00:00:17:18 - 00:00:38:09 Jason Today we're going to spend the day with Marvin Likness a drone operator as he takes us on a day in the life of a drone operator. We're also going to go to a drone meetup group and talk to several other drone operators who share with us how they got started what sorts of things they're doing with drones on a day to day basis and where they think this technology is going to take us in the future. 00:00:38:23 - 00:00:44:01 Jason My name is Jason Steele. Join me as we move one frame forward into the future of drones. 00:01:00:19 - 00:01:19:10 Marven My name is is Marvin Likeness. I've been playing with drones for about ten years, but it's the it's mostly been the smaller work like toy drones, like the little ones. You can fly in your house, chase your cat, chase your dog. Right. Over the last couple of years, I've been getting into the bigger drones and doing a little bit more aerial cinematography. 00:01:20:09 - 00:01:25:12 Marven Well, it's 630 in the morning and I'm off for a fun day of droning and filming. 00:01:26:02 - 00:01:48:16 Cody It's Cody Hollis, Purdue. YouTube is probably the easiest place to find me, and that's my channel. Name is EEDOK which is E E D O K. I used to play cards competitively, but when the pandemic happened, like all those things came became, like, nonexistent. So I needed something else to do. And then that's when I learned of, it's a certain class, a drone called a tinywhoop and a drone that's small enough to be flown indoors, and. 00:01:48:23 - 00:02:05:05 Cody Yeah, so I just kind of got hooked on those just flying those in my basement. And, yeah, they're like just super tiny. They go they have a hilarious amount of torque. Like they just go. And because they're so light, you can crash them into walls and stuff and it takes thousands of crashes before you break anything. 00:02:05:15 - 00:02:19:07 Martin I'm a mechanic as a background so I used to do the smash up derbies, and that's how I got into when I got a drone. That was the first thing I filmed was asmash up derby. And then I got hooked. I got hooked on that on the cars, and I was used to traditional drones. So that's when I got FPV drones. 00:02:19:21 - 00:02:21:05 Martin So you have to get closer to the car. 00:02:21:11 - 00:02:46:13 Alex My name is Alex Taianovski and the first drone I bought was in 2017 and it was a DJI Maverick Pro I always had, I guess kind of an interest in filmmaking just type in stuff and then yet at the time when drones are first starting to become commercialized, it just looked like just a ton of fun. 00:02:47:11 - 00:03:16:06 Marven Hi again. Well, we just got the first site that I'm doing and it's about 735 now. It's time to start on the paperwork and make sure that it's good to fly. Hey, paperwork is done. Now I'm scoping out the site. I took a look around. I already know what my project's looking like. I've been here at this location before, so it's actually not that bad. 00:03:17:13 - 00:03:37:04 Marven It's beautiful. River Valley area. There is a walking path that I have to be concerned about all that's on my paperwork. And we're going to get we're going to get set up This is my my first drone set up a lot of stuff packed in this little package. 00:03:48:11 - 00:04:11:01 Marven And this is pretty much my biggest workhorse, as you can see. In my case, anything happens to it. I have a backup I'll probably go into other things that I do prior to even coming here to make sure batteries are charged. Make sure that your weather is going to be good even before you get on the road. 00:04:14:23 - 00:04:55:20 Marven That your tablet is good. Make sure your cards are blank and ready to go I myself, I like to have the second one ready in case the first one comes out, because what I'm doing is I'm doing very quick captures. And if something happens to my drone, well, I don't have time to go looking for it while they're demoing house so if all else fails and something actually happens which it hasn't knock on wood. I can get up filming right away, capture what's going on. 00:04:56:16 - 00:05:10:18 Marven I'm dealing with picking up the drone that is maybe sitting on a bank somewhere a little bit later. I also have what's called an ND filter. This one's a polarized filter. 00:05:13:23 - 00:05:42:16 Marven All of a sudden, my my lighting is is way off. We are really good at compensating for most of that but in case there's something a little bit off, a little bit too bright ND filters, always good. Now, on the controller themselves, you could just put in a small phone into the section and run it off that. But I find that to be a little bit hard for me to see. 00:05:42:16 - 00:06:16:21 Marven Maybe it's my age. Just there's just basically a small $10 item you can get off the eBay that like and you can get a little bit bigger size. larn charis are always good at these. You never know when you're actually going to be getting up and going or sitting down and waiting forever. Got my cell phone, which is actually tethered to my display, so it'll actually be able to run different scripts. 00:06:16:21 - 00:06:41:12 Marven I can set up scripts in a program called Drone Drone Link, and what it will do is it'll actually map out the exact same route every few times, as many times as I want I can take photos at every location. I can take video as it's going along. I also brought this up because paperwork is all finished and ready to go. 00:06:41:23 - 00:07:04:15 Marven Every flight should be logged if there's ever an incident again. Knock on wood, I haven't had one yet, but if there's any any incident, it's good to have it on paper soon after it happens that way. If Transport Canada ever gets a hold, it says, We heard you're flying this drone and this is what happened. You can say, Well, this is what happened. 00:07:05:05 - 00:07:32:02 Marven You have drone logs that stay in your tablet for. You can be retrieved and you also have all your filming on your SD card that will prove your case whether or not what happened or what didn't happen. Another thing that's really nice about these small drones is it's kind of neat to get on lookers and asking what's going on for different things. 