.
[1597.22] Stephen: Excellent.
[1598.66] Stephen: Yeah, I imagine the timing has got to be difficult.
[1600.98] Stephen: You've got to be hovering in exactly the right place.
[1603.22] Stephen: You've got the angle lined up, but just like holding it, holding it,
[1606.18] Stephen: like cramping up a little bit.
[1609.54] Koel: Yeah.
[1609.86] Koel: Well, you know what?
[1610.58] Koel: I let's just say this.
[1611.94] Koel: I'm I'm definitely honing in on my hovering skills with with the with FPV
[1618.58] Koel: because I mean, normally you don't really just hold it in one place, you know,
[1622.42] Koel: like kind of whip it around, you rip it around and stuff.
[1625.86] Koel: But, you know, it's a little bit of a different game when you're kind of,
[1630.34] Koel: you know, you're on call for making sure that you start when when you have to.
[1635.06] Koel: So you kind of have to almost just those tiny micro adjustments where you're like,
[1638.98] Koel: OK, I'm staying here, I'm staying in one spot.
[1642.1] Koel: I hear the director saying three, two, one.
[1644.58] Koel: Then I see the guy go and then I go.
[1646.74] Koel: So it's I was finding I was getting about five or six short takes per battery,
[1654.82] Koel: maybe like six or seven.
[1658.18] Koel: So it's yeah, it's it's pretty fun.
[1662.34] Koel: I quite enjoyed it today.
[1663.62] Koel: Actually, I got some shots that I think are going to be really usable.
[1667.14] Koel: Last last time there was some maybe like I would say maybe like 30 to 40 percent usable shots.
[1673.86] Koel: This time I'd say it's probably like more 70 to 80 percent usable shots.
[1678.5] Koel: So definitely, you know, just like anything, like the more you do something,
[1682.34] Koel: you're going to you're going to feel it out and get better at it.
[1685.22] Koel: Right. So. All right.
[1688.45] Stephen: Well, we'll be waiting for the ESPN contract to drop, you know.
[1693.81] Koel: Yeah, I'll just show up at my analog goggles and be like, hey, guys, I'm a professional.
[1700.77] Stephen: And don't worry. In case I hit any of the players, I bought three spare drones.
[1704.93] Stephen: Yeah. Yeah.
[1708.21] Koel: If you can assign this release form, please.
[1713.97] Frank: This episode was recorded in front of a live online audience, downloaded and edited to make
[1718.53] Frank: sense when it played audio only sensors to please the iTunes people hosted on the Internet,
[1723.57] Frank: forwarded through to your podcast provider, downloaded playing on your device and is now
[1727.89] Frank: playing in your ears. All thanks to our patrons. Consider joining them.
[1732.21] Frank: And you'll also get other online benefits. Find out more at Patreon dot com.
[1736.93] Frank: Pause slash. Let's drone out.
[1739.97] Koel: You guys been doing any flame at all lately?
[1744.1] Curry: I did. I went out on Tuesday to test these new
[1748.74] Curry: Express LRS PWM receivers from
[1752.58] Curry: Radio Master. If you if you happen to have some subscriptions to FPV channels
[1756.9] Curry: on YouTube today, you would have noticed everyone's review videos dropped at the same time again.
[1764.5] Jack: So I thought they were just Radio Master.
[1766.42] Curry: The ERS radio master video VM receivers. So I tested for six channels. I'm not I'm not
[1776.1] Curry: blowing my own trumpet and no offense to anybody else. But I did notice that all the other reviews
[1780.42] Curry: I watched, they all did it on the bench and no one went and flew anything. I went in something
[1786.42] Curry: and I even cut my thumb on a prop. I was I was barely crying. I was that brave.
[1797.14] Curry: So that was fun. And I managed to completely wipe out a battery so I had to glide a wing down.
[1805.7] Curry: And I lost a collar in the field and had to find it again. That was fun.
