=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 484 ===
Title: LDO 484 - Looking ahead to 2025 (and nepotism)
Recorded: 2024-12-05
Hosts: Stephen "Belrik" Howell, Wayne "CurryKitten" Andrews, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash, Andrew "Frank" Hyams
Guest(s): (none recorded)
Total audience: 760
Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9GgCBbZpxY); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/1975458675-letsdroneout-ldo-484-looking-ahead-to-2025.mp3)
=====================================

#LetsDroneOut #DronePodcast #Drone #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!
[16.2] Frank: Art Faulkner!
[17.88] Frank: Sam Dahmer.
[19.68] Frank: On with the show.
[20.68] Stephen: Hello and welcome to another episode of Let's Drone Out.
[57.62] Stephen: episode 484 for Thursday the 5th of December 2024.
[64.42] Stephen: Brought to you this week by everyone's favourite, Curry Kitten.
[68.54] Stephen: Hello!
[69.54] Stephen: And myself, Stephen.
[70.54] Stephen: How long have we been out there?
[72.54] Stephen: It's been a quiet week for a lot of us in the UK, suffering as we are at the hands
[78.44] Stephen: of some quite relentless lashings from wind and rain.
[84.42] Stephen: But there's a few interesting things that we're going to be chatting about this week.
[88.5] Stephen: We think so.
[89.5] Curry: We are probably wondering where everybody else is.
[91.94] Curry: Jack is, I think, a work thing, although I haven't spoken to him personally.
[96.3] Curry: Frank was aiming to come on, but he's had a power cut.
[99.42] Curry: Tony is playing a game, so he can't be bothered, and Cole is just getting on a plane to get
[104.54] Curry: a Swiss passport.
[105.86] Curry: It sounds very 007, doesn't it?
[107.7] Curry: He's flying to Montreal to get a Swiss passport.
[110.54] Curry: I don't quite see it, because Montreal is like French side, but Swiss.
[114.06] Curry: Who knows?
[115.06] Curry: Weird things.
[116.06] Curry: Anyway, we're here.
[117.06] Curry: I actually had some flyable days this week, which I wanted to use, but unfortunately my
[121.62] Curry: wife has been very poorly, so I didn't get to do anything at all this week other than
[126.5] Curry: run up and down stairs with drinks and fetch new boxes of tissues and keep going and get
[131.14] Curry: her drugs and things.
[133.34] Curry: So that was fun.
[135.18] Stephen: Yeah, I've got past my illness, which is why I was kind of hiding away previous weeks.
[141.5] Stephen: I went out to do a bunch of training, so I've been slogging into the centre of London and
[147.22] Stephen: getting completely exhausted.
[148.62] Stephen: I probably will be sick again just from being exposed to so many commuters.
[153.86] Stephen: But yeah, I've been learning things, IT-related things, and meeting people in the company
[161.66] Stephen: for the first time, who are from the north of England, which is nice to say hi to everyone.
[168.18] Stephen: I had a couple of late nights, so a little bit jaded, but hanging in there.
[172.9] Stephen: I just noticed my camera is at quite a jaunty angle as well.
[176.58] Stephen: I think it may have slid over to the side there.
[179.1] Curry: We're all slightly slid over.
[181.1] Curry: My OCD is going to keep you about me not being central.
[184.86] Stephen: There we are.
[185.86] Stephen: Bless the dutch angles there.
[188.86] Stephen: I'll be back on straight around.
[191.66] Curry: With us two not doing any flying this week, and not particularly amount of news, I think
[198.78] Curry: we've got some news, we thought we'd take a look or have a think about what is going
[205.42] Curry: to be hot in 2025, and what do we want to do?
[209.38] Curry: What do we think is going to be the things to look for?
[212.14] Curry: But we're also prepared to answer questions from any of you guys, because we haven't got
[218.02] Curry: that much to say.
[219.14] Curry: But we're prepared to enter a discussion.
[221.86] Curry: No thanks.
[222.86] Stephen: Where do you think we're going?
[225.34] Stephen: 2025 is an interesting year.
[227.54] Stephen: If we look back at where we were in 2015, a lot has changed, a lot has stayed the same.
[232.58] Stephen: But by and large, things are in a lot more mature position than they were back then.
[238.62] Stephen: So it would be interesting to trace a line through some of those trends and ask where
[242.26] Stephen: we're going next.
[243.42] Curry: Yeah, it's quite interesting when you think about it in a 10-year thing.
[246.98] Curry: I'm trying to think when it really took off, 2015 still felt like you're in very much
[253.86] Curry: where people would come up to you and say, this is interesting, what have you built?
[256.9] Curry: And they sort of explain it and they say, fantastic, keep going.
[260.06] Curry: As opposed to, oi, you with a drone, you can't fly that here.
[263.42] Curry: Which is more, today you think, ooh.
[265.66] Curry: Did you have OpenTX in 2015?
[269.5] Curry: No, I think we had ER9X, which was the predecessor to OpenTX.
[280.62] Curry: Jack, I thought you weren't here today.
[283.1] Jack: No, it's next week.
[285.3] Curry: Ah, this is what happens when I get second-hand notices from Cole.
[289.74] Curry: Yeah, I thought Cole was going to work as well.
[293.06] Curry: Can't trust him, he's going for a Swiss passport, that could mean anything.
[296.9] Jack: I know.
[297.94] Jack: No, I'm on this week, I'm not on next week.
[301.02] Jack: Ah, well, you're late.
[303.5] Jack: I'm very sorry.
[304.42] Stephen: Thanks for showing up, mate.
[306.74] Stephen: Yeah, so 10 years ago, we were waiting eagerly to see what F R Sky was doing then by the
[313.34] Stephen: sound of it and everyone kind of ooh-ing and ooh-ing about proper radio firmware.
[317.5] Curry: I think ER9X is still there.
[320.42] Curry: I can't quite remember where we were on a timeline because when we started flying FPV,
[326.74] Curry: for me it was like 2012 and people that were in the hobby for a little while longer were
[332.86] Curry: bringing in really nice Futaba radios and then changing them over to 2.4 and stuff.
[343.18] Curry: Most of us jumped onto the Turnigy 9X or one of the clones and then either you fit the
[349.14] Curry: free Sky internal thing, which I think Jack did, or you could buy a module.
[353.38] Curry: It was so amazing because I flew the 9X for a while with the default FlySky firmware,
[359.58] Curry: which was terrible.
[361.14] Curry: You didn't know if you were out of range, so you'd just be flying along and then your
[364.66] Curry: tricopter would just crash because it's like, I don't know anymore.
[371.98] Curry: Flashing it to ER9X and putting in the free Sky module was amazing because you'd fly along
[378.46] Curry: and then we'd go, it's like, oh, I'm starting to get out of range.
[381.58] Curry: I've got telemetry from the radio.
[384.34] Curry: That's amazing.
[385.34] Curry: It's like, oh, it's getting further out of range, I should turn around.
[389.7] Curry: That was the magic of it.
[392.98] Curry: The fact you had this super, because previously, previous to things like ER9X and then OpenTX
[401.46] Curry: and now HTX, you didn't have radios that did that.
[407.1] Curry: You'd have like, what are you producing?
[409.46] Curry: It's like, are you a glider?
[411.18] Curry: Are you a helicopter or are you a plane?
[413.66] Curry: There was no quadcopter or stuff.
[415.66] Curry: Then you say, okay, let's say I'm a glider.
[418.42] Curry: It's like, okay, this switch does this, this switch does that.
[422.26] Curry: There's no options.
[423.26] Curry: It's like, that's a dual rate and this is flaps.
[427.22] Curry: When you're trying to put that into a quad where you need mode switches and things, it
[431.9] Curry: was-
[432.9] Stephen: You want a new configuration?
[433.9] Curry: Well, we recommend buying new radio.
[438.18] Curry: I think the old sandal brigade would probably still freak out if they saw like, you know,
[445.34] Curry: HTX and stuff.
[446.34] Curry: They're like, but I'm flying a glider.
[448.14] Curry: Where's my glider model?
[449.46] Curry: It's literally like, what are you flying?
[451.06] Curry: Then you make it by that.
[453.7] Stephen: You just kind of moved over ER9X and FOSC, I guess, would have been coming out really
[458.9] Stephen: soon off that.
[460.98] Stephen: Everything would have been pretty much manual, pretty much analog output, right?
[466.74] Stephen: It would be WM for everything.
[468.3] Stephen: It looks like in the end, the back end of 2015, you were probably seeing Betaflight
[476.26] Stephen: appear.
[477.26] Stephen: So, you just moved over from Arduino land into like F1 flight controllers, right?
[484.82] Curry: You say Arduino land, for a lot of people that were getting into the hobby around that
[489.02] Curry: time, it was the KK board, the original board that was amazing because you could, it was
[495.54] Curry: a single board and you could make it fly a tricopter or a quad or a hex.
[502.86] Curry: Or you could put a telemetry on it.
[506.27] Curry: Well, no, because the original one didn't have a screen.
[509.75] Curry: And if you wanted to change the gains, you'd have a screwdriver and you'd turn this thing
[514.71] Curry: and that would define how much gain you had.
[518.99] Curry: How much did you get on that?
[521.71] Curry: There was a filter, they would say, essentially.