00:07:32:02 - 00:08:04:15 Marven But at least this way it doesn't make a whole lot of noise and you don't get too much attention and people aren't going to be bugging you too much while you're actually flying the drone. Very important to turn on your controller first. Get your app set up on line. It's actually set up. So as soon as I turn on the controller while it's connected to to the tablet, my program will automatically open and I go and I turn on your drone, see the twitches, you'll see the camera do. 00:08:04:15 - 00:08:32:23 Marven It's a little adjustment what's my programing on this drone? I'm set up at the position that I launch it from every time, but that just helps the drone communicate with the G.P.S. It'll it'll launch, it'll do a little bit of a hover while I check the check the motors, blades, everything else while it's in flight as well. And this pad will basically be its takeoff point. 00:08:32:23 - 00:08:59:21 Marven What that does is not only does it give it a visual reference when it takes off, so the sensors underneath will actually hover and look at it, but it'll also stop getting like rocks or sand or a little bit of dew from grass getting into your motors so now that that's set up, we get into our flight, we'll do a little hover a little closer to the camera. 00:09:00:12 - 00:09:50:01 Marven We'll make sure that the motors and everything are turning properly, then nice and clean. And then we'll go for our first flight of the day you know, we have it hovering in place and I'm double checking everything. My batteries get my signals and my phone is good. I'm getting 24 satellites right now, which is really good. I don't fly. 00:09:50:14 - 00:10:22:15 Marven I wouldn't really try it for under nine satellites, especially if I'm doing something that right at my edge of the space where I'm at. But right now it looks good. I'm going to turn on my recording so now I'm actually recording the camera set up like you didn't see earlier because it works well. I wasn't really or when we got all that set up that got myself. 00:10:22:15 - 00:10:23:01 Martin Set up. 00:10:23:15 - 00:10:27:02 Marven Let's go take a look around this area. And I'll show you what. 00:10:27:02 - 00:10:39:19 Martin I feel like filming now. 00:10:39:22 - 00:10:52:12 Marven It's going to be boring when you're just looking at me. I like to see it so I can see a little bit more but I have another program called Drone Link 00:10:52:19 - 00:11:00:21 James Which I'm going to open with that. 00:11:00:21 - 00:11:02:08 Marven I actually have a program. 00:11:02:22 - 00:11:04:21 Martin That will go over the river. 00:11:05:08 - 00:11:36:20 Marven Just at my edge of site. Probably better with other people with better eye sight. one of the things I like to stay within line of sight that that is the law in Canada, especially for my level of of license and and now it's done, it's run, now it's just coming back to its home position. 00:11:43:22 - 00:12:14:17 Marven That's mostly so now we've landed up there first visual of the day that will go over the second one, which is actually getting an establishing shot of the house that's going to be demo'd. It's this one's usually normally like a starter drone, right? A low grade camera no tilt, no very little stabilization, cheaper motors, that type of thing. 00:12:14:21 - 00:12:40:06 Marven they wear out, you throw them out, right? That's the way it was. A lot of guys around here are using some pretty interesting drones that I'm still getting into the market for and they're getting smaller cameras getting better. I got of this right now, the ease of flight is getting better, the setup is getting better. And I'm pretty good at soldering, but I haven't done too many builds myself. 00:12:40:19 - 00:13:04:01 Marven So I'm mostly a buy and fly. So this is the whole area I want to get into. There, learn to get the actions using the goggles I designed to encompass using you in the world now is just become one with the drone as you're flying it around. The whole world disappears when you're doing it. 00:13:04:15 - 00:13:26:00 Alex So FPV stands for first person view and it just means that you're you're wearing some type of goggle that is feeding you a video image from your drone directly to your eyes. So it just makes it it makes it easier to be more precise in terms of flying it rather than, you know, holding like a cell phone or an iPad screen in front of you. 00:13:27:15 - 00:13:44:06 Alex So it definitely feels like maybe like a airplane simulator game on a computer. It's it's very similar to that. So anybody who's who's played arcade games or, you know, flying games on on their computer, that it'll feel fairly similar. 00:13:44:06 - 00:14:05:04 Cody So because when you have the goggles on, you're viewing what the pilot sees. Like it's yeah, it's really a neat experience. But yeah, unlike VR, it's real life. So yeah, there's that whole aspect to it, which I think Daniel as a pilot, it raises the stakes a bit because like in a game, you crash whatever, you restart real life, you crash. 00:14:05:04 - 00:14:08:11 Cody You've got to go pick up your remains and go do some repairs. 00:14:35:07 - 00:14:54:00 Marven All right. Checking in again. It's like, you know how my day has gone. This has been going really good. Went through almost three batteries they haven't got the front facing down yet. We're shut down for an hour, so I'm going to charge up some batteries on the go and we'll be back here in about an hour. 00:14:54:16 - 00:15:09:22 Martin So you never you always have tons of batteries and you fly these drones. So that's a small one. And it's not it's not even just those drones either. I know it's bigger ones. I just never had enough batteries charging all the time. So I only got six today for this and I'm not going to be charging you. They fly around the. 00:15:12:01 - 00:15:21:11 Martin But this is the don't know if you're charging concept. They have every job at my my car is running all the time, charging everything. And I got a director saying, oh, we need this done. 00:15:22:10 - 00:15:28:02 Marven I like that one that you can actually charge off your battery at same time. Right. I can do two, two at a time and off the. 00:15:28:02 - 00:15:32:08 Martin Batteries and then you get comfortable. Yeah. This is so. 00:15:32:08 - 00:15:33:09 Marven It's all about keeping the. 00:15:33:12 - 00:15:34:16 Cody Key here, keeping them up. 00:15:34:23 - 00:16:00:20 Marven Just before you. OK, well, I've been gone for about 20 minutes. I wasn't going to take the whole hour. You never know when they're going to get started again. So when made a dart drop off and I pick up all set to get filming I'll have everything set up here in the next 15 minutes again and we'll be ready to go and then we'll just wait for their go ahead and then we're flying again. 