[1811.62] Curry: And these are all tales of a hero. Yeah, it's, you know, I don't I don't like to say hero,
[1817.7] Curry: but I think that's fair, Steven. And yeah, I flew around and my old wings are still old,
[1823.46] Curry: but now they're got modern modern stuff in them. That's quite good. And because Express
[1829.3] Curry: RS as well, you probably noticed even that they they've just done the release candidate one,
[1833.86] Curry: haven't they for three point three, which introduces cloud building for people that
[1839.7] Curry: got utterly intimidated and like what the hell is going on when it built something
[1843.46] Curry: LRS now with 70% less screwing around.
[1846.74] Curry: Yeah. And they've got s bus support, which I haven't looked at yet. And they will support
[1852.02] Curry: PWM up to 16 channels now. And more importantly, a mix of I believe s bus and PWM.
[1861.7] Stephen: Yeah, assign something s bus, they do some D and they do that freaky protocol that DJI
[1868.66] Stephen: uses for their Ronin cameras. Yeah, I was I was mostly going to protocols because I was like,
[1873.78] Stephen: Who the hell uses Sunday? I've seen it. It's what you see in the multi protocol module and you just
[1878.5] Stephen: scroll past it to get on on the thing I really like about these new receivers is that they've
[1886.18] Stephen: gone and added V bat telemetry as standard. So they've all got a little pad that you can just
[1891.94] Stephen: tack on a lead from your lipo and you get a lipo readout. I find that really useful when you put
[1896.66] Stephen: it in their cars, especially because you just kill that's how I accidentally murdered my battery
[1902.98] Curry: because I put it on the four channel one, which for this little Hornet wing, which was a completely
[1907.22] Curry: manual wing, no, no, nothing, no OSD or anything. And I set up the alarm to say if it drops under
[1913.22] Curry: 10.2, then say the voltage. And I was like, I was blipping the for all kind of come on,
[1918.82] Curry: I've been flying for 15 minutes. And it's like, oh, it's at 10.5 is going to hit it soon, guys.
[1923.22] Curry: And then we got it and it's like 10.1 volts. I'm like brilliant. I was like, Oh, did it recover?
[1927.46] Curry: It's not saying anymore. And I forgot to put the extra little field on to say repeat this every
[1934.18] Curry: five seconds. So I was like, maybe I just need to blip the throttle again. And then I just killed
[1939.22] Curry: it glanced under the goggles. And it's like, oh, it's 8.4. I better land it. And then I'm like,
[1943.86] Curry: okay, we're going down a bit quicker. A bit more throttle, like throttle, throttle.
[1948.74] Jack: I rewatched your open HD as well. Yes. And how you got stuck in a bush and your maple leaf antennas.
[1966.02] Jack: And I was just like, you know, cold now so you can he's your he's your key to smuggling
[1971.7] Jack: mobile leaf related products.
[1975.46] Curry: Must be Canadian. Yeah, the maple leaf antenna.
[1978.98] Koel: Oh, yeah. Yeah. What true RC or no.
[1983.14] Curry: Apparently, this this is a company that gave away this design for nothing.
[1990.74] Curry: But they do a directional antenna as well, which they sell, they haven't released the things for
[1996.5] Curry: it. But yeah, the maple leaf is something you can just get the Gerber files for and
[2000.74] Curry: just order it, which was surprisingly cheap, like a under five for like five antennas, one of which
[2008.26] Curry: is now in that big hedge. So I can't get out of fact, but I've got four more. Yeah, no problem.
[2015.62] Curry: But yeah, I think the Express LRS sounds like it's it's basically now a proper competitor to
[2025.54] Curry: things like crossfire that did do the old legacy protocols and things.
[2031.46] Stephen: It feels like V3 they've gotten to that cadence like V1 was like hyper experimental. The only
[2037.14] Stephen: people using V1 were people soldering their own equipment up. Literally building, I mean,
[2044.1] Stephen: not soldering in receivers, but soldering the receivers themselves. And everything was DIY.