[524.95] Stephen: Yeah, that's what you had to look forward to when you went off the KK, I guess.
[528.71] Stephen: You were like, oh, well.
[529.71] Curry: Yeah.
[530.71] Curry: I remember at that point, the first quads I had, I had a great big receiver in it and
[536.11] Curry: each individual BWM thing.
[538.43] Curry: And it wasn't for a while that the DR4 came out and you could, I think you had to possibly
[547.35] Curry: bind it with this little...
[549.63] Curry: Jumper.
[551.15] Curry: Jumper.
[552.15] Curry: Jumper.
[553.15] Curry: Yeah, jumper.
[554.15] Curry: And that would put it into PPM mode and it's like, that's amazing, I only have to use one
[558.19] Curry: servo connection for all my channels.
[560.87] Curry: But it was essentially just PWM in a row.
[565.59] Curry: It was a while until we got into S bus and stuff.
[571.99] Curry: And I can't remember when beta flight first came out, because I started out basically...
[576.23] Stephen: I can't see the original 2.0.
[580.15] Stephen: But 2.1 looks like October 2015.
[583.83] Stephen: So maybe there were releases on a different repo before beta flight 2.1.
[588.91] Curry: Well, what happened is after base flight, everybody jumped to clean flight because clean
[593.43] Curry: flight, which Dominic did, was brilliant and had all these changes in it.
[597.99] Curry: And when beta flight first came out, it was very much this is beta.
[602.75] Curry: And it literally used to have releases every couple of days, it was like a new release,
[606.55] Curry: it was just laying out like this.
[608.59] Curry: So I didn't jump for it for a long time, because it seemed like it was slightly unstable
[614.95] Curry: until it got to a point where, actually, stuff has stopped flowing back into clean flight
[619.75] Curry: and it's now going into beta flight.
[621.59] Curry: So it kind of just took over it.
[623.63] Curry: And at that point, it stopped doing weekly releases and things.
[627.71] Stephen: Yeah, so I guess mid 2014, literally, you know, 10 years ago, you would have been looking
[633.87] Stephen: at clean flight, clean flight 1.0 would have come out last last month.
[640.19] Stephen: And you've been looking at clean flight 1.1 that gave you GPS.
[645.87] Stephen: I'm not sure what how GPS would have worked.
[648.15] Stephen: It might have been quite exciting GPS at that point, I guess, but it would have been in
[654.59] Stephen: there at least.
[655.59] Curry: Yeah, it might have been in there because where where base flight came over from multi
[662.07] Curry: we multi we had loads of like exciting features and they had all sorts of GPS and position
[668.35] Curry: hold and stuff.
[670.51] Curry: And that originally like base flight was multi we onto the STM 32 chip.
[678.31] Curry: And I think I think they put it all over there wasn't sort of like, until later when beta
[682.27] Curry: flight came on, it's like, we don't need this GPS stuff, shut out, let's let's work on just
[686.95] Curry: getting it working for quads and making it really good.
[689.79] Curry: And it's slowly then come back again.
[691.91] Stephen: So that would have been like f1 and comparable stuff right with base flight, and then f1
[697.59] Stephen: was dropped went to f3 f4 f7 appeared f3 was dropped.
[703.55] Stephen: We're now got to the point where I think f4 11 is getting a little bit like people squinting
[710.07] Stephen: sideways at it.
[711.87] Stephen: And there's just been a notice that if you're going to try and run a hexacopter or an octocopter,
[717.91] Stephen: please stop using f4 and f7.
[720.63] Stephen: Because that's just not good for the high number of motor outputs anymore, because you've
[726.55] Stephen: got to jump through all these hoops to get all the motor outputs working on those and
[731.71] Stephen: have like the speed that you need to do all the fancy features and to do the high D shot
[737.79] Stephen: rates and to do all the low latency like pit processing because they're, they're now like
[743.67] Stephen: hyper optimizing those targets to get them running all the filters.
[749.11] Stephen: So we're starting to see things like push ever closer to you probably need an h7 after
[755.47] Stephen: all these years.
[756.47] Stephen: But that's not that's not a bad run, considering your prop that f4 and f3 was probably coming
[761.59] Stephen: out like 2016 or so they've been on the market a while.
[768.55] Stephen: But yeah, yeah,
[769.55] Curry: it's kind of interesting, I suppose that the sort of the targets not changed.
[775.71] Curry: It's like this x with four motors, but it's like the, the hardware to run it, mostly because
[782.15] Curry: I guess the filtering and the the head loop and the whole D shot thing is like, we need
[788.03] Curry: more power.
[789.03] Stephen: Yeah, well, they're just trying to reduce the jitter to like lower and lower levels,
[794.75] Stephen: much like kind of the LRS has done on the receivers where they're like, it used to be
[798.55] Stephen: tolerable that one signal would come in plus a few milliseconds and the other one would
[804.19] Stephen: back a few milliseconds and now people are like, yeah, we're down like way below the
[808.67] Stephen: microsecond threshold now in terms of the jitter from event to event, which makes everything
[814.91] Stephen: smoother and truer overall, but just pushes the hardware that much harder.
[819.79] Curry: It's kind of interesting how many people this affects who are like, I want to fly my hex
[824.55] Curry: and octo on my bit of light f4 board.
[828.67] Stephen: Yeah, I mean, you can do that just don't upgrade it, you know, I mean, there's nothing to stop
[832.95] Stephen: people from just running the older versions, you know, if if you are happy running your
[838.43] Stephen: clean flight release from 2015, then run your clean flight release from 2015, right?
[844.91] Stephen: But if you want to be completely obsessive about it and get, you know, the best the tightest
[851.79] Stephen: experience then you know, it's probably time to get on the upgrade train, which is kind
[857.03] Stephen: of true for more or less all parts of this hobby and always has been I guess.
[863.87] Curry: So going into next year, it's it's tricky to think what the the beta flight enhancements
[872.43] Curry: would be because they've got up to a very sort of optimal sort of way of doing things
[877.47] Curry: at least for five inch quarters.
[880.71] Stephen: So is it just more, more faster, more faster, but also altitude hold and position hold are
[888.15] Stephen: coming in.
[889.15] Stephen: I saw that coming up.
[890.15] Stephen: Yeah.
[891.15] Stephen: Yeah.
[892.15] Stephen: And they're going to be doing that without a mag as well.
[893.55] Stephen: So GPS based.
[895.99] Stephen: And I think if you've got a barrow, that kind of accelerator accelerometer plus barrow based
[903.95] Stephen: sort of kind of position hold that might drift a bit.
[907.23] Stephen: So getting to a world where now, even if you've got a freestyle quad, you get into
[912.79] Stephen: a fail safe, it's going to have the ability to just sort of lock itself in place.
[918.87] Stephen: And then, you know, hopefully you can kind of walk yourself around the other side of
[923.55] Stephen: that building and wave your radio and get the signal back and carry on, which would
[928.59] Jack: be quite nice.
[931.67] Jack: The Boris B episode of beat a fly.
[935.43] Jack: We spoke to him on, uh, it said eight, it just says eight years ago.
[944.71] Jack: So there you go.
[946.71] Jack: Us.
[947.71] Jack: Yeah.
[948.71] Curry: When he first started, because he didn't happen to speak because he's not, he's not connected
[952.99] Curry: with a bit anymore.
[953.99] Curry: Is he?
[954.99] Jack: I don't know.
[955.99] Jack: Yeah.
[956.99] Jack: I don't think he's doing it anymore.
[958.99] Jack: Uh, last time I checked in with him, he was, um, this on my channel, the, um, sort of
[967.71] Jack: bonus chat to him after I knew he, I knew he had a child just when he first started
[974.11] Jack: beat a fly.
[975.11] Jack: And I don't, I don't think he flies anymore.
[977.59] Jack: I, he hasn't flown for years.
[981.5] Curry: You would have also seen, um, if you've been paying attention to YouTube, a bit of wing
[987.26] Curry: stuff would be a flight.
[988.66] Curry: I saw the other day, uh, they did the RTH and landing, which worked very well, but it
[995.18] Curry: is very dependent upon your area.
[997.66] Curry: Cause it literally comes around in a circle descends and that's 20 meters.
[1002.38] Curry: It flies out, comes around and tries to land.
[1005.18] Curry: Of course, depending what's surrounding you at this point could be interesting.
[1009.78] Curry: If you've got trees or buildings or anywhere, it's like clunk.
[1012.62] Curry: Hopefully there's, there's something to say, just, just keep circling.
[1016.18] Curry: And when I get this radio back, I'll take it.
[1018.42] Stephen: I think there's a loiter mode instead of the landing one.
[1021.1] Curry: Yeah.
[1022.1] Curry: Yes.
[1023.1] Curry: Brilliant.
[1024.1] Stephen: If you're in an open area, but I want impressive performance through the trees.
[1027.22] Stephen: If you've seen a lemons videos, uh, that's lemon with an eye, um, he's got some footage
[1033.9] Stephen: of him doing this very slow, kind of almost like prop hanging flight FPV style with a wing
[1040.3] Stephen: through some trees and then sort of gunning it a bit more in some other videos as well.
[1045.38] Stephen: Um, so yeah, it seems to be responding pretty well.