00:16:10:05 - 00:16:35:14 Alex Transitioning from flying like a basic DJI drone, flying an FPV drone I picked it up. That was my, that was my COVID hobby, I guess. Yeah, it was summer of 2020. So when I first got into it and that was just from just watching a bunch of stuff on YouTube. Yeah. Again, just seeing it and wanting to wanting to be a part of it and trying it for myself. 00:16:35:14 - 00:16:41:02 Alex So always, always had an interest in aviation as well. So the two kind of came together. 00:16:41:22 - 00:16:43:12 Niek Do you ever get motion sick in the goggles? 00:16:43:12 - 00:16:57:03 Martin At first because you're, you're trying to lean with it and you look like it look funny because you like leaning with it, right? So you got goggles down and people don't know, so you're learning and then you're just people look at you weird because you like to see. 00:16:57:03 - 00:17:12:10 Martin And the more you turn your drone, the more you turn your head youtube is my teacher. Everything I learned was on YouTube. plus some of these guys. We're all part of discord. It's a week, OK? Whatever it is, you send a message, hey, I can get this to work and somebody somewhere. Oh, sure. 00:17:13:00 - 00:17:13:18 Alex I can't pick anything. 00:17:14:03 - 00:17:20:04 Cody I think he's on the. Oh is he not on channel one that I can't see. 00:17:22:01 - 00:17:23:01 Alex He's supposed to be on eight. 00:17:24:13 - 00:17:43:07 Cody Oh that's because he can't you can't view on 8 because it's public channel. OK, so he's got it. He's got to change to any channel other than eight and then he can get on there. OK, he can go to Channel seven or something. I played the FPV simulators and I joined a race series on one of the simulators and I actually end up doing really good on the series in the simulator. 00:17:43:16 - 00:18:03:15 Cody So a bunch of the guys that run events in the states invited me to come to an event called whooptopia in the US. And it was yeah, it was crazy. It was 84 pilots came to it from all over and yeah, they said it was like the fastest pilots that for like the tinywoop class and it was, yeah, just a huge race in it. 00:18:03:19 - 00:18:22:10 Cody It was amazing. I think it's Trinity is actually the thing right now. It's like, I think events like this are needed and we just need because it is right now, it is not, I'd say consumer level ready for people to get into it easily. But if you have a community to help you get into it, it smooths things out so much more. 00:18:23:10 - 00:18:30:15 Cody So I think, yeah, right now the biggest challenge is just getting communities together that are willing to help everyone out and get everyone flying. 00:18:31:10 - 00:19:04:02 Marven All right. Well, it is 230, just about. Oh, that first job took a while but they did an awesome job. They didn't damage any houses on the way. They had two brand new ones on both sides. So really hard to get through took about 5 hours worth of filming. So 20 minutes spots. The film itself is probably going to be somewhere around 2 hours where the film to go through but we'll go on from there. 00:19:04:06 - 00:19:27:13 Marven I still I have been charging up batteries as the day goes through. I only have four batteries and they only last about 30 minutes apiece. So that kind of gives me an idea of how I'm doing for battery wise. I have one that's been recharged completely. So we're going to go on to another site from a demo from yesterday, and we're just going to go do a quick clean up shot on that one. 00:19:28:06 - 00:19:33:09 Marven And I got a car charger so and everything in between spots, so I can stop fly stop fly. 00:19:33:09 - 00:19:37:08 Martin the thing about this one is that you can go FPV and when you go to land, you just hit a button and. 00:19:37:08 - 00:19:40:11 Marven I haven't even put it in full acro though. 00:19:43:01 - 00:19:44:22 Martin I got to get I just want to say I got to get to. 00:19:44:22 - 00:19:46:08 Marven Learn the acro on the smaller ones. 00:19:46:08 - 00:19:48:01 Marven and then we'll see. 00:19:48:01 - 00:20:00:20 Martin So yeah. the practice drones eh. Yeah, put a lot of time in on the, on the goggles. OK, yes. Maybe I got this one yeah. You can bash it, it bounces off everything. It doesn't break anything. Yeah. 00:20:01:23 - 00:20:03:00 Marven Oh, you already smashed it good. 00:20:03:07 - 00:20:20:13 Martin Oh, yeah. This thing has been I was filming a truck coming around with a trailer and I was going between the trailers and it hit the trailer, it fell through onto the ground and the tire was coming for it. And I did the turtle mode flipped out of the way of the tire, and then I couldn't fly away. But I saved it. 00:20:21:18 - 00:20:46:03 Marven There's something called turtle model on a lot of these drones that if it lands and flips over, it'll actually spin the, the the propellers in a different speed and flip over. So a lot of times when you land it out, especially the smaller ones that don't have the G.P.S. or anything like that, if you have the flip over mode and it's able to flip over, then you can flip it up and then head back home and you don't have to go for a hike out in a slough. 00:20:46:13 - 00:21:08:07 Martin The result of that. So there is a thing about FPV drones that you spend more time fixing than flying because you always got to fixing the air because when you fly try to push yourself and push your luck. And so I can do this and you crash and then you got to spend hours fixing it. And most of the stuff you see is opensource so you can plug the computer and reprogram it. 00:21:08:07 - 00:21:31:16 Martin OK, so for this one, I put a GPS on their own and a program there that it fits and I wasn't good at it. So when you worked it out programed it, so if I lose signal instead of it crashing, it actually goes up in altitude, until I can reconnect again. I'm just making a second one and I'm going to make it so you can actually flick a switch and it will come back on its own and land on it's own. 00:21:31:16 - 00:21:39:22 James You should be seeing signal any second now, spinning. Yeah. Four spinning here we go. 00:21:42:09 - 00:21:45:22 J.R. Well there's no way I'm going to track that. 00:21:51:17 - 00:21:52:04 Cody Go right. 00:21:53:22 - 00:21:59:19 James The crowd will. 00:22:01:09 - 00:22:05:00 James Full Snow. Full snow. did someone just turn on please. 00:22:06:06 - 00:22:11:00 James I got 00:22:11:00 - 00:22:13:08 J.R. what does full snow mean? you don't have a signal. It looks like. 00:22:27:02 - 00:22:29:16 James But what happens I'm pretty sure while I was in the air I heard. 