[2051.22] Stephen: And then V2, you started to see the big names like iFlight, Maytech, all got on board and started
[2057.94] Stephen: selling stuff. And now every company really has their own brand when you get out to V3,
[2063.3] Stephen: and it started to become mature, and it's become this kind of easier to use product. And we're
[2068.26] Stephen: just at 3.3 at the moment, 3.3 is going to drop with the you don't need to have this crazy build
[2075.94] Stephen: it on your own computer system, which also opens up the gate for easier installs, like maybe using
[2082.74] Stephen: a mobile phone to flash the receiver and stuff like that. Because all of a sudden you can flash
[2086.9] Stephen: it via Wi Fi. And you could trigger that via a mobile phone client that just pulls down the
[2092.26] Stephen: bits and pushes it to something else on Wi Fi. So I think it's gonna Yeah, and of course, the last
[2099.46] Curry: the last bunch of releases were radically improved on the fact that you didn't have to flash them. So
[2105.3] Curry: because the radio master ones are on a sort of piece of firmware that hasn't been released yet,
[2110.82] Curry: they're like, Oh, you can't flash it yet. But of course, you can still just go to the Wi Fi,
[2115.22] Curry: put your passphrase in, I could change all the channels around set up my fail safe positions
[2120.82] Curry: without having to do anything. The other interesting thing they've got as well, right?
[2126.74] Curry: Which ones? You can change protocols. Yeah. They've got wireless head tracking in 3.3.
[2135.3] Curry: Which is at the moment, it's only supported on HD zero with a backpack. But I do remember that the
[2143.38] Curry: the rapid fire module had an accelerometer in. And I wonder if that can be that can be used
[2149.46] Curry: at some point, will that get updated? Because that's interesting. Since there's not many people with
[2155.54] Curry: backpacks, and I've got a big swan the wall and it's got pants help. Now I didn't use that one.
[2160.74] Curry: But for you that didn't see the video yet, because it wouldn't fit in the car. And I
[2164.82] Curry: couldn't be asked to take the wings off because it's such a faff. But it's still it's still
[2168.42] Stephen: installed with a standalone backpack that's just got like the world's cheapest accelerometer on
[2175.38] Stephen: there. Because you don't need like a low jitter super fancy one if you're just tracking your head
[2179.06] Curry: movement. No, I mean, just going like that. And that is not a big deal, is it? But that'd be quite
[2183.94] Curry: cool if that can come out on more goggles. Wireless trainer as well, I think is arriving
[2189.86] Stephen: with the head tracking. So you can use you basically put a receiver inside an HDX radio,
[2198.34] Stephen: and then your buddy who's doing the training, they pass through to your radio. So they just
[2204.82] Stephen: connect to your radio like it's a model. And you have those channels come into your radio.
[2210.34] Stephen: And then you can select to bypass them or not bypass them. So you can buddy box using it as well.
[2215.78] Jack: Oh, that's quite cool. I didn't see that. I can't get my rapid fire
[2222.98] Jack: backpack to work properly. And I don't know why.
[2226.98] Curry: Didn't we discuss that you had the wrong module? And it didn't have the extra ESP32 chip in it?
[2232.82] Stephen: It's like an 82 ESP82 that happy model makes. I've got a spare one and never used if you want,
[2240.18] Curry: but Jack's got the white beta FPV module, the 500 milliwatt system. And I think they put
[2248.98] Curry: the backpack in from the one what one which was the black version.
[2253.7] Stephen: Yeah, you're right, man. Yeah. Yeah, that one don't have no backpack, governor.
[2258.9] Stephen: That's why I don't want to have a backpack either. The boxer. Oh, the inbuilt one should have
[2265.22] Stephen: actually the if it's the inbuilt radio master module, that should work. Yeah.
[2270.26] Jack: Yeah. Okay, I will try it again with this. Yeah, I put an inbuilt one in.
[2276.26] Stephen: But yeah, Curry is absolutely right. Because I bought the white one.
[2279.86] Stephen: And then I bought the black one as well. And I didn't just buy it to increase the power.
[2283.7] Stephen: I bought it because I wanted that backpack functionality that wasn't on the previous model.
[2287.54] Jack: So yeah, I will just I might buy another the other s module.
[2295.06] Jack: I might and I might then donate this to Frank.
[2299.54] Stephen: The old the super cheap happy model ES 24 one does actually have a backpack on.
[2305.14] Stephen: It's kind of a pig to use because it doesn't have an exposed USB.