[1049.18] Stephen: I think he's recorded it all like with an O3 with stabilization because it's weirdly
[1053.74] Stephen: smooth as well.
[1055.74] Curry: It's weirdly smooth.
[1056.74] Curry: It's either he's, he's managing to fly with absolute zero wind or there's some sort of
[1061.9] Curry: stabilization because even if, and he's using quite a small wing, which should bounce around
[1067.7] Curry: quite a bit really.
[1070.1] Stephen: He did make a big thing about like not just having servo control with a bit of stabilization,
[1075.58] Stephen: but like aggressively like paid controlling the servers as well.
[1080.02] Stephen: Um, so there's some hope that it might be a wee bit smoother than, than we've seen in
[1085.9] Stephen: some wing implementations.
[1087.7] Stephen: It's going to be interesting to see how it compares to what you and I have, right?
[1091.54] Curry: It will be interesting because there's only certain amount you can do with servo because
[1095.06] Curry: it's like, it's not like you've got a motor up and down.
[1098.26] Stephen: So yeah, it's going to be interesting because you're all of a sudden going to have a lot
[1105.14] Stephen: more targets because the, one of the strengths of beta flight is just that huge hardware
[1110.9] Stephen: support.
[1111.9] Stephen: I know if you know, they kind of hold out for the, the more powerful targets with more
[1115.82] Stephen: IO and you know, it's more limited selection and you can't remap stuff quite as easily.
[1122.74] Stephen: Whereas beta flight, you can run it on any, anything that's been made in, in the last
[1128.46] Stephen: like eight years, pretty much, and you can remap pins around.
[1132.18] Stephen: So you could take something that's designed for a quad and you know, grab that motor pin
[1136.54] Stephen: and make it a servo and grab that led pin and make it a servo and do all that stuff
[1141.46] Stephen: quite easily.
[1143.26] Stephen: So it could be interesting, it'd be interesting.
[1146.46] Stephen: We shall have to wait and see because I've only seen them on videos so far.
[1150.18] Stephen: I haven't seen people who would fly wings on other firmware, give it a go, which would
[1154.5] Stephen: be the, the more telling data point, right?
[1157.62] Curry: Yeah.
[1158.62] Curry: I mean, that's, that's, that's the fun thing though.
[1161.34] Curry: If you've got, uh, one good thing about beta flight, as you say, any old flight controller
[1166.46] Curry: from years ago, we could just grab and stick in a wing, potentially, as opposed to INAB
[1170.94] Curry: where it's like, Oh, I haven't got this particular target.
[1173.06] Curry: That's a shame.
[1174.06] Curry: I can't use that.
[1175.06] Curry: She's good.
[1176.42] Stephen: I've got some, some little wings and also you can get like AIOs as well, like CRUDI AIOs
[1184.54] Stephen: where you might've blown like one of the motor outputs and just pop it in a wing would be
[1189.94] Stephen: kind of interesting.
[1190.94] Stephen: Yeah.
[1193.6] Stephen: Yeah.
[1194.6] Stephen: That certainly works.
[1195.6] Stephen: Yeah.
[1196.6] Stephen: That'd be fun.
[1197.6] Stephen: Yeah.
[1198.6] Stephen: And then over on the FPV front, um, I saw, um, Stinger Swarm looking at open IPC.
[1203.08] Stephen: It feels like there's not, not a massive huge rush of attention on that, but it's,
[1208.8] Stephen: it's keeping going.
[1210.36] Curry: It, it, it had that big rush when, um, RunCam bought something out and it seemed to, it
[1217.88] Curry: seems to keep going, hasn't it?
[1219.2] Curry: So you've got the Emacs stuff and I know Emacs, uh, are working on some sort of Google module,
[1226.84] Curry: which I think is going to be the killer app for that sort of thing.
[1230.88] Curry: Oh yeah.
[1231.88] Curry: So as I found out, it's now got, um, the, like a proper MSP OSD with, uh, like basically
[1239.72] Curry: a stick menu.
[1241.08] Curry: So through that you can go and change channels, change all the camera settings.
[1245.76] Curry: That's pretty cool.
[1247.2] Curry: And the things they're working on at the moment are things like, um, a sort of thing where
[1252.82] Curry: the receiving end looks at the RSSI of the signal is getting all the other way around
[1258.72] Curry: and it, it just a bit rate because of it.
[1262.2] Curry: So that's similar to like what walks now will do is like, Oh, you're going far away and
[1266.92] Curry: my signals crap.
[1268.12] Curry: Let's reduce the bit rate walks now to the, like, let's reduce it to here.
[1271.72] Curry: And you just look at the middle bit and everything else is rubbish, which we'll put it more on
[1275.52] Curry: parity with that stuff, which is pretty cool.
[1278.56] Stephen: Because you were saying previously you had to kind of decide if you were flying long
[1281.96] Stephen: range or if you were flying close up freestyle and set it to begin with before you took off
[1287.36] Stephen: or you'd end up with a bad experience.
[1289.4] Stephen: Right.
[1290.76] Curry: Well, yeah, I mean, the bit rate on it is not particularly high.
[1294.52] Curry: You can, you can set it to like five megabits, 10 megabits, and you get a pretty good
[1301.28] Curry: picture, but there's no, there's no like difference as you fly out.
[1306.44] Curry: So if you would go far instead of it starting to become like a little bit speckly and sort
[1311.96] Curry: of reducing the bit rate, it will just like, Oh, I'll start freezing a bit and you just
[1317.16] Curry: get bits of it.
[1318.16] Curry: And then it's like, Oh, better turn around at this point.
[1319.88] Curry: So it's all going very wrong.
[1322.68] Curry: But some what, what it doesn't have this is I need to, I need to get my head round Ruby
[1327.16] Curry: as well, because what it doesn't have, it doesn't have the two way situation where it
[1333.2] Curry: tries to like, do it, do it like, resend the frames if it's missing some information.
[1338.96] Curry: I'm hearing that Ruby does something clever with it and might be able to add to that.
[1344.96] Stephen: We'll find out.
[1345.96] Stephen: I think the author of Ruby suit seems to be pretty cagey about exactly what's going on
[1350.72] Stephen: and not willing to open source it.
[1353.2] Stephen: But I heard it like a year ago that he was just keeping it private for a while and then
[1358.4] Stephen: he'd share it.
[1359.4] Stephen: But that doesn't seem to be happening, I don't think.
[1362.32] Curry: This is what I keep getting.
[1363.32] Curry: I keep getting people commenting on the video saying you must try Ruby, you must try Ruby
[1366.32] Curry: out.
[1367.32] Curry: And I've avoided it because I know it's this one guy.
[1371.16] Curry: And we know that open, open HD suffered because one guy that was in the project suddenly left.
[1378.4] Curry: And they lost half their like binary assets because they were stored on some weird server
[1383.16] Curry: somewhere instead of GitHub.
[1384.88] Curry: And I don't like putting my eggs into a basket where it's like, this could all just crash
[1388.8] Curry: and die.
[1389.8] Stephen: And I hope open HD does get their hardware out.
[1392.96] Stephen: They seem to be very open about what they're doing and there's no kind of eyebrow raised
[1400.36] Stephen: over potential ties with war efforts and things.
[1405.76] Stephen: So it would be nice to have that side represented as well.
[1411.2] Stephen: But yeah, it's clear that the Chinese vendors have seen an opportunity with an open IBC
[1416.72] Stephen: and jumped on it.
[1417.72] Stephen: And we can't deny them the jump they've got there.
[1422.64] Stephen: It's good to see them making progress.
[1424.72] Curry: Yeah, as we see if if he seems doing one, then you know, it's, it's in the it's in now
[1430.56] Curry: cheap and cheerful.
[1431.56] Curry: Yeah, I can't quite get my hands on one yet.
[1434.72] Curry: And hopefully we'll start see a few different cameras come out as well.
[1437.44] Jack: It's looking really promising.
[1439.08] Curry: It is if they get like the small email export would, I think it's a bit of a game changer
[1446.32] Curry: because it's literally a single board, you connect it in some woop or two big, you put
[1451.36] Curry: five volts into it, it's good to go.
[1455.36] Curry: The only dodgy thing on that was the the pre release versions, they sent the reviewers
[1461.2] Curry: as a 3d printed camera case.
[1464.2] Curry: And that's not very tight on the screw.
[1466.52] Curry: So hence my was out of focus.
[1468.72] Curry: And to focus it, you know, you've got that locking focus nut, you've got this much out.
[1475.96] Curry: And I'm like trying to hold it whilst trying to turn and it's like it's impossible and
[1479.96] Curry: looking through the goggles, trying to like where's the okay, I've got the focus point
[1483.72] Curry: now tighten that without moving that it's like, it's hideous.
[1487.32] Curry: It's really, really difficult.
[1488.84] Stephen: You might as well just give up on the locking nut and just put a drop of light CA on on
[1493.2] Stephen: the on the lens thread and call it good.
[1495.08] Stephen: It's not bad.
[1496.08] Jack: If you smash your lens and need to change it, you're like, oh, it's a 3d printed shell
[1502.0] Stephen: anyway.
[1503.0] Stephen: Yeah.
[1504.0] Stephen: Yeah.
[1505.0] Jack: Cut it out.
[1506.0] Jack: Cut it out.