00:22:29:16 - 00:22:30:22 James The guy next to me plug in. 00:22:32:03 - 00:22:35:20 James And his channel overrode the signal over rode mine. 00:22:36:23 - 00:22:39:14 James So suddenly I saw a picture of myself. 00:22:40:12 - 00:22:41:10 James And then snow. 00:22:49:22 - 00:23:05:05 James Well, my day is done. Fully broke. Cage finally broke. she's dead. I can't get another one of these. 00:23:05:05 - 00:23:14:04 James Uggh. 00:23:15:14 - 00:23:24:18 James All because someone plugged in. Yeah. No way. my day is over. Oh, that's right. And I don't have kind words for you guys. 00:23:24:18 - 00:23:25:11 Martin I didn't even know he plugged in before you. 00:23:25:11 - 00:23:31:15 James Yeah he did. I heard it go off. so I'm out. 00:23:39:01 - 00:23:43:08 Martin All right, guys, before you plug in, just make sure no one is in the air. Because he crashed. Because one of the DJI guys plugged in. 00:23:44:09 - 00:23:52:22 James Just crashed, She's dead. Yeah, well, go figure. DJI guys wrecking things.That goes, right? Well, I guess. 00:23:53:06 - 00:23:55:15 Martin That's what we got to be careful DJI stuff. 00:23:58:01 - 00:24:00:00 J.R. So what does it mean when the DJI is plugged in? 00:24:00:00 - 00:24:08:12 Martin So what happened is the DJI puts a lot more power on the signals than the analog signals. 00:24:09:02 - 00:24:10:05 Cody Should put signs on sticks so we don't get people blown out of the air. 00:24:10:05 - 00:24:25:18 Martin I think we'll have to separate all the dji guys. And analog guys. do not plug in someone.. I think we have to find just a small system of one. So once in the air. We won't plug in. Well, I don't know this again. You with the post? Yeah, we can try it. 00:24:25:18 - 00:24:27:07 Martin Do you have anything that would work for them? 00:24:27:07 - 00:24:29:00 Cody Well, we just have to go to the craft store. 00:24:29:00 - 00:24:35:06 Martin I guess we might have to. Yeah, whatever. You would have to do that just because I know that guy wasnt very happy. And I don't blame him. 00:24:35:13 - 00:24:39:08 Cody Especially with this he's had that one for like five years and that's. 00:24:39:09 - 00:24:43:10 Martin Like, yeah, he was telling us all of the things that survived, right? Yeah. That's awesome. 00:24:43:10 - 00:24:49:06 Cody Survived in the rodeo even. and that's never have anything survived that rodeo. Now, of course, 00:24:49:06 - 00:24:55:22 Martin the first literally, his first pack flew in the air and then the other gentleman next to him did that. Was it hard? 00:24:57:02 - 00:25:21:14 Marven All right. Well, it is a quarter to three, and I'm on my second job site now. This is one that I filmed yesterday. And and it was a nice quick takedown of a small house. And I'm just going to pop the drone up. I've already mapped out a flight plan for it, and it's going to go up. It's going to take a little bit of a video on a curve as it focuses on the one spot that it was. 00:25:21:14 - 00:25:49:15 Marven Actually, the work was was being done on at just shows the clean up of the site. All right. So I did a screenshot of that one or screen video shot. So hopefully you can see that quick little flight that I did. Now I'm ready to finish packing up the last of my drones. I'll keep the the batteries charging as I'm heading home. 00:25:50:19 - 00:26:18:06 Marven I got a little bit of a break and then I'm going to meet about filming a concert area. Now, concert areas get kind of fun because you still have to follow the rules of the air now with a drone, I can't fly within about five meters of anybody that's not involved in the filming process, so I'll have to be able to stay over top of trees and film from a distance, that type of thing. 00:26:18:16 - 00:26:42:16 Marven So I'm going to be going out there later on tonight, 3:00 now. I'll be home by about 430 and it'll be just about time to head back out for that one. So hopefully I'll have some batteries charged up for that. It seems to be an ongoing thing to keep batteries charged for these drones, especially when you're working a hard drone day. 00:26:42:23 - 00:26:47:17 Martin There you go. Like can fly the house. So you have you talked to where do you go, Cody. 00:26:48:21 - 00:26:56:14 Martin Cody pretty good. Yeah. So that guys actually does championships in the US with that thing. Oh really? 00:26:57:02 - 00:27:00:12 Martin He's got, little gates for them. He does like in his basement. He's got a whole racetrack set up. 00:27:00:12 - 00:27:33:08 Cody The tiny woops themselves are like they get to like 30 kilometers an hour maybe like they're not super fast but yeah, when it comes to like bigger FPV drones, like I have like one they call like a open class, five inch one that can go over 160 kilometers an hour. Very quickly, this is a I'm going to be racing this next week in Indiana and they call this one a tiny trainer because it's like, well I guess you could kind of see over there that's an open class size this one they call it like a micro because on the is this three inch props and the one race we're doing is a spec race. 00:27:33:08 - 00:27:52:07 Cody So everybody racing is going to be on the same frame the same motors and same propellers. So nobody should have a big advantage in racing. This is also I don't fly to get footage. I know a lot of people do that. Like a lot of people come from this as like, I want to take good videos. I want to take whatever I like. 00:27:52:07 - 00:28:17:02 Cody When you fly a TV, it's kind of like riding a motorcycle. Like you get that adrenaline rush and that's what I chase. So if I do get footage, it's secondary. It's not what I focus on. It's just that because I put a camera on and recorded what I was doing, that's why I have footage I think this is a new sport that's going to become like probably like similar to like Moto GP or maybe like F1 because it is like it's that style of racing. 00:28:17:02 - 00:28:47:01 Cody But these things, these crafts move so quickly and with like such accuracy that you can do crazy tracks and like even like the one I said, like when I went to Arizona, one of the races we did was just in the bar and we just literally hang made a track around the bar like through the pool tables and the tables and it's just a riot to like not only to fly but also to watch afterwards because yeah, it's, it's, I don't know, it's like I can't even put into words what it is. 00:28:47:01 - 00:29:09:04 Cody It's magical, I think is more people like know about it. I think more sponsors should be open to making more locations available to race. That and that could make for some very visually pleasing races as well. And the one thing I think is, is like I think right now the issue is right now it's kind of hard if you're not into it, it's kind of hard to track where the trends are going because they are that fast. 00:29:09:17 - 00:29:29:10 Cody So I think in the future, actually, it's going to slow down a bit and they're going to make them light up a lot more and make them a lot easier to follow. Yeah, well, they're big. They're going to do something to make it easier for people that are not into it to follow it. Well, there's the right now, the top two leagues are DRL is the Drone Racing League, which is a spec league in the US where they just travel for different places. 