After completing this lesson,

you'll be able to explain how drones are used in the real world.

This looks like a pretty good spot.

An important thing wherever you're flying,

you need to make sure that you're legally allowed to be there.

And if you're within five miles of a local airport,

you will have to make sure you notify the FAA because legally,

you have to make sure they know you're flying if you're within that range.

There are also some height limitations.

We can't go above 400 or so feet,

which We're not going to do that today.

The thing that we want to talk about today is the temperature, very cold.

We have about eight degree Fahrenheit temperature

to deal with here in Blacksburg, Virginia.

So that affects that few things.

And we need to make sure that the temperature of our batteries is

regulated or at least has sort of synchronized with the surrounding temperature.

You don't want to take a warm battery out of your house,

instantly power it up,

you need to let it sort of acclimate to its surroundings.

The other thing we need to be aware of is that

the cold temperature is going to reduce our battery life.

So I've done a few things today.

I have unplugged the camera.

I've also unplugged the video transmitter

because they use a little bit of power and we're going to be flying only a line of sight.

So instead of pulling that power out,

we're just going to leave them unhooked and that'll help us fly for a little bit longer.

With these smaller batteries,

if we're doing any high powered maneuvers,

will probably only get about five to eight minutes out of it.

I've also switched to three bladed props.

This helps a little bit with balance and it also

helps get a little bit more bite out of the air,

but it is going to cost us a little bit of efficiency.

Now, they do weigh a little bit more,

so we have that extra mass that we're turning,

it's going to suck a little bit more current down and shorten our flying time.

So hopefully, unplugging the camera in

the video transmitter will sort of offset the propeller.

So full disclosure, I have actually flown

this a couple times before to troubleshoot some problems.

The first time we went out and flew,

instantly tried to flip over because I thought these two motors were switched.

So as soon as it went up in the air,

it tried to compensate for this by spinning up what it thought was number four,

and it actually spun up number one,

so it instantly flipped over.

So I took it apart, took care of that,

did a test flight,

and it started to have what's called drift on the horizon,

which means that, as you go up it starts to work its way to the right.

I added a little piece of foam between the flight controller and the chassis,

as well as another piece of sticky tape underneath it to try to isolate it.

But let's go ahead and let's fly this thing and see what it will do.

So first, we're going to start by plugging in the batteries.

So I'm going to undo the velcro and plug in both batteries.

Make sure all the ESCs fire up.

Make sure we get that second battery in.

And then I'm going to pull these between the batteries a little bit.

And redo the strap to hold them in place,

that way we don't get in the way of any of the props.

Also you want to make sure if you ever transport this in a bag,

that you're trim is back to neutral on the throttle.

I want to make sure that everything is centered so when I take off,

I've got a good neutral fight.

And that way, I can adjust them on the fly if I need to.

We want to try to hover a little bit, that's the first thing.

And you can see it's turning itself.

So I'm going to trim it a little bit.

It will take a little bit of work to get you to,

but it's a good idea to stay a couple feet off

the ground so you don't get any turbulence underneath the props.

And if you have to fly between three and six feet off the ground,

it will help give you a little bit of a buffer.

And always remember as you're landing to keep it facing away from you.

So if you want to move it somewhere,

then you want to turn your body and try to turn it with you.

We're at Gateway Park here in Blacksburg, Virginia.

There's lots of open land here and that's great

for opening the drone up away from people.

Because it's pretty fast,

it's a little harder to capture in this open area.

I would guess it can top 35 miles an hour fairly

easily with the current three cell setup in the motors that we're using.

Let's take a walk to some old buildings and

test the drone out in its intended environment.

So the first test flight went pretty well.

The first flight went up,

we have a little bit of yaw and drift issue where

the quadcopter goes up and it tries to bank to the right on its own.

So that's something again,

it's potentially in the accelerometer.

We can go in and adjust some settings and filter some more out.

But ultimately it probably means that

the flight controller needs to be isolated a bit better.

So that means getting some gel sticky tape putting it around in foam, things like that.

I think some of the issues we're having have to do with temperature,

since it's probably maybe 10 degrees right now.

I don't think the accelerometer and the gyro

inside the flight controller really like to be that cold.

In this case, we've got some moisture on the ground,

so we've got cardboard to keep it away from the motors.

But other than that, it's a great place to come out,

we can fly, we got lots of room.

And if we crash for some reason,

we can walk up to it and retrieve it pretty easily.

Now, that we have a feel for how the drone flies in the open,

let's test it out in some buildings.

Even though we have a slight drift issue with

the controller and we have our cameras turned off,

we have a great opportunity at this location to fly into some old barns and garages.

Ideally this would be done with the camera on, but again,

we're dealing with limited flight time and only a few batteries on hand.

So we have to get all the testing done while we're here,

so we can make adjustments later.

First, we're going to take off from this old concrete slab and fly into the whole barn.

This is a nice open room to fly in.

But given the old nature of the building,

it's a good idea to fly in and check out the structure first.

The drone handles really well in here despite fighting the drift.

Let's bring it back and try another location.

This time we're going to start from the ground.

And again, we're using cardboard here because of the frost and moisture on the ground.

One possible addition to the design would be to make

a baseplate that can be taken from the backpack and used as a launch pad.

Now because we are using cardboard, it is easy to carry,

but we're limited because we can't land back on

it due to the wind and forces created by the props.

Now, this space here is a little bit tighter,

but it does really well in here as well.

So all in all, I'm happy with the results of today.

Wish it could have been a little bit warmer,

so we had a little bit more flight time.

But I have some feedback for the drones,

some things that I want to change,

and ideas for possible updates.

Test flight

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