[1507.0] Jack: Yeah.
[1508.04] Jack: Um, what I used to do is I used to have like a focus chart on the wall at radio say, you
[1513.84] Jack: know, like all those lines converging and then I would, uh, get it in focus, then loosen
[1521.16] Jack: it a bit, wind the, the, the ring down onto that and then gently tighten it back up.
[1529.52] Jack: Just cinch it slightly.
[1530.92] Jack: And then it cinches itself as it follows.
[1535.0] Stephen: I had it focused in here and I'd like focus on something that's like, you know, the other
[1541.16] Stephen: side of the room and be like, yeah, yeah, it's definitely in focus.
[1543.48] Stephen: I'd take off and realize I couldn't see like, I could see the grass right in front of the
[1548.68] Stephen: quad.
[1549.68] Curry: Yeah.
[1550.68] Curry: I'm, I'm like using my garden and there's like a brick wall and I'm like, that's a good
[1555.36] Curry: sort of 20 feet away.
[1557.2] Curry: So that's probably good.
[1559.76] Stephen: You've got to focus against something that's that kind of middle distance because if you
[1563.24] Stephen: get it so it's beautifully in focus at sort of two to three meters away, there's a very
[1568.72] Stephen: real risk that when you take off, you're just looking at a giant blur and some very sharp
[1574.32] Stephen: blades of grass immediately in front of you.
[1578.72] Curry: So that's a warm for Tony.
[1580.16] Curry: As long as Tony can see his grass and it's beautiful, he'll be happy.
[1585.76] Frank: This episode was recorded in front of a live online audience, downloaded and edited to
[1589.88] Frank: make sense when it's played audio only, censored to please the iTunes people, hosted on the
[1594.72] Frank: internet, forwarded through to your podcast provider, downloaded, playing on your device
[1598.92] Frank: and is now playing in your ears.
[1600.84] Frank: All thanks to our Patreons.
[1603.24] Frank: Consider joining them and you'll also get other online benefits.
[1606.52] Frank: Find out more at patreon.com forward slash.
[1609.6] Frank: Let's drone out.
[1610.6] Stephen: Steven, I saw you're posting killer quads.
[1613.68] Stephen: Are you sealing up?
[1614.68] Stephen: I have no idea what I'm talking about.
[1616.68] Stephen: Lights out.
[1618.16] Jack: Are you selling up?
[1620.36] Jack: Is someone pretending to be you telling everything?
[1623.16] Curry: Did you make a post on killer quads?
[1625.76] Stephen: Can't remember.
[1627.24] Jack: I'm not.
[1628.16] Jack: No, I have no idea.
[1629.32] Jack: He's been ill.
[1630.24] Jack: So forgive the dementia.
[1632.48] Jack: He might have like had a bit of a fever during.
[1635.48] Jack: Telling up what?
[1637.72] Jack: Selling your drone stuff.
[1639.96] Stephen: I was just just I was just bored.
[1643.28] Stephen: I haven't been flying for a while.
[1646.0] Stephen: Been doing other stuff, but, um, yeah, I can't remember sparing a little bit of light serve
[1657.36] Stephen: versus all the people that serve was trying to help who were busy, like shouting splitter
[1664.36] Stephen: traitor and so on.
[1665.36] Stephen: It was all a bit too much drama.
[1667.12] Stephen: It was just like, oh, really can't be bothered to deal with this.
[1672.16] Stephen: It's one of the things that makes me feel like just get giving up a lot of the time
[1675.96] Stephen: when I see that, because it's just such a drama factory at times.
[1680.52] Stephen: This hobby.
[1681.52] Stephen: I love it, but we're own worst enemies.
[1684.08] Stephen: You know, we've got enough to worry about with government legislation and just becomes
[1687.88] Stephen: a bit.
[1688.88] Curry: It seems to say there's any hobby like, you know, when you were, well, when I was a kid,
[1697.2] Curry: it's like, we like playing games, but the spectrum people versus the Commodore 64 people
[1702.12] Curry: and has the same things on the PC game at the site.
[1709.08] Stephen: No one likes it.
[1710.08] Stephen: You'll never be a PC game when the first PlayStation came out and everyone's like that's not proper
[1715.88] Stephen: video game.
[1716.88] Stephen: That's not Nintendo.
[1717.88] Stephen: It's not, it's not say rubbish, rubbish, rubbish.
[1721.12] Jack: Yeah.
[1722.12] Stephen: Yeah.
[1723.12] Stephen: It's much the same.
[1725.12] Jack: Um, I love, I love that big gray PlayStation.
[1731.08] Curry: It was the best anniversary PS5 broke for just a grand.
[1737.52] Curry: Yeah.
[1738.52] Curry: You can't get one.
[1740.52] Jack: No, rather not.
[1742.0] Jack: I know.
[1743.0] Jack: And apparently like the, the, the 30 year special intro isn't permanent on it.
[1749.28] Jack: It's only for as long as they're doing it.
[1753.96] Jack: And I'm like, Oh God, because it's the boot startups, the same, you know, the Sony present
[1762.04] Curry: but you can change it on the record.
[1765.36] Curry: It popped up.
[1766.36] Curry: It's like, it's our 30th anniversary.
[1767.96] Curry: What style would you like?
[1768.96] Curry: And you can have this one, two people get the slightly, it's like a rotating sort of
[1773.76] Stephen: low poly PlayStation logo or something that came in the original one anyway.
[1786.66] Curry: Talking of slightly controversial news, Steven, you were talking about Rotor right before
[1790.38] Curry: we came on that.
[1791.38] Stephen: Right.
[1792.38] Stephen: Okay.
[1793.38] Stephen: So I was going to do the 10 years on, but let, yeah, let's, um, let's jump sideways.
[1798.1] Stephen: Um, they wrote a riot, as people will know, was bought by red cat and red cat is a portfolio
[1806.98] Stephen: company where they have a lot of drone related enterprises and they, um, I put them all under
[1814.42] Stephen: one roof.
[1815.42] Stephen: Um, and from fat shark wrote a riot, um, I think teal there as well on unusual machines
[1822.82] Stephen: was the latest one, which lists, uh, drew Campbell on the, uh, executive team drew Camden.
[1830.9] Stephen: Sorry.
[1831.9] Stephen: I should say Mr. Mr. Guy liner himself.
[1834.66] Stephen: Um, and there was a New York post-article which caught my attention last week announcing
[1841.98] Stephen: that happy days for unusual machines as their chairs surged more than a hundred percent
[1848.82] Stephen: following, uh, the spawn of, uh, Donald Trump joining the advisory board, uh, the imaginatively
[1858.98] Stephen: named Donald Trump Jr.
[1861.54] Stephen: Um, yeah, great.
[1867.06] Curry: So if you didn't like, if you didn't dislike unusual machines enough for building war drones,
[1873.84] Curry: now you've got extra reason to dislike them.
[1876.52] Curry: You've got one of the top spawners there.
[1879.16] Stephen: I think probably the only man who looks more punchable than Piers Morgan.
[1883.0] Stephen: I mean, he's really, he's gone for it.
[1887.0] Stephen: That's quite an achievement.
[1888.56] Stephen: Yeah.
[1889.56] Stephen: Well, I mean, you've got to factor his dad in as well, I suppose he's got good at genetics
[1894.2] Stephen: there.
[1895.2] Stephen: Um, but yeah, so I don't know what this means about the direction of the company as a whole,
[1899.56] Stephen: but it's clear that they've got a massive sort of media shot in the arm there.
[1903.96] Stephen: And now their name is going to be plastered everywhere courtesy of, of Donnie.
[1909.64] Curry: Um, well, it means they're going to get huge contracts, doesn't it?
[1914.36] Curry: Because it's like, uh, dad, can my company get me useful things?
[1921.32] Stephen: That's not the sole reason they're getting massive contracts.
[1924.44] Stephen: One of the massive reasons that they would get them anyway is that his Donnie's father,
[1930.32] Stephen: Donnie senior is threatening to put a tariff on anything from China.
[1935.28] Stephen: So what, what, what he's done there is seeing the opportunity to penalize the competition
[1940.46] Stephen: who has better technology and a more popular product and a kind of prop up the us drone
[1946.44] Stephen: industry there.
[1947.52] Stephen: So people are going to be buying anything that's made in the us because it's going
[1953.28] Stephen: to all of a sudden look relatively cheaper and better value than the Chinese competition.
[1960.08] Stephen: And so yeah, kind of aligning yourself with something here that, that stands to benefit
[1964.12] Stephen: from those tariffs is, is a smart move.
[1966.72] Stephen: I'm sure.
[1967.72] Stephen: Especially if your dad is the one that's going to be standing behind those tariffs, there's
[1973.12] Stephen: nothing as traditional as nepotism.
[1975.04] Curry: Yeah.
[1976.04] Curry: As we had earlier this week, when, when current president decided to pardon his son for all
[1981.88] Curry: the wrongdoings, which may or may not happen during the last 11 years, which is oddly specific.
[1988.12] Stephen: Yeah.
[1990.94] Stephen: Yeah.
[1991.94] Stephen: It's spectacular.
[1992.94] Stephen: Well, unfortunately for people making things in the us, you know, these threats result
[2000.58] Stephen: in threats in reverse and China has slapped tariffs on exports of germanium and other
[2009.62] Stephen: rare metals that are used to make drones amongst other electronics.