00:29:29:10 - 00:29:48:10 Cody The most recent one there was that in Las Vegas, they did a racing on the strip. The other big one is DCL, which is in Europe. And yeah, I think their last one was at L.A. X, which I don't know how to say it properly, but it's in Switzerland and it's a ski resort. And they did a race through like the chairlifts and the like and up and down the mountain. 00:29:48:21 - 00:29:58:19 Cody So that's that's what exist now. But again, like both those things are I can think this is like the very infancy. Like almost no one knows about it. And yeah, it's one of those exciting things to watch. 00:30:00:06 - 00:30:25:17 Marven So it is about ten to four I just got home. I got enough time to run in and print off some more business cards because I went through a slew of those today great benefit of of doing a drone shot right by a walkway around very nice houses is you get a lot of referrals. So I'm hoping that I get a little bit from from those as well. 00:30:26:07 - 00:30:56:20 Marven And then I got a 45 minute drive from my next job. Uh, it's going to be for a meeting that, that they're doing like a folk festival with, with four days of music and 60 some odd artists. It's going to be exciting to do that. It's not happening until July, but we're doing the initial set up and I'm going to be doing some droning so that they can actually get some pictures of where they're putting things and maybe even use that for advertising. 00:30:58:19 - 00:31:29:21 Marven OK, well it is now 4:12 of my busy day, got my business cards all printed off and also too while I stopped off at home, I got a nice package on my doorstep. It's actually something I ordered in from DJI. Nothing too special but for me it's it's kind of nice. Guess what it is. It's a battery. I need more batteries, so it's a little piece of foam for my for my FPV goggles as well. 00:31:30:00 - 00:31:52:22 Marven So we should be all set. I think right now I'm close to two batteries charged for my mini and my battery for my FPV is all charged. And if I really have to, I do have a have a pavel 360 that it's got its batteries ready. So I should have plenty of stuff to finish off this last call. 00:31:52:23 - 00:32:17:17 Alex A friend of mine does a car drifting and yeah he was just saying that, you know, he wants to basically make a cool video of his car. So I got out with my the first drone that Mavic the one that is kind of more stable it's not as maneuverable as an FPV drone would be. Yeah. We just went out to some some dirt road in the middle of nowhere and I followed him around. 00:32:17:22 - 00:32:29:12 Alex But very quickly I realized that it's just it's hard to follow something. It's hard to chase something with one of those types of drones. And I knew that I had to transition to the FPV side of things. 00:32:30:03 - 00:32:46:20 Martin I said, we're going to chase each other with the FPV drones and see if we can record each others drones in the air. And then it's going to it's kind of cool. We don't get to. It's our first, year out of COVID So that's the first time we actually get together and get to fly drones together. So for excited minds to the on faces and we'll see happy people. 00:33:12:08 - 00:33:12:21 Alex Like by my. 00:33:12:21 - 00:33:28:04 Martin Car behind it Oh wow. Yeah, I got to slow down here. I just passed you. 00:33:29:13 - 00:33:30:11 Alex I'm jsut following the edge of The trees OK. 00:33:30:11 - 00:33:34:09 Martin I think I see you. 00:33:36:07 - 00:33:36:14 Alex pop up? 00:33:39:09 - 00:33:40:00 Martin I see you. 00:33:47:12 - 00:33:49:15 Alex come back along the building. 00:33:49:20 - 00:33:51:13 Alex Yeah like the lane basically the parking. 00:33:53:21 - 00:33:59:19 Martin Meter refused to get us to be going I again. 00:34:00:17 - 00:34:02:08 Cody Yeah I had to go back to. 00:34:02:22 - 00:34:08:10 Martin yeah mine is missing channels. Really? Nothing. You be said that. Yeah. 00:34:08:11 - 00:34:32:02 James I might have to adjust the camera. Okay I'm coming in to land. 00:34:32:02 - 00:35:10:03 Alex There's a local car company called Spec D Drifting, so they're the number one organization in western Canada for the sport of drift or automobile drift. Right. And it was the fall of 2020 where they had their first straddle tech bash event where basically a bunch of people from all over Western Canada come down. It's not so much as a competition, but more of a, I guess a community event for all the, all the local drifters and I got the chance to basically fly a drone and do some filming at that event. 00:35:10:20 - 00:35:30:07 Alex It was only three weeks after I started flying FPV. So I was terrified. But yeah, it was a great experience and from that moment I was hooked and I've been just trying to kind of do more gigs and do more of that since then. I've had a few more videos with that spec D drifting. 00:35:33:00 - 00:36:07:19 Alex People are pushing the boundaries of what's technically possible as far as this filming even in recent times. I know, I know it was last year, two winters ago, there was an event out in B.C. called Natural Selection as a snowboarding competition. But they're using natural terrain, I believe is at Revelstoke Resort City. So one of the most well-known, most famous pilots, GAB707, did a lot of work in terms of building specific equipment for that event. 00:36:10:16 - 00:36:34:00 Alex He had to basically from scratch. He had to design a brand new gimbal. It was a two man team that he was flying with one. He'd be flying the drone while somebody else was operating the gimbal so it's right now, it's individuals kind of pushing the envelope. They're pushing the boundaries of what's what's possible rather than the industry being driven by, you know, the corporate giants, so to speak. 