[2309.86] Stephen: And you need to light move jumpers around to flash the backpack, but it's super cheap.
[2313.78] Stephen: And I have got the backpack working with that on one of my radios.
[2318.74] Jack: Yeah, I couldn't get that to flash because you set I had
[2324.9] Jack: Swoney send me his stuff to like flashing it working.
[2328.82] Jack: And then I set the dip switches to flash the backpack and it just would not teach.
[2334.58] Jack: They don't know why. Yeah.
[2339.46] Jack: Yeah, on its first flash, I had to be like, yes, force flash.
[2343.3] Stephen: And then it was like, you have to press this button and then press another button.
[2348.34] Stephen: It's not very friendly to dyslexics. I'll say that like the instructions are lots of ifs ands and buts.
[2356.66] Curry: When I did it, it did feel very experimental.
[2359.38] Curry: And I think I I flashed the wrong target and had to go back with like an FTDI adapter and make it
[2364.9] Curry: right. And yeah, all sorts of stuff. It was it was all of it. What am I doing now and spend a long
[2370.02] Stephen: time in Discord? I did that a while ago on autopilot because I saw that there was this wrong
[2375.38] Stephen: size error flash repartitioner. And then I was like, oh, it's only for a TX or it's only for an
[2381.3] Stephen: RX. And I had to get out the FTDI and like recover. I think it was a receiver or something.
[2387.7] Stephen: Got it out and FTDI'd it back. But luckily, like, it's not so painful. The first couple of times,
[2394.02] Stephen: it's just like, what the hell am I doing? I'm going to break everything. And then you're like,
[2397.3] Stephen: actually, no, it's basically every all modern hardware is pretty much indestructible because
[2402.34] Stephen: there's always like a burned in bootloader. And if stuff goes wrong, then the burned in bootloader
[2407.46] Stephen: is always there. You just need to like connect the FTDI to it properly, or connect DFU plug to it
[2414.26] Stephen: properly. And it just comes back. But the first couple of times is always a bit of a
[2418.5] Stephen: like an imagine. Oh, I got the 3D printer back online. After, after discovering that failsafe
[2428.9] Stephen: had managed to fit with the most esoteric plug that he could find for the heater element in a
[2434.58] Stephen: slightly different esoteric variation to the one that the heater element supplier actually used.
[2439.86] Stephen: And I was just like, I wonder why there's this bit of frayed insulation on it. Oh,
[2444.18] Stephen: it's a one by two plug instead of a two by one plug. Like, so now I know all about Micro Molex,
[2452.14] Stephen: more than I ever wanted to know about Micro Molex. But the printer is up and running. And by
[2457.5] Stephen: God, it creates some impressive prints. It had been offline for a little while. And I've forgotten
[2461.5] Stephen: how good it was. But oh, my word, it's it's stonking. So I've been printing off a lot of lipo
[2467.5] Stephen: covers going to be going to do a bit of Bando flying with failsafe and company next week
[2473.34] Stephen: over in Croatia. So been getting stuff ready and had a bit of a brown trouser moment where
[2480.7] Stephen: I discovered that every airline in the world abides by the IATA regulations, which say you
[2487.26] Stephen: could take 20 spare lipos except for British Airways, which I decided to fly because I wanted
[2493.18] Stephen: to not deal with Ryan Air who make me mad. And apparently British Airways have a maximum of four
[2500.86] Stephen: because reasons everyone else is 20 and they've got four. So I had to like,
[2505.58] Stephen: get someone who's going by road and like rush up to them with a bunch of lipos and please, please
[2511.42] Stephen: take my batteries, please, please. And hopefully, they'll be the airlines did it based on what hours
[2520.46] Curry: rather than number of batteries because it's helping a battery. So up to 100 watt hours,
[2525.9] Stephen: most airlines allow 20 batteries and 100 watt hours is like, it's like a two amp hour success
[2533.02] Stephen: or something freaking humongous. Let me just do something and check the water. So I've got,
[2542.03] Stephen: for example, a 700 Mar. That's like a five s and that's 12 watt hours. So a battery that's like
[2550.43] Stephen: six times bigger than this. So a five s that's four amp hour would probably be just about okay.