[2015.44] Stephen: So yeah, it's going to be more expensive to export things from China.
[2021.42] Stephen: And as a result, China said, well, it's now going to be more expensive for you to make
[2025.78] Stephen: things in the us.
[2027.62] Stephen: So I'm not sure if anyone's really a winner here.
[2030.34] Stephen: I'm not sure what that means for the price of drones for us consumers overall, because
[2036.94] Stephen: it sounds like everyone's just going to have to pay more, but we'll see how that goes.
[2042.9] Jack: You'll only be legally allowed to buy it from designated Rotoriot shops.
[2047.98] Jack: That's it.
[2048.98] Stephen: You have to paint your face a launch.
[2052.14] Stephen: Place the order.
[2053.14] Jack: Yep.
[2054.14] Jack: And I'm like, nope, you can't, but it must all go through the correct channels.
[2060.38] Jack: I gave up on the KO 45.
[2066.82] Jack: I flashed it to AM 32.
[2069.5] Jack: I had that horrible, jittery, and in the end, somehow, Stephen, the lovely flight controller
[2079.14] Jack: you got me, the SD card, no, it's fine, it's still alive.
[2085.82] Jack: The SD card just doesn't work, but this is how saddened I was by my foolish mistake.
[2095.78] Jack: I now have, yep, that says BL Heli S.
[2100.18] Jack: Well, well, you can't go wrong.
[2103.3] Jack: Now come back to 8-bit, baby, 8-bit.
[2107.34] Stephen: You could flash it to Blue Jay.
[2109.62] Stephen: Sometimes she just needs something that works.
[2111.22] Jack: Yeah, maybe.
[2112.22] Jack: I don't know.
[2113.22] Jack: More than anything, I could have put the other BL Heli, my last BL Heli S, BL Heli 32.
[2125.98] Jack: Yeah, see, but I, I don't know where I put it, I have no idea.
[2134.9] Stephen: There's some ESC news as well, trying to take this in a positive direction, other than that
[2140.06] Stephen: Blue Jay is pretty awesome and they're still working very well, but there were a lot of
[2143.94] Stephen: features going into AM 32 for those who have working ones that don't stutter and jump around.
[2150.86] Stephen: You can now control them via a drone can.
[2155.22] Stephen: So if you find yourself in a situation where your flight controller is two meters distant
[2159.86] Stephen: from your ESC, do not spare because you can use CAN all of a sudden to control the ESC.
[2167.82] Stephen: And I noticed IKEA came out with this very interesting feature where, well, you know
[2173.34] Stephen: that the prop spinning thing where you'd sort of test the motors are spinning in the right
[2176.94] Stephen: direction and then you click reverse and then you'd be like, wait a minute, is that the
[2180.82] Stephen: right direction?
[2181.82] Stephen: And you click reverse again and then you go, and you take off, be 90% sure it was going
[2186.66] Stephen: to be okay.
[2187.66] Stephen: Only if you're going to flip upside down and try and murder rate you.
[2190.78] Stephen: Well rejoice, because there is a slightly simpler way now where AM 32 is reportedly
[2197.7] Stephen: able to actually measure which way you rotate the props.
[2203.98] Stephen: If you put it in a special mode and you like toggle the beacon on, it can go into a special
[2210.3] Stephen: mode where it listens and you manually rotate the prop in the direction you want it to turn
[2216.98] Stephen: and then it goes boop boop and remembers the right way and it says that way is now forward,
[2223.37] Stephen: which is interesting.
[2224.37] Curry: I think Jack's going to say it's not a new thing, is it?
[2231.69] Curry: Where did it go?
[2232.69] Curry: No.
[2233.69] Curry: I think it was on the, what's the company that did easy OGF, I've forgotten now.
[2239.21] Curry: It's Immersion RC, Immersion RC bought out their drones and I've got one of them and
[2246.97] Curry: I can't remember what it was called, something or other, but they had two F3s in it and one
[2254.77] Curry: was two for the flight controller and one was for the OSD and one of the features they
[2260.25] Curry: put in is like move your motor, which way you want it and that will be which way it
[2265.29] Curry: goes.
[2266.37] Curry: It did a lot of really awesome things, which it didn't catch on in regular stuff because
[2272.49] Curry: it was our own firmware.
[2275.09] Stephen: My only concern is right now it looks like it triggers that mode if you leave the beacon
[2279.97] Stephen: on for more than 10 seconds or 10 cycles.
[2282.85] Stephen: That's not good.
[2283.85] Stephen: If you crash you can't find it for a while.
[2285.45] Stephen: So a slightly more complex version so it doesn't like get itself up a tree, have a beacon on,
[2291.65] Stephen: you find it, oh it's that tree, then you wiggle the tree with the beacon still on,
[2297.33] Stephen: the drone falls through, turns its props in the process and ends up on the ground having
[2302.85] Stephen: reversed the direction of several of its motors, unbeknownst to you the pilot who was busy
[2307.05] Stephen: shaking a tree.
[2308.53] Stephen: So maybe a slightly more complex system to get it into that mode rather than just leaving
[2316.53] Stephen: the beacon.
[2317.53] Stephen: There does seem to be a problem in that.
[2318.53] Jack: Yeah, because as your quad falls the props will be turning the other way, wouldn't they?
[2327.25] Jack: But you do have PAS mode.
[2329.57] Jack: So I think when it starts detecting it's not moving the correct way it just dies rather
[2335.21] Jack: than taking you out because we had an intern at Radio C who wired up the props in the wrong
[2345.05] Jack: direction of a KISS quad and I went to flight test there and it nearly took my head off.
[2351.49] Jack: It went straight out and almost to the big glass windows, luckily it dropped through
[2358.69] Jack: the window.
[2360.25] Stephen: With Christmas approaching there's numerous accessories and for a modest fee you can have
[2367.41] Stephen: the well-booted DC shoe footed footer jack here placed on top of your quad to ensure
[2373.57] Stephen: that you're safe.
[2374.57] Stephen: So just a reasonable fee, Jack will travel around the country and put his foot on the
[2380.01] Stephen: top of your quad because he's got years of experience doing this.
[2383.77] Stephen: So there you are.
[2385.01] Jack: I know.
[2386.01] Jack: You were horrified by that.
[2387.45] Jack: I am so sorry.
[2388.61] Stephen: I subject you to anything up to a modest sitting lifter and we think he can keep it down safely
[2394.45] Stephen: on the floor.
[2396.85] Curry: Back in the olden days you used to tie your quad to two chairs and test it out that way
[2402.73] Curry: to make sure it did all the right things.
[2404.65] Curry: You do.
[2405.65] Curry: I've never done that.
[2406.65] Curry: Have you never done that?
[2407.65] Curry: That was a tried and tested way of checking your pits.
[2412.25] Stephen: I've seen people bungee cord stuff to patio tables and things.
[2418.41] Stephen: Any table that comes cold in it.
[2419.41] Curry: Bungee cords are a bit dangerous because it's like that's not going to work.
[2422.49] Curry: If you suspend it between two chairs and then you can put the motor in and make sure everything
[2428.85] Curry: works fine.
[2429.85] Curry: How do you suspend it between two chairs?
[2432.69] Curry: What's between the two chairs?
[2434.65] Curry: Rope.
[2435.65] Curry: Rope to quad and then a quad rope to another thing.
[2439.97] Curry: So it's suspended on two arms.
[2442.73] Jack: Is this everything CPI or whatever when people were doing their testing and is that right?
[2449.65] Curry: Is that the right panel?
[2453.29] Curry: I've got a video of me doing this once which I won't share with my wife because she'd be
[2457.21] Curry: like, what are you doing to our chairs?
[2459.21] Curry: It's insane.
[2460.73] Stephen: Why has he knocked all the varnish off the chairs?
[2463.09] Stephen: Oh, they were like that.
[2464.09] Stephen: They were probably the cat.
[2465.09] Stephen: It's probably the cat.
[2466.09] Stephen: Yeah, it's the cat.
[2467.09] Stephen: It wasn't this cine lifter and nothing to do with the cine lifter.
[2470.69] Curry: Yeah, that used to be a thing.
[2473.65] Curry: Tie things to chairs, test it out.
[2476.89] Curry: Two fact.
[2478.89] Curry: The fact you haven't done this is right.
[2479.89] Stephen: People were actually testing maximum amp draw with batteries by finding a heavy table and
[2486.45] Stephen: the bungee cord and really like lashing it down onto the table.
[2490.85] Stephen: And it seemed to be that you could go full froth on that and it would be.
[2494.53] Curry: Bungee cord sounds like the wrong thing because when you stop thrusting, it's like stuff as
[2499.13] Curry: opposed to suspended.
[2500.93] Curry: It's just like I think it's like you with a rope and then you stop it and it falls back
[2505.65] Stephen: down.
[2506.65] Stephen: Yeah, it wasn't enough to actually kind of even create a gap.
[2510.57] Stephen: It was just something that was easy to tension.
[2512.85] Stephen: You could use like a belt or something, I suppose, but it's something you can crank
[2517.41] Stephen: down on it.
[2518.41] Stephen: It works.