00:36:34:11 - 00:36:44:23 Alex They're in the game. They're a big part of it for sure. But yeah, like the hobbyists are the guys who are, I guess, coming up with new stuff. I do. 00:36:45:02 - 00:37:09:22 Martin I do pretty much anything. I grill estates. We do. We did a movie shoot last year. That's really cool video. I mean, that music video. And the guy was throwing money from the roof of a building in Edmonton. So it's a small drone through it. And so it was very cool. But there's lots of different notes. Even jobs, for example, this one where we're done, where you fly through a factory and because all automated, you can really get a guy with a camera to actually film it. 00:37:10:06 - 00:37:22:03 Martin So we flew the small drone through all of the different mechanical parts and like that moving, different moving arms, robotic arms that were cut different like different. Ah, I guess what you call it, I'm not, I don't know what they actually doing that was paid to film it. 00:37:22:03 - 00:37:27:17 Niek Have you seen the video that's like a film, the inside of a bowling alley? 00:37:28:06 - 00:37:46:19 Martin Yes, I've seen it. That was viral. That was really cool. So that's what we do. Yeah. And so yeah, so we did that. It was a I think I hot tub factory that we actually filmed and we had to fly through and it's all automated, right? So it's through that, ensure all the different items that are different. I guess I want to show different stuff. 00:37:46:19 - 00:38:00:23 Martin So it was surprisingly just done. I guess the other one was a, you know, a welding shop that will make some kind of steel rods, but everything's automated. Machines move all the steel machines with it. And so you can't really walk in there with a camera. And so I fly different drones around it and then the same in all this. 00:38:01:00 - 00:38:02:18 Martin So it's it's very challenging. You know. 00:38:03:07 - 00:38:21:07 Cody My day job is a software developer, and I did have a contract automating inventory for a vehicle rental company where they had the barcodes on the front of their vehicles and we just programed them to go to the parking lot, turn take a picture move to the next field, take a picture and then using image recognition, find the barcodes. 00:38:21:07 - 00:38:28:20 Cody And yeah, I made a job that was very it's like not a very exciting job for a person to do into one. Now a drone does. 00:38:29:23 - 00:38:46:10 Martin But also what you can do with these kind of cameras is what people do. They put a set of four motors, they put an extra set of four underneath it with an extra set of props underneath it. So you get one more thrust and you can fly FPV drone, but instead of an GoPro you get a very decent camera and do professional work. 00:38:46:10 - 00:39:01:12 Martin So an example is the movie that came out, ambulance. We'll go check it out. The drone through engineers, mostly FPV drone, and it was done exactly with that set up and the kid was 19 that did it. One of the top pilots and he is in Vancouver. So I'm throwing it out and I go, can you. 00:39:04:03 - 00:39:22:01 Cody What I do know is like because of the capability, the just the raw speed and agility of these things, you get like basically like video game cameras for real life because the, the amount that you can get in close and chase task moving things well you having like six degrees of freedom to move around whatever you're filming. 00:39:22:17 - 00:39:35:09 Martin You set the standard when they hire you, they're like, we want this shot. You don't straight up. That is going to be this long. So for example, when I got hired to do like car stuff, I said, I'm OK if you get the contract, I get 5 minutes max. So you have to get the driver to do what do we have to do? 00:39:35:13 - 00:39:51:10 Martin I still have to take off. So leave an example where it's filming motorbikes and one of them was going to finish the lap by going on one tire and popping a wheelie. which was really, really cool but didn't tell anybody. So I had to fly the first time, find the guys run out of battery. Land it, refind him line. But I knew he was that and so I take off again. 00:39:51:10 - 00:39:55:08 Martin So you have all this extra oh yeah. But that's what you just got. Satisfaction. 00:39:55:18 - 00:40:18:11 Marven They're using drones and worse, they're huge. They're thinking of using a drones for deliveries. They're already doing short hops between buildings right now in different places. They crash. And the interesting thing about drones is, is to be able to get a drone into a place where it's hazardous for a human being to be in. I mean, that's to me is the biggest. 00:40:18:16 - 00:40:42:14 Marven Yeah. Advantages that are just blowing up just just getting to the point where people are putting drones through pipelines. Right. Or up on high. It's very hard to get ladders on anything or just places that are dangerous or let's say your neighbors is is getting a little bit old. He doesn't want to get up on the ladder you don't want to get up on the ladder. 00:40:42:14 - 00:41:11:06 Marven You can send a drone up. Everybody is safe. He knows what's going on. Right. I think over the next I think over the last ten years, it's gone from something that lifts off the ground and floats around to something that is is now a tool. And it's going into all different areas of business. Yeah. And I think that'll just be getting further like it's mind blowing. 00:41:11:06 - 00:41:23:19 Marven What about simple drones where ten years ago to where they are now to where they're going to be in the future? I mean, delivering organs for hospitals. I mean, they're already doing that. 00:41:27:03 - 00:41:40:17 Marven Or forest firefighters have been using these quite a bit. There's a lot of enterprise drones that can cover long areas, stay in flight longer, be up in all different types of weather. 00:41:42:03 - 00:41:42:07 Martin Yeah. 00:41:43:00 - 00:41:57:08 Marven And they're saving lives. They're finding people with infrared, right? They know they can pick out hot spots for where other people wouldn't be seeing them like that. It's the technology is just beginning. Oh, yeah. 00:41:57:23 - 00:42:26:21 Alex Yeah. It's I think it's it's hard to predict where drones are going to go and how, you know, as a society. Well, we'll use them in the future. I know recently they're becoming quite big in, in agriculture, for example. So rather than using like a crop duster plane, you can you can purchase a fairly sizable drone, but it'll be something that will replace a full airplane or like an entire machine. 