[2559.07] Stephen: So you can basically take X class batteries up to 20 of them. But there's no discount until you get
[2568.58] Stephen: over 100 watt hour and over 100 watt hour, you can only have four on any airline. But BA decided to
[2574.58] Stephen: say under 100 watt hour is also four, presumably because up to 100 watt hour, there's a gulf
[2580.98] Stephen: from stuff that's like a tiny battery that might be one watt hour up to, you know,
[2587.94] Stephen: like house brick sized stuff that could be like a four amp hour, three or four s cell, which would
[2594.9] Jack: be like 95 watt hour. Can you buy an old laptop and fill it for the batteries and wire up certain
[2604.02] Stephen: voice that runs on all those are technically the required lipo cells for this HP Elite book. Yeah,
[2612.5] Stephen: it's running on. It's running on a 48 s two p configuration totally standard.
[2619.78] Koel: Yeah, just run that through the x rays. They'll be like what? Yeah, true. Do not press the power
[2625.7] Jack: button. Where these gloves? Did you did you just buy a Ryanair ticket just for your batteries and
[2634.9] Jack: hope that they can walk on themselves? I'm not sure. Yeah, that's not dodgy. I'm just gonna put
[2642.9] Curry: this backpack full of weird wires sticking out on a thing and then I'm gonna leave and take a
[2647.14] Stephen: different flight. No reason. That's fine. Don't anyone see a strange looking gentleman with a beard?
[2652.98] (squeaky voices): And a mustache. He was twirling. He was twiddling it like like, like a villain.
[2665.7] Koel: Yeah, that sounds exciting though, man. Sounds like creators gonna be epic.
[2671.14] Koel: Yeah, I hope so. There's a mega bat no there, which looks pretty cool. I'm jealous. I'm very jealous.
[2677.46] Jack: Yeah. Cole, stop eating.
[2682.9] Curry: Cole, stop eating. Turn your camera around and get in complaints about portrait video. This isn't
[2687.38] Stephen: TikTok. It's not a young person's thing. So if you treat it like that, do a dance routine.
[2693.46] Stephen: Where's that's not dancing. That's not even dad.
[2701.06] Koel: So weird thing. So when I was flying today, Jack, I'm getting that video sync thing again, where
[2706.34] Koel: when I give a throttle on my OSD elements are dancing all around.
[2711.38] Jack: What? Maybe, maybe change the weather. Where the negatives connected maybe. I don't know.
[2722.38] Stephen: Yeah, you're solving quality something something.
[2728.46] Jack: Mine. That's all I could think it is, is that yeah, my sort of pads where I soldered
[2735.1] Jack: my camera ground. Maybe that, yeah.
[2740.3] Stephen: I mean, Jack's squad when I flew it had absolutely crystal image quality. So I know
[2746.3] Stephen: he knows what he should do. And you're unlikely to have left like a spare yard of wire wrapped
[2750.78] Stephen: around the stack for no good reason, right? No, no. Yeah. Maybe something just got dinged like he's
[2757.82] Stephen: been flying hard around concrete, hasn't he? Maybe he just dinged it. Yeah.
[2762.94] Koel: Yeah, not not this, not this one so much. But I might have to just play around with the video
[2768.86] Koel: sync test or the video sync level because I don't think it's quite lined up in the middle.
[2775.18] Koel: So it might be that but I don't know, it's weird because yeah, it seemed to be it seemed to have
[2780.46] Koel: been fine for a bit. But now throttles seems to be giving it to me. But only sometimes I don't know,
[2785.74] Stephen: it's really odd. A bit odd. Builds don't always age well. Sometimes stuff just
[2793.42] Curry: deteriorates. Sometimes stuff just breaks. Like stuff that needs to fly well. Sometimes just
[2798.86] Curry: goes like receivers go, cameras go. I mean, it's brand new. I had my favorite little toothpick
[2807.26] Stephen: that used to be amazing with like Predator Nano. And it was it was awesome. And over time,
[2814.3] Stephen: it's just gotten kind of crappier. Because I'm not doing big crashes, but it must have been crash
[2819.82] Stephen: like 30 or 40 times, you know. And eventually stuff just gets a little worn down. Yeah.