[2519.41] Stephen: Caroline says the ex-partner didn't like that trick, apparently.
[2524.09] Stephen: So yeah, furniture damage apparently makes the non-pilots in the household particularly
[2530.77] Stephen: annoyed.
[2531.77] Curry: Yeah, everything about me doing quads in the house makes the partner particularly annoyed.
[2538.53] Curry: So look out for that.
[2540.53] Stephen: Fly them somewhere else.
[2542.65] Stephen: And Numskull comments that he remembers when radix changed their gyros and had his one
[2550.57] Stephen: and only fly away, which took off in his back garden and over the main road at max power,
[2556.97] Stephen: which yeah, that would be terrifying.
[2559.57] Stephen: When you go out to do a nice gentle hover test and it's just 100% and gone like a bullet.
[2565.25] Curry: I managed to do that when I was first building my tricopter when I didn't know what I was
[2569.53] Curry: doing.
[2570.53] Curry: And someone at work lent me a radio and tried this out and I didn't know what I'd plugged
[2575.09] Curry: into what because I was throttling up and then the motors were coming on in ways I wasn't
[2582.89] Curry: familiar with.
[2583.89] Curry: And it had these switches to reverse the channels.
[2586.37] Curry: So I was like, I'll try reversing that one.
[2587.97] Curry: Anything happen?
[2588.97] Curry: No.
[2589.97] Curry: I'll try reversing that one.
[2590.97] Curry: Eventually, I managed to reverse the throttle in which case the tricopter went shh and hit
[2595.25] Curry: me in the head and then fell back down again.
[2599.05] Stephen: I suppose at least it hit you because if it didn't, would you have even ever seen it again?
[2603.29] Stephen: It would just be gone.
[2604.61] Curry: Yeah, fortunately, it wasn't stable enough just to go up with it, but I learned about
[2612.93] Stephen: what channel orders were.
[2614.69] Stephen: So that was quite useful.
[2616.61] Stephen: The comments in the chat apparently, wigs are very dangerous with these similar tests
[2621.97] Stephen: as well.
[2623.73] Stephen: Yeah, anyone with delicate furniture or hair pieces, just don't be testing your quarter
[2632.25] Stephen: round anything more or less is the message I'm getting here.
[2635.41] Stephen: I think that's fair.
[2637.41] Curry: So talking of next year, I was thinking about Express LRS, what's happening there?
[2644.33] Curry: And the main thing I could think of, because I haven't looked at what's coming up, is the
[2648.29] Curry: use of the LR1121 chip, which has this huge range of frequencies because previously you
[2656.29] Curry: have multiband.
[2657.29] Curry: I've forgotten what the chip's called.
[2658.89] Curry: You had the 2.4 chip and you had the 868915 chip and now you've got this single chip that
[2665.21] Curry: goes from a range, I think it includes 433 up to 866 and 2.4.
[2671.13] Curry: So you've got one chip to do them all.
[2674.53] Curry: So essentially, we could have receivers coming out where you could flash both versions of
[2680.97] Curry: the firmware and just swap the antenna over to do things what's happening there.
[2685.45] Stephen: Yeah, what is happening there?
[2687.25] Stephen: I mean, if only we had someone who knew, well, I guess we'll just carry on repeating hearsay
[2693.89] Stephen: and conjecture.
[2694.89] Stephen: But yeah, it looks very promising and new chipsets, I think the original ones, the
[2704.37] Stephen: Cintech modules they had were pretty old, right?
[2709.17] Stephen: The ones on the 900 megahertz band were what was being used in Crossfire for many, many
[2714.49] Stephen: years or very, very minor revisions on what was being used for Crossfire, right?
[2719.81] Stephen: Yeah, I think it's the same chip as that.
[2725.57] Jack: You know, like Crossfire released their GitHub, was there any updates to that?
[2733.09] Jack: Did we learn anything?
[2735.81] Stephen: How incredibly sarcastic comments?
[2738.41] Stephen: I think the original promise was that it would appear in two weeks.
[2744.57] Stephen: It was pointed out that I believe two weeks on Venus was finally what we ended up with
[2750.29] Stephen: at something around 640 days total earth standard days.
[2756.45] Stephen: But yeah, that everyone's at least got something to base it off now.
[2759.65] Stephen: And that's good.
[2760.65] Stephen: They finally got something out there.
[2763.13] Stephen: It looks like, you know, the LRS has just pretty much taken over the hobby.
[2767.21] Stephen: There's a little bit of noise about, oh, look, FrSky, I have their new radios out and then
[2772.33] Stephen: you can kind of do this and you hit this button and it's like the old RXSR.
[2778.85] Stephen: I noticed Mads review of that was like, oh, yeah, but you can also run Express LRS on
[2783.69] Stephen: this.
[2784.69] Stephen: So, yeah.
[2787.23] Curry: I wonder, I'm interested to know if we'll see some people going back to 433.
[2793.23] Curry: There was some people experimenting with 433 on Express LRS.
[2797.63] Curry: But I don't think it's gotten to sort of the main code, like back in the old days.
[2804.11] Curry: And I think the reason Crossfire exists is because Trappy got into an argument with Sander
[2810.39] Curry: at Emotion RC about EZ-OHF blanking out on one of their long range flights.
[2817.79] Curry: And they got into this big public argument and then like, well, we'll make our own radio
[2823.23] Curry: system there.
[2824.23] Curry: Don't like yours anymore.
[2825.95] Curry: And like, oh, it's Crossfire.
[2828.19] Curry: So 433 back in the day was like the range king.
[2833.47] Curry: But it's like the antenna for it because it's a longer wavelength is like this big.
[2839.19] Curry: Oh, it's like it's back to the 80s antenna.
[2841.19] Curry: It's not quite so good for quads.
[2842.19] Curry: Yeah.
[2843.19] Curry: You'd go very far on it.
[2844.19] Curry: But you'd go very far on 2.4.
[2845.19] Stephen: Maybe we need a 72 megahertz version of Express LRS, you know?
[2848.79] Stephen: Yes, you'd go back to 35 megs and go the whole thing and just have like this big tree and
[2853.99] Stephen: things.
[2854.99] Stephen: But every now and then he does wing racing in Wales.
[2857.23] Stephen: And if we get that, he probably wouldn't need to leave the house.
[2860.67] Stephen: It's run is like 72 megahertz CLRS and probably reached Wales from his house.
[2867.99] Curry: Oh, we've got an update from people now.
[2870.83] Curry: The 433 is available, says Kevin Bright.
[2873.39] Curry: But the sensitivity doesn't seem to match the specs.
[2875.43] Curry: Joe did a ton of testing to try and make it work, but eventually put it aside.
[2878.79] Curry: Oh, that's a shame.
[2879.79] Curry: We can't have the good old days.
[2881.03] Curry: I've still got my diamond antenna somewhere, which is it makes you feel like an old radio
[2885.59] Curry: controller because when you've got a radio and your antenna is like this tall and it
[2889.95] Curry: has that big wiggle to it, that's more fun than this little stubby thing.
[2894.43] Curry: You have a diamond antenna.
[2895.95] Stephen: What you do is literally be the size of a bent coat hanger.
[2899.43] Curry: Yeah, the diamond antennas were the things to get for 433 and had to make sure you didn't
[2904.59] Curry: get a fake and that that would go on on your DragonLink or your EZ-OTF or your R9 link.
[2910.99] Curry: There's there's loads of weird, weird and wonderful 333 systems out there that were very
[2917.27] Curry: expensive back in the day.
[2919.15] Stephen: Yeah, it's a shame that 433 doesn't deliver, but for most people, 2.4 works great.
[2924.83] Stephen: So while I'm sure that the guys with their experience and brains could probably figure
[2931.07] Stephen: out which component is to blame for the lack of sensitivity and make some progress, there's
[2937.87] Stephen: not a lot of people that find 2.4 gigahertz limiting with Express LRS, much less like
[2944.19] Stephen: the 900 or 868 version.
[2946.19] Stephen: So the people who need 433, that would probably be just curiosity and experimentation for
[2953.15] Stephen: the most part, rather than an actual need to be able to fly more than 100 kilometers
[2957.71] Curry: away from where they're standing or having weird things left over.
[2961.87] Curry: Yeah, I still got I still got some antennas on my my the plane that hates me as has got a
[2970.87] Curry: I forgot what it says now, but it's yeah, it's got a 433 antenna going through it, which is
[2975.91] Curry: like this big.
[2977.35] Curry: Still have to get back and fly that thing eventually.
[2980.39] Stephen: So what are you looking forward to building in your career?
[2983.43] Stephen: You seem to have probably three or four builds going at the moment.
[2987.11] Stephen: It looks quite busy where you are.
[2990.23] Curry: Um, I've still got that VTOL, which isn't working.
[2994.79] Curry: So I'd like that to work.
[2998.79] Curry: Other than that, it's like it's all a bit nothing, nothing particularly new.
[3005.19] Stephen: It's just like VTOL to work, are you waiting for the manufacturers to do something or are
[3009.79] Stephen: you talking to developers or are you just kind of like staring at it and the hope that
[3014.75] Curry: it's kind of like we have the slight disagreement between the main manufacturer about what
[3020.03] Curry: happens when you connect it to a computer where I send them a video of me hooking it up,
[3025.19] Curry: downloading Q Ground Control, plugging in and it's saying, I don't know what this is.