00:42:27:23 - 00:42:52:02 Alex And you can do a whole field in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost, as far as I understand. Anyways, they're also for agriculture. They're used. I know Martin uses it for know. You can actually measure essentially the the moisture content of your soil right? That's one application that we've seen come up in the last few years. 00:42:52:19 - 00:43:33:08 Alex So as far as different industries go, yeah, like I said, it's it's hard to predict it. It's really going to be limited by people's imagination. And yet regulations that's another aspect of it that in the past or currently is potentially limiting to the developing the development of the of the technology but that's coming along as well where the the laws that we started out with, some of them are becoming a little bit more I guess, relaxed and reasonable or useful, I guess, or practical. 00:43:35:00 - 00:43:35:06 Alex Yeah. 00:43:36:03 - 00:43:53:01 Cody Well, I think they're going to be size up to the point where they can hold people in cargo because they are a super stable way to travel that is not limited to the ground that can get in and out of small places and they have amazing agility. So I think that's where like in 50 years it will go. 00:43:53:09 - 00:44:13:22 Cody I think we're going to start seeing more beyond line of sight things where they use cell phone networks to communicate with the drones so we can send them much further than what we've been able to up till now. And because, yeah, these new connections are 5G, they can carry a video signal with very little latency, so you can yet travel to places that are hard to get to you. 00:44:13:22 - 00:44:36:21 Cody Otherwise the batteries available to you leaving like ten years ago versus now, it's like unrecognizable. Like the batteries of today are so much smaller packs, so much more energy in a smaller space. So that you can even put more cells in and have more power output and have longer run times as well. So I think as more and more things move to like I think electric cars are actually what's pushing this the most. 00:44:37:16 - 00:44:41:00 Cody And yeah, so as those batteries improve, yeah, everything's going to improve with them. 00:44:42:01 - 00:44:48:08 Alex Yeah. I mean, as cliche as it is, you know, the sky's no longer the limit, I guess. 00:44:48:18 - 00:44:52:12 Marven Oh, looks like I'm a little bit on the early side, which is fine. 00:44:58:03 - 00:45:14:19 Marven Turns out we're actually looking at like a 28 minute trip instead of a 45. That's pretty good. That's going to be nice. Later when I'm coming in from home to do a quick filming here and there. 00:45:15:23 - 00:45:31:12 Jason All right. So I'm going to try flying one of these bad boys. I don't know how this is going to go, but it should be very interesting. I hope I don't crash because I feel like that's going to be very expensive. So Alex has been kind enough to to be the one to let me try one of his that's Jason. 00:45:32:06 - 00:45:41:02 Martin This land near. Don't you think they're just going to hold up? OK, yeah. Let's do this to the first place, OK? Because I'm going to like be like. 00:45:41:07 - 00:45:44:23 Cody It's going to be like playing Nintendo for the first time. Yeah, probably. 00:45:44:23 - 00:45:46:14 Jason OK, now lower the camera down. 00:45:46:14 - 00:45:48:04 Martin And we'll see if we can get you just. 00:45:48:09 - 00:45:49:20 Alex Just to maybe take. Off a little bit. 00:45:49:20 - 00:45:52:12 Jason We're all right. 00:45:53:06 - 00:45:53:19 Cody Just like first. 00:45:55:04 - 00:46:11:18 Jason I just just to myself. Yeah, just regular. More and more. Little more. That will go a little we're coming up there. We go it down because I'm not that far down. You go. 00:46:12:22 - 00:46:14:19 Jason Down. Slow down, slow down. Oh, gosh. 00:46:14:22 - 00:46:24:00 Jason Oh, my gosh. That was awful. Yeah, that was all too lot. 00:46:24:07 - 00:46:25:14 Jason Oh, my gosh. I just bounce. 00:46:25:14 - 00:46:26:12 Jason Like crazy there. 00:46:26:12 - 00:46:41:22 Cody Yeah, well, that's what's happening is you have you have your moment of inertia. Right? Yeah, because the object of want to stay at rest. Yeah. You have to give it a lot to get over that, and then you kind of got to drop it down, right. OK, once you get over there because that's the bottom is where it does most of the work. 00:46:42:06 - 00:46:52:11 Cody All right. And then you also have a thing called ground effect back over. Yeah. Because the area that you're pushing down is coming back to you and you're not getting as much. So as you go higher, you'll have more pressure of air. 00:46:52:11 - 00:46:53:00 Martin Before you. 00:46:53:07 - 00:46:54:00 Cody Know, the easier. 00:46:54:08 - 00:46:55:04 Martin Was not the concept. 00:46:55:04 - 00:46:56:12 Jason OK, all right. 00:46:56:12 - 00:46:57:01 Alex He's talking. 00:46:57:02 - 00:46:57:20 Alex Hydrodynamic. 00:46:58:01 - 00:46:58:22 Cody Yeah. All right. 00:46:59:17 - 00:47:09:07 Alex How do I pick up my glasses? I'm like, no. So you're on the ground so you should be able to see in front of you. Wow. 00:47:09:08 - 00:47:12:20 J.R. Well, you were wearing the goggles. Yeah. Nice. 00:47:13:03 - 00:47:18:15 Alex Like Jason, I'm just going to grab your lanyard for the radio, so. 00:47:19:09 - 00:47:31:07 Jason He's just picking up on his low power modes. I mean, it's actually. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, we're not running. OK, I check out fire so soon? Right now your. 00:47:31:07 - 00:47:32:18 Alex Left index is on the switch. 00:47:33:04 - 00:47:34:12 Alex So if you flip that towards. 00:47:34:12 - 00:47:35:20 Alex Yeah, that'll turn on the drone 00:47:35:21 - 00:47:40:04 Martin So they give you a brand new app. It's funny because I something like an hours they had to some like it was. 00:47:40:04 - 00:47:49:10 Cody Way she was worried about somebody like you definitely want to let down. 00:47:49:10 - 00:47:50:17 Martin On the throttle because you're going to the moon a bit. 00:47:50:22 - 00:47:51:05 Cody Oh yeah. 00:47:52:00 - 00:48:01:05 Jason A little more. There you go. Oh, boy. That's me. I'm on it. It was oh my gosh. So you're like, what's got to. 00:48:01:05 - 00:48:01:09 Cody Keep? 00:48:01:10 - 00:48:03:17 Martin So I'm gotta let it down. Let it down. 00:48:04:07 - 00:48:05:01 Cody I'll let it go. 00:48:05:11 - 00:48:20:03 Jason Running because it's falling away for a little over again. Yeah, like that. You fall all right now you're going to delightful guy. Sorry, Tony. 00:48:20:03 - 00:48:20:14 Cody You excited to. 00:48:21:04 - 00:48:27:14 Martin See everybody going over there to check it out? I just was like, oh, I don't know. It just I don't I don't know. 00:48:30:10 - 00:48:33:15 Jason Yeah. So I was like, we got to go rescue it now. Yeah, we'll find it. 00:48:33:15 - 00:48:36:07 Cody OK, now it's rescue time. How did it look to the locals? 