[2827.1] Jack: Mine did do it, then it stopped doing it. And now it's doing it again.
[2833.74] Stephen: I don't know. If I can offer a small piece of exceedingly unhelpful advice,
[2838.94] Stephen: it would be join the cult, go digital, throw away your analog gear.
[2844.38] Koel: Why don't throw it away? It's technically not analog. Well, is it Jack? How's that? How's that
[2852.38] Koel: work? Like it's, it's on board OSD on the flight controller. Yeah, it's analog video.
[2859.66] Stephen: Yeah, man. It's analog video. Analog video is just a little bit flaky. I mean, yeah,
[2865.9] Stephen: it's small stuff. But it's just but now I'm on the second generation, right? I'm upgrading
[2872.46] Stephen: stuff. But was analog that went to DJI. And now from DJI, I'm going to move it to walk snail
[2878.62] Stephen: because it's just everything just as good as DJI, but is a little less crappy when it's around
[2885.1] Stephen: foliage. And the system seems to have a bit more of a future with DJI. I had none of these issues
[2893.34] Stephen: with, you know, interference and stuff. But every now and then when you got flying close to trees
[2898.7] Stephen: and that it would just kind of break down into a tile wall. But walk snail seems to have solved
[2903.74] Stephen: that. So I'm at the point now where I'm thinking this flying in Croatia, I've got a bunch of DJI
[2910.94] Stephen: systems. I know they fly okay, but I might just punt a couple of them over to walk snail because
[2915.18] Stephen: I've got a couple of walk snail boxes on the bench just by my old thumb. Do you think it would
[2922.38] Koel: be replicatable? Like this, this, you know, the little analog thing. If I don't have props on,
[2930.3] Koel: I could replicate on the bench. Or do you think it's mostly an inflight thing, Jack?
[2936.62] Jack: On the bench. But you can't all like Wi Fi noise. Without props, it's not pulling the
[2943.1] Curry: amps though. That's the thing. It's normally high. I am good to go for it.
[2947.74] Stephen: If you can't just go outside, like find a table, belt it down to a patio table with some like
[2954.38] Stephen: luggage straps or something and just rag it and see what it does. I just moved that ground wire
[2960.62] Stephen: first. I think it's that when I was doing the wiring, I needed to run like the yellow video
[2969.82] Stephen: signal wire over a different route to the power wires. And then everything was a lot better.
[2974.3] Stephen: Running them all together was the recipe for disaster sooner. I made them take different
[2979.58] Stephen: paths between the FC and the camera and the FC and the VTX. So a lot of that went away.
[2985.5] Jack: Corey, what was the deal with the immersion RC power meter thing?
[2993.1] Jack: What was the deal? How do you mean? Yeah. Well, how comes you finally got one?
[2998.22] Curry: It's like a bit late. Someone sent it to me and acquired it on my behalf.
[3005.66] Curry: Basically.
[3010.7] Curry: Oh, I just I think it's like it's a tool everyone could do with and would find useful,
[3017.9] Curry: but not necessarily everyone can afford because normally it's like, is my VTX working? And it's
[3023.42] Curry: just a case of buy new VTX is going to be a lot cheaper than buying this tool that could tell me
[3027.5] Curry: if the VTX was bad or not. So yeah, from that point of view, also, if I'm ever testing a VTX,
[3034.14] Curry: and it's making these sort of claims about I'm putting out this much power,
[3037.74] Curry: then I think it's very useful to be able to test it and say, actually, it is or it's not.
[3042.78] Stephen: Or they're always question marks raised over the calibration of that, though.