[3031.67] Curry: We don't know what your firmware is.
[3032.99] Curry: We don't know what your model is.
[3034.27] Curry: And they send me a video back when they plug it in and it says, it shows our model, it
[3038.03] Curry: shows our firmware.
[3038.75] Curry: It's like brilliant.
[3040.11] Curry: How do we, how do we match up?
[3042.07] Curry: How do we mesh together?
[3043.67] Curry: Because you sent me two of these and they both did the same thing.
[3048.32] Stephen: I noticed I got a warning with a mission planner or something on my phone where it's now
[3053.68] Stephen: apparently identified as a malicious app by Google, which was a bit of concern.
[3059.2] Stephen: Nice.
[3060.44] Jack: How did the jacket go or shall I watch that video, Curry?
[3067.96] Curry: I have, it was toasty as I keep saying relentlessly.
[3072.2] Curry: If you, if you have a drink every time I say toasty, you will be blind drunk by halfway
[3077.4] Curry: through the video.
[3078.16] Curry: Apparently it's my word of the day for that day.
[3080.44] Curry: It's very nice.
[3081.4] Curry: It was like, it was nice.
[3082.64] Curry: It's like a nice warm thing.
[3084.52] Curry: Even though I wasn't cold, I decided to keep it on because it was so pleasant.
[3090.87] Stephen: You know, my, my first thought was, oh, a barrel jacket.
[3094.59] Stephen: Oh, that's interesting.
[3096.55] Stephen: I wonder what happens if you put a three S on that.
[3102.67] Curry: You see, you see this like fire at the back.
[3106.39] Curry: That'd be fun.
[3109.15] Stephen: Yeah.
[3111.23] Stephen: Cause it looked like it was probably maxing out of five volts and then it was like
[3115.11] Stephen: switching up to five faults or something.
[3117.87] Stephen: Be interesting to see how much juice it's actually putting out because you've got so
[3122.47] Stephen: many packs and, and it looks like it's got the same plug as you did have on like a
[3126.59] Stephen: goggles pack or something.
[3129.27] Curry: Yeah.
[3129.47] Curry: I could, I could, I could plug six S in and see what happens.
[3133.63] Curry: It might be boring though.
[3134.55] Curry: It might just be, um, um, it just like pops.
[3141.87] Stephen: Well, you could start small.
[3143.19] Stephen: You could start with like a two S pack and be like, what, what's going to happen on
[3147.83] Stephen: the two S and two S is what it's got essentially.
[3151.35] Curry: Yeah.
[3151.51] Curry: It's seven.
[3152.03] Curry: Can you swap and use the goggles pack?
[3155.31] Curry: I could do because with, uh, the walk snail and the HD zero goggles, you get a
[3161.95] Curry: barrel Jack with an XD 60 in the end, which you plug one end into your goggles
[3165.75] Curry: and the other other side into whatever.
[3167.47] Curry: So it's like, let's connect different batteries, but I quite like being warm.
[3172.15] Curry: So I don't really want to blow up.
[3174.59] Curry: It'd be quite good to glow in the dark as well though.
[3176.51] Stephen: If I can just get a while ago, but I haven't worn them in absolutely ages.
[3180.79] Stephen: I've forgotten where I put them.
[3181.87] Stephen: I got them for snowboarding.
[3184.03] Stephen: I, I want these for skiing as well.
[3185.95] Stephen: I'm scheming every, I need to keep my feet warm.
[3190.27] Stephen: The wiring was a bit of a problem because I had to connect each
[3194.19] Stephen: individual sock to a USB C.
[3197.11] Stephen: Um, so I ended up with this weird system of like a splitter and like
[3201.71] Stephen: two USB power cables running down my legs.
[3205.51] Stephen: Cause I came with these really small batteries and they would
[3208.35] Stephen: discharge quite quickly, especially cause lipos get cold.
[3211.75] Stephen: They get really bad at holding their charge.
[3214.43] Stephen: Uh, and so I wanted to put the lipo in my pocket where it was nice and
[3217.83] Stephen: toasty and then run a elite.
[3219.95] Stephen: Yeah.
[3220.19] Stephen: I ended up with this kind of just maze of USB extensions running
[3224.43] Stephen: down the trails of legs.
[3225.55] Stephen: And it was, yeah, it felt like a bit dangerous.
[3230.87] Curry: It does.
[3231.99] Curry: I suppose what I'm looking forward to is, is something I guess we talked
[3237.87] Curry: about before, it's like the, a module for a goggle that would just give you
[3244.63] Curry: HDZ, uh, I just did a, uh, open IPC with a DVR, which at the moment is a
[3249.79] Curry: Redaxa, which you'd have to sell it yourself, but it'd be a nice tab, a
[3253.91] Curry: commercial thing with just like this little tiny HDMI need and just
[3258.07] Curry: connect it up and go.
[3260.19] Curry: That would be good because at the moment it's, it's a bit slow.
[3263.03] Curry: I might have to go and buy myself one of those things because at the
[3266.59] Curry: moment I can't record true DVR.
[3270.07] Curry: I have to use like a tablet and that's only recording about 40 to 50 frames
[3274.59] Curry: a second, and I'm getting like lovely smoothness in my goggles.
[3278.63] Curry: And when I look at it on the DVR playback, it's like, Oh, that's not very
[3281.67] Curry: smooth because missing frames out.
[3284.35] Stephen: Powerplay for 2024 that actually does HDMI pass through and record
[3289.59] Stephen: instead of, uh, just the old school one.
[3292.35] Curry: I'm told that the, the orca goggles can record from HDMI in.
[3296.79] Curry: So that is possible, but they're very, very expensive.
[3299.79] Curry: Yeah.
[3300.79] Curry: Those goggles, aren't they?
[3302.07] Curry: So it's kind of moved past them as well, hasn't it?
[3305.71] Curry: They were supposed to be in their HD system out several years ago
[3308.67] Stephen: and it's, it still hasn't happened.
[3311.03] Stephen: HD zero apparently advertised that as an initial feature, but they were blocked
[3316.07] Stephen: from, um, incorporating HDMI recording because the HDMI consortium gets
[3321.59] Stephen: twitchy about people recording stuff off HDMI.
[3324.91] Stephen: And so they're all sorts better.
[3326.63] Stephen: The blocker feature in the firmware.
[3328.31] Stephen: So it sounds like the hardware is capable, but they were told that that
[3332.71] Stephen: would be naughty because people would, I don't know, like plug it into their
[3336.79] Stephen: Chromecast and record Netflix shows or something daft.
[3340.23] Stephen: I don't know.
[3342.11] Curry: It's not, uh, I mean, you could do it.
[3344.63] Stephen: Yeah, that's why I said screen recording.
[3346.95] Stephen: Yeah.
[3347.35] Stephen: I mean, it's, it's designed to record a camera signal.
[3351.15] Stephen: We just do that.
[3351.99] Stephen: So I don't know what the fuss is.
[3353.95] Stephen: Like I've got Elgato like USB things here that I use for cameras plus the
[3359.43] Stephen: one that I'm using for camp right now that will do it, but apparently it was
[3362.59] Stephen: a blocker for HD zero on and you can understand if you're making a niche
[3366.31] Stephen: product like that, the fewer hurdles you have to jump through the better.
[3372.07] Curry: What about you, Jack?
[3373.15] Curry: What are you looking forward to in 2025?
[3376.15] Curry: It's going to float your boat.
[3379.68] Jack: Uh, I don't know.
[3382.92] Jack: Brilliant.
[3383.24] Jack: Maybe some work EFCs, but I don't know.
[3388.12] Jack: Stop fiddling with them.
[3390.4] Jack: Yeah, just leave alone.
[3393.44] Jack: I ain't got a clue really.
[3395.8] Jack: I'm just trying to get through life.
[3398.68] Jack: That's it.
[3401.43] Jack: It's a, it's very difficult.
[3404.35] Jack: I do.
[3405.23] Jack: I am struggling.
[3408.15] Jack: You know, uh, I don't know if like, yeah, 10 years, 10 years of LDI.
[3413.39] Jack: I'm looking forward to that.
[3415.63] Jack: I'm looking forward to that.
[3417.39] Curry: Is that when we stop and we just destroy the website?
[3421.91] Jack: Yeah.
[3422.51] Jack: Well, you guys, you guys can, you guys can carry on.
[3426.19] Jack: I just want to be able to attend.
[3429.75] Jack: Um, you know, like to go, go to the sort of like maker space and stuff.
[3436.11] Stephen: Yeah.
[3436.83] Stephen: I think like 10 years of LDO would be just a giant bonfire of trashed
[3441.19] Stephen: planes and old quads and Jack jumping up and down on top of it,
[3445.03] Stephen: making hooting monkey noises.
[3447.83] Jack: Yeah.
[3448.99] Jack: Like, like the, um, you know, the heat episode from black books, Dave syndrome.
[3457.39] Stephen: Much like that.
[3458.23] Jack: Yeah.
[3460.82] Curry: So we're going to go meet up and fly and LDO 10 year flying.
[3468.66] Curry: And he's coming from Canada.
[3470.42] Curry: That's what he's suggesting.
[3472.46] Stephen: Yeah.