00:48:36:12 - 00:48:36:19 Martin Well, that. 00:48:36:19 - 00:48:38:02 Jason Was really interesting. 00:48:38:02 - 00:48:40:01 Jason Wow. I'm terrible at. 00:48:40:01 - 00:48:41:18 Martin This. Don't you just bounce. 00:48:41:18 - 00:48:42:21 Jason Like miles. 00:48:42:21 - 00:48:44:06 Cody Up there? Holy smokes. 00:48:45:16 - 00:48:46:07 Martin It is. 00:48:46:08 - 00:48:47:05 Cody What we usually try to get. 00:48:48:05 - 00:48:48:10 Martin To. 00:48:48:11 - 00:48:49:08 Cody First. Yeah. 00:48:49:23 - 00:48:50:19 Martin Oh, wow. 00:48:51:05 - 00:49:00:04 Jason So after crashing my first year on, I am out helping with the hunt. Oh, perfect. 00:49:02:05 - 00:49:07:00 Jason Recovery is it is it alive? It's good. 00:49:07:00 - 00:49:08:07 Alex unharmed 00:49:08:13 - 00:49:14:04 Jason Woo! Perfect. Right on. I'm glad 00:49:14:04 - 00:49:15:03 Martin So tell us. What do you think? 00:49:15:08 - 00:49:23:15 Jason So I was kind of cool. I've never. I've never flown those before. It was terrifying in the sense of, like, oh, I do a little bit, and it just goes. 00:49:24:01 - 00:49:29:07 Jason Way up there. I in there, it's like, how do you how do you like? 00:49:29:13 - 00:49:36:00 Jason Because you're like, I watched you guys doing as you guys were chasing each other, right? And you're like, just feathering the controls just. 00:49:36:00 - 00:49:38:13 Martin A little bit. Yeah. And you guys got really. 00:49:38:13 - 00:49:40:22 Jason Used to those tiny movements. And here I am. I'm just. 00:49:40:22 - 00:49:49:07 Martin Like, let's practice. Oh, and using like, over and over, ready for the goggles on, you can see is like, oh, so cool. 00:49:49:07 - 00:49:51:17 Jason Yeah. Just it feels like just flying. 00:49:51:21 - 00:49:57:15 Martin Just flying in the air already sitting in a chair flying. You can take virtual reality with the real world. 00:49:58:01 - 00:50:03:03 Jason Yeah, exactly. It was really neat. So yeah. Thank you very much. I appreciate you taking the risk on. 00:50:03:03 - 00:50:13:00 Martin Me with your break. So you guys, very brave. he is being humble about it, but it is very brave. Oh, man, I'm going to walk away. 00:50:13:00 - 00:50:14:19 Jason He's going to say it's actually really broken. 00:50:14:20 - 00:50:29:13 Martin My sock drawer now. Still good to go. Oh, thank you. Oh, you mentioned that. I mean, like, if you land without breaking off landing, OK, then that counts. Congrats on your first flight. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. That was. 00:50:29:13 - 00:50:30:07 Jason Fun. Awesome. 00:50:31:16 - 00:50:51:15 Marven Hi there. A little wrap up from yesterday. I did about an hour's worth of shoot out in the field and even in through in through some trees. I had my first crash, and Jeff, very minor, didn't even ding a prop, so I just had to do a little bit of a walk, pick it up in a way. 00:50:51:15 - 00:50:56:21 Marven We went out a wonderful day, but that's the life of a drone pilot. 00:51:02:04 - 00:51:25:04 Jason Today's final frame. I don't have a whole lot to add. Our guests had so many different ideas and directions where this thing is going in the future. I'm excited and I'm sure you are as well. I thought it was especially interesting, Cody, talking about the new sport of drone racing, and I do think that that will take off. 00:51:26:00 - 00:52:00:14 Jason As everybody said, this is still early community. Yes. That commercial drones, you know, the all the DJI products and stuff have been around for a while and are getting better and better. But the ones that are for FPV racing and these guys are custom building that allow some pretty wild stuff that's still very much the tinkerers, the creators, the guys working in their basement and learning from each other and soldering iron and all these different pieces that are coming together. 00:52:00:14 - 00:52:40:11 Jason And it's community, as Cody said, that's going to bring everybody together and keep things going right now. And eventually it will get to a point where there will be more of a mass adoption of drones. So it won't just be a few guys with drone licenses flying these things around, but we're going to have more and more people bringing their drones to competitions and there will be a need for more film makers, broadcasters, announcers at these competitions to bring the races to the masses just like any other sport. 00:52:40:21 - 00:53:02:16 Jason So I think that that's going to happen. I think that we are heading in that direction probably maybe a few years before we see more mass adoption on that. But get in early. Now is the time. If you're curious, go and find a local drone operator and drone groups and go and hang out and get your hands on some of these toys. 00:53:02:16 - 00:53:23:11 Jason Try them on and I call them toys. But man, these things are pretty wild. You saw the speeds these things can get up to on the race tracks and find through some of the shots in here. Speaking of shots in here, as in the end credits you're going to see in a minute. You can see where all these guys are at. 00:53:24:15 - 00:54:02:10 Jason You can find them all on YouTube. And so definitely check them all out there and see more of their stuff. And if you're looking for drone operators in Alberta, these guys are fantastic. And as well, I just want to say a big thank you to all of them. They were all very kind to open up their catalogs of footage for me to be able to get all the B-roll this this episode definitely took me a lot more for editing because I was digging up the proper stuff and doing a little bit more background to find things. 00:54:03:15 - 00:54:35:22 Jason And so thank you everybody for your patience and for supporting today's episode as well. And the special thank you to James, who we saw his drone got damaged today. Thank you so much. For letting us into that moment because that was that was a frustrating moment. And I appreciate you allowing us to be able to see the kinds of things that face us as we are in a newer industry. 00:54:36:16 - 00:54:57:09 Jason Technology doesn't always work well together and so sometimes that can be frustrating. And thank you all for being a part of today's episode. And my name is Jason Steele and I'd look forward to next time when we move one frame forward into the future of film.