[3048.06] Curry: There's question marks. Yeah. But immersion RC say they calibrate it next to a big professional
[3055.02] Curry: super duper machine and it gets very, very close. It's never going to be spot on, but it's very
[3059.74] Curry: close. So if we use the calibration things they've got for because they do 5800 in little 50 hertz
[3068.46] Curry: blocks, so you can get very close to the frequency you should be testing and decide if it's right or
[3073.58] Curry: not. And the sort of things it's coming out with are things that match up with my sort of thoughts
[3079.5] Curry: about what these things are like, like, you know, I'm a big fan of the Rush FPV VTX because they're
[3086.38] Curry: very clean, but I've always noticed on 25 milliwatts, they don't seem anything to write home about. And
[3091.58] Curry: when I tested the one, it was putting out like between 14 and 17. But when you put it to 200,
[3099.34] Stephen: it's it's much, much more. I found for those Rush VTXs, they would just go bananas sometimes and go
[3105.66] Stephen: into like race mode all the time, which would put them on a super low power. I'd have to fight
[3111.66] Curry: race mode. They had this problem. I remember doing this because I was upgrading Betaflight.
[3117.98] Curry: And it's like Betaflight suddenly had a stricter interpretation between smart audio 2 and 2.1.
[3124.54] Curry: And some of them saying, yeah, we speak smart audio 2.1. And then suddenly, when you told them to
[3129.66] Curry: use 2.1, they would drop down to hit mode or race mode and stuff like that. And they wouldn't change
[3135.42] Curry: channel. And then you move it back to smart audio 2. And instead of giving it a whole,
[3142.14] Curry: the normal like DBM values, you just say I'm on value 0, 1, 2, 3, 4. And it works perfectly
[3148.06] Stephen: all of a sudden. It was very strange. Yeah, when it was in this special mode, it would just
[3153.58] Stephen: refuse to go, it would default to pit mode as soon as you powered on and it would stay in pit mode
[3159.18] Stephen: until you can get out of it. Table pit mode, which you couldn't do a lot of the time because pit mode
[3164.06] Curry: was such a bad video signal, you couldn't see the OSD. You had to be this close to it. I honestly
[3169.18] Curry: think it's the difference between, I think, I think, sorry, Betaflight tightened up on the
[3177.5] Curry: smart audio protocol in some way. And there was something in the rush FPV stuff that wasn't quite
[3183.42] Curry: in the handle. And as soon as it went past a certain level of Betaflight, it went slightly
[3189.42] Curry: haywire. Why has this suddenly gone wrong? It was working perfectly before.
[3194.54] Stephen: Yeah, other than that, quite a nice little setup. They had shielding on them, they had a can over
[3199.02] Stephen: it. Most of the VTXs, they didn't put cans over. And I think that helped them keep a really clean.
[3203.98] Curry: Yeah, the reason I like them is I can wire stuff up and I don't have to be all that careful about
[3210.62] Curry: it. I can pretty much just hook it up to the power supply from the flight controller at whatever
[3218.86] Curry: voltage coming through. And I can use the five volt for the camera. And whatever cleanup they're
[3225.5] Curry: doing on their VTX itself seems very, very good. So it's always a very clean picture. I'm not so
[3231.98] Curry: much worried about how far will it go. I'm more worried about what's the pitch quality like. And
[3237.74] Jack: that always seems very good, crystal clear on those ones. Yeah, I must put your mind at ease
[3245.84] Jack: knowing that having that sort of can over the top of it, protecting, you know, delicate little
[3255.04] Stephen: resistors and everything. It's the shielding as well. Yeah. You've got a whole load of EMI from
[3262.72] Stephen: ESCs and just gives it a bit more of a chance. I think they were the first people to do that,
[3269.68] Stephen: especially on the whoop sizes, like down to the little 25 by 25 tiny VTXs, which they give you
[3278.16] Stephen: this tiny VTX that actually sat in a daughter board to fit on the 25 by 25. It was even smaller
[3284.32] Stephen: than that. It was like receiver sized. And even that would have a can on it, which, you know,
[3289.84] Stephen: does help with, you know, physical durability, but seem to be, they certainly had good signal.