[3472.66] Stephen: So drone light shows that's becoming a thing.
[3475.06] Stephen: Would you, when everyone was messing around with we none chucks, would you
[3479.74] Stephen: have predicted that they were going to be replacing fireworks that actually
[3485.14] Stephen: be seen as the sensible safe alternative to fireworks and would be flying
[3489.78] Stephen: in fleets of one to 300 over the faces of families nationwide?
[3498.66] Curry: It is quite good.
[3499.5] Curry: Cause it's like, it's not fireworks, but it's potentially just as dangerous.
[3504.66] Stephen: If they try it out dangerous, it's pitch, but you're literally flying them in the
[3509.3] Stephen: middle of the night where you can't see if they even start falling.
[3512.78] Curry: Exactly.
[3513.26] Curry: It doesn't make great big bang noises, which is very good.
[3516.5] Curry: If people have pets, uh, the whole of that couple of weeks around November
[3521.38] Curry: the fifth is that there's a nightmare as the dog is just going mental.
[3525.18] Curry: And the cat is hiding under the bed at all times.
[3527.98] Curry: So yeah, it sounds good.
[3530.94] Stephen: You are.
[3531.18] Stephen: Yeah.
[3532.14] Jack: And the rubbish.
[3533.66] Stephen: Pro tip for that.
[3534.62] Stephen: Um, first, first time dog owner with Bob, but, um, yeah, play a lot of video games
[3540.34] Stephen: and watch like really loud action movies.
[3542.66] Stephen: And then when the fireworks appear, your dog's just like, what?
[3546.18] Stephen: Oh, all right.
[3548.98] Stephen: Hmm.
[3550.42] Curry: Maybe we'll just be suspicious of anybody that walks outside the house.
[3555.98] Curry: And that includes an area of approximately 50 meters from the front door.
[3560.26] Curry: Anybody in that zone can be parked out as soon as she's outside that zone.
[3563.74] Curry: It's okay.
[3564.22] Jack: But in that zone with, with, with, I loved the video that you shot for me of
[3571.9] Jack: the cat winding up the dog as you were coming home.
[3577.02] Jack: That was really sweet.
[3578.26] Jack: Thank you.
[3580.34] Curry: Oh, that's, that's okay.
[3582.34] Curry: The, uh, weird cat that jumps out.
[3584.7] Curry: And sometimes she comes, like one time she came to walk all the way to the park
[3589.02] Curry: with us and people were staring and pointing, not because there was a cat
[3594.98] Curry: there, but it was just this dog and cat walking side by side down the road
[3598.54] Curry: was, was freaking them all out a little bit.
[3601.18] Curry: They didn't really understand.
[3603.18] Stephen: Yeah.
[3603.38] Stephen: My cat max hangs out in the front garden until Bob comes back and then
[3608.14] Stephen: jumps out at Bob and sniff surface.
[3611.14] Stephen: Yeah.
[3613.14] Stephen: That's and dogs can get on.
[3614.74] Stephen: Nice.
[3616.3] Stephen: It's true.
[3617.82] Stephen: Someone was saying the TBS Lucid, uh, hang on, hang on.
[3623.02] Stephen: You said a TBS 12 S ESC under 50 quid.
[3629.66] Stephen: Now that does sound amazing.
[3631.54] Stephen: That's not a four in one though.
[3632.9] Stephen: That is a single ESC.
[3634.66] Stephen: So if you want to fly, you're going to need 200 quids worth of ESC.
[3638.82] Curry: Yes.
[3639.1] Curry: But anyone who might be thinking that was an amazing deal, someone that's got them.
[3643.5] Curry: My, my friend, Bob, who lives over in Florida is attempting to build a 13 inch
[3648.86] Curry: drone using these and his first effort of plugging in resulted in a pop and lots
[3656.1] Curry: of smoke, uh, where he thinks he's, he's blown his PDB.
[3663.58] Stephen: Has he made a drone before this?
[3666.86] Stephen: Yes, but not this big.
[3668.58] Stephen: Okay.
[3670.58] Curry: It's interesting.
[3671.22] Curry: It's like the, it's like the PDB can't send all its 12 S to the flight controller.
[3676.54] Curry: So it has this little, it has this weird little, um, pin.
[3680.98] Curry: That's like, this is one 10th of the actual power.
[3684.1] Curry: And you connect that to VBAP and then in beta flight, you say, uh, give me the
[3689.66] Curry: voltage and here's my multiplier.
[3691.5] Curry: And that, that's how you get your true voltage out of it.
[3693.9] Curry: You get this little divided by whatever.
[3697.14] Curry: Yeah.
[3699.9] Stephen: Interesting.
[3701.06] Stephen: Yeah.
[3701.34] Stephen: So this is a, yeah, it's an AM32 ESC, uh, 70 amp sustained, uh, 90 amp for 40
[3707.86] Stephen: seconds burst of 120 amp at 12 S.
[3712.62] Stephen: Oof.
[3713.74] Stephen: Uh, it's described as by Ann Mantek, meet the TBS Lucid 12 S ESC, a voltage
[3720.5] Stephen: goblin that laughs at thermal punishment.
[3726.28] Curry: So that you are a voltage goblin, a voltage goblin.
[3730.64] Curry: Right.
[3731.6] Curry: Hey, we've come to the end of the show.
[3735.6] Jack: Yeah.
[3736.28] Jack: I'm on the Thursday night show.com.
[3740.52] Jack: So if you guys aren't sick of me, um, I am on there from 11 to 12 UK time.
[3750.68] Jack: There's a whole, uh, retro new retro new wave.
[3761.24] Jack: New retro wave.
[3762.8] Jack: Yeah.
[3763.84] Jack: And I mixed with eight East classics.
[3768.84] Jack: So yeah, go to the Thursday night show.com.
[3774.04] Jack: Hopefully we'll be a bit better than what we have been.
[3778.52] Jack: But yeah, it'd be lovely to see anyone over there because most
[3782.68] Jack: people go to sleep by then.
[3785.48] Stephen: Well, you, you're developing this kind of John Peel restful voice persona, Jack.
[3789.84] Stephen: So maybe that's exactly what people need to just chill out after a rough Thursday.
[3794.8] Stephen: You just get to a time with Jack where we play you some wonderful retro tunes.
[3802.16] Stephen: Yeah, it works.
[3804.96] Stephen: Yeah.
[3805.96] Stephen: Very calming.
[3807.52] Jack: And there's no BBC and mess it all up.
[3810.52] Stephen: No.
[3812.36] Stephen: And you weren't unexpectedly like drop some like hardcore punk without any
[3817.84] Stephen: warning right into the middle of the mix.
[3819.56] Stephen: Like John Peel would, it's just going to stay nice and mellifluous.
[3825.68] Jack: That's how it should be.
[3826.48] Jack: What consumed Cole.
[3828.48] Jack: Cole's doing it right.
[3829.56] Jack: People.
[3831.56] Stephen: Noice.
[3832.64] Stephen: That is the correct way.
[3833.76] Stephen: While flying.
[3835.6] Jack: Like, subscribe, share to all your friends, click all the
[3840.88] Stephen: buttons all at once.
[3842.24] Jack: The bellend button.
[3843.92] Jack: Yeah.
[3844.96] Jack: Yeah.
[3845.76] Jack: Join our Patreon when Cole gets back next week.
[3849.24] Jack: We're going to do another history.
[3851.84] Stephen: We're experimenting with ESCs and FCs and all sorts of new firmware.
[3856.72] Stephen: Do it a long way away and pay for Jack's executive service of putting his foot
[3862.8] Stephen: on your quad for a reasonable rate.
[3864.44] Stephen: I'll just tie it to some chairs.
[3866.88] Stephen: Yeah.
[3867.72] Stephen: Um, chairs that you have pre-agreed with other house users are acceptable
[3873.56] Stephen: for beating the snot out of with flying apparel.
[3877.48] Jack: I've only got one chair.
[3878.76] Jack: I haven't got two chairs.
[3880.24] Jack: Uh, Clive use, Clive has used my, uh, executive foot and ESC
[3886.6] Jack: flashing services.
[3888.16] Jack: Oh, there you are.
[3888.68] Jack: I don't know how he found the service.
[3892.6] Stephen: He's still in the hobby.
[3893.76] Stephen: So that's a good start.
[3895.08] Jack: How is that ESC doing?
[3896.52] Jack: Has it exploded?
[3898.2] Stephen: I mean, I, I, we hope that's because he, he's so overawed with the
[3911.12] Stephen: executive foot and quad staying service.
[3915.4] Stephen: There we are.
[3916.64] Stephen: Well, yeah, everyone go join Jack's Thursday night show, which you can find at
[3921.76] Jack: Thursday night show.com.
[3924.68] Jack: The Thursday night show.com.
[3927.6] Jack: Thank you.
[3928.0] Jack: You've been joined by Stephen.
[3931.48] Curry: I'm everybody's favorite.
[3932.6] Curry: Curry kitten.
[3934.36] Jack: And I'm brought to life.
[3935.96] Jack: Thank you.
[3936.32] Jack: Good night.
[3937.48] Jack: Bye.
[3937.68] Jack: Stay safe.
[3938.4] Jack: Thank you.
[3938.68] Jack: Lovely Patreons.