[3298.11] Stephen: So I think it was probably helping that as well. Yeah, I've been pretty impressed with the rush
[3304.03] Curry: tanks. Fair play. Yeah, I've seen some I've seen some ones that look like it and are bad. And I
[3311.31] Curry: can I can certainly tell the difference when I just put them on and I go out and as soon as you
[3316.59] Curry: get past about 500 meters, you just see this breakup and noise starting to come in. And even
[3325.79] Curry: it can be close up as you've seen, if you if you hit full throttle and you start getting
[3331.95] Curry: any disturbance on the screen, that's not a good sign. That's what we're trying to avoid.
[3336.19] Stephen: Yeah. But as like I was saying, right, where you've got the we do punch outs and you up the
[3342.03] Stephen: throttle and what all of a sudden the build that you thought was clean on the bench suddenly starts
[3345.95] (squeaky voices): to show a load of garbage. One. Yeah. Is this your goggle? How cold is this? What happens after
[3358.51] (squeaky voices): some time wearing goggles over your head?
[3362.11] Jack: Canadian not used to the hate.
[3367.31] Stephen: I've been melting. I've ricked up a bevy of PC case fans that are all controlled
[3374.11] Stephen: off a tiny adjustable DC power supply. Just off to the side here, just over there,
[3382.19] Stephen: like a wall of 120 mil case fans tied together with cable ties does basically enabled my brain
[3389.15] Stephen: to function this week because I felt like I was losing my mind. It's just so unbearably hot.
[3396.11] Jack: I know I've not I've not been coping very well. Do you want me to on the sort of like last few
[3403.87] Jack: seconds, the worst part of the whole battery thing regarding the size is that the size has
[3411.55] Jack: now changed. So I've got like those those batteries have now got even smaller. So now having to
[3420.99] Jack: scavenge older style vapes for their batteries, and I'm too battery short for my 4S build.
[3431.63] Stephen: Quickly speaking need to be matched cells because I'm pretty sure the incident you take off,
[3435.87] Jack: you're going to drop at least one of them. Yeah, I mean, the thing is, is like they've been,
[3441.63] Jack: you know, high, probably highly discharged because like, you know, you've got people like smoking,
[3449.63] Jack: like sucking on them, sucking the living life out of crazy addicts with no sort of like voltage
[3456.43] Jack: protection. So I'm dubious of them all. All it's got to do is one flight and I'm thinking, well,
[3462.67] Jack: Curry, he's got, he's probably got a wing that we could stick that on and have a bit of a fly about
[3470.11] Jack: maybe. So maybe the meetup of Steven, Curry and I can happen.
[3477.15] (squeaky voices): We got my seven inch. What about the wrong way?
[3483.55] Jack: But I do. I do highly discourage anyone doing. Yeah, maybe.
[3488.83] Curry: Depends on the use that one. Because let's face it, it felt a little bit like it was a bit spongy.
[3495.23] Curry: I mean, it felt spongy before and then I covered it in sponge. What's it called?
[3503.63] Curry: Laminate. Thank you, Jack. And now it's still spongy. And it's like, oh, this is not handling
[3509.07] Curry: the wind very well. And then the little wing was absolutely fine. I'm like, yeah, this is this is
[3512.67] Curry: a bit knackered. I think probably it's only like, you know, 11 years old. It had one of its wings
[3518.35] Curry: snap off and jump up and go over into a tennis court, which I had to climb up and go and retrieve
[3524.19] Curry: this one time. Other than that, it's all perfect. It's only been crashed about 50 times.
[3528.75] Jack: Jesus. Sounds great. Jack first. Yeah. Right. That's all we got time for. You've been listening
[3538.27] Jack: to lecture now. It's been lovingly sponsored by our wonderful Patreons. I do highly discourage
[3547.71] Jack: anyone who's making their own packs. Don't do it unless it's completely in a safe environment and
[3552.83] Jack: you fully know what you're doing. So, you know, do as we say, not as we do. And please take
[3560.11] Jack: precautions. We have been joined by the lovely man with a mustache. Stephen. Good evening and
[3570.35] Jack: good night. Thank you to our lovely Patreons. Yeah. Everyone's favorite curry kitten. Goodbye.
[3577.07] Jack: My buddy, Cole, and I've been brightened to life. All right. Thank you, guys. Thank you
[3583.31] Jack: for everyone who tuned in. Thank you. Good night. Telemetry loss.