Av8Chuck

You can’t legislate stupid. Likewise asking this question on a “drone” forum is pretty stupid. There’s a really simple answer, make it illegal to be naked in a hot tub. Sounds kind of stupid, doesn’t it. There are plenty of laws to protect privacy there’s no need to create more just for drones. If your situation is as secluded as you say then you might want to talk to your friends who know when and where you hot tub. Also, if the area is as restrictive as you’ve described, take a wet towel, throw it at the drone and knock it out of the air.

What ps wrong with the Seagull? You might want to check out the IntelliG.

Interesting idea. Depending on how accurately you want the transition from one interval to the next to be, you could keep it relatively simple and fly to the same waypoint and make sure you have the same heading. Any drone that can shoot timelapse should work. The Mavic2Pro should work.

New Zealand is awesome.

Did Mathew work on that project or did he just fly around from outside? If he worked as a contractor and didn’t get sued for some reason he’ll probably never work on another Apple project. But your right, you never know.

Ok, for all the concerns you mentioned about what your customers might do with your footage is the reason that you can’t use imagery of their projects for promoting your business without permission. Here’s an interesting tidbit, as the photographer, unless specified in the contract, you own all the footage. It does not belong to them because they hired you. However, as we’ve been discussing, just because you own it doesn’t give you the right to use it. The best way to manage everyone’s expectations is to agree upon what can be be used for promotional purposes in the employment contract. Keep in mind that the client who hired you, like a real estate agent, probably doesn’t have the authority to give you permission in the first place. For the clients your already working for, just talk to them. However you go about solving this problem, GET IT IN WRITING. The real problem your solving is one of expectations. If you make an honest effort of trying to get permission to use any material for promotional purposes and get it in writing, then even if the wrong person signed your request you had the integrity to ask. Most of the time the offended IP owner will simply ask you to stop using it. But if you don’t make the effort and get it in writing then not only will they make you stop but it can cost you money. This is one of those topics where it sounds more complicated than it is. Use common sense. If your documenting the construction of the Disney Concert hall in downtown LA, your probably not going to get permission and you know you’ll get in trouble if you use any of it for promotional purposes. If your documenting the construction of an office building in rural America, people are less likely to care. Also, if your working on a project that is federally funded or DoD related then it is expressly prohibited. In those cases you must get permission. Depending on what it is, generally you will get permission if you ask but they need to approve hows it’s being used. In case you haven’t figured this out, this is a “quarantine” answer. I’m bored out of my mind. Answering this question is the most excitement I’ve had in days 🤬

Anyone who has followed my replies knows I rarely suggest asking for permission first, but in this case it’s not to ask permission to fly, presumably you already have that, but it’s an intalectual property issue. You do not have the right to publish images of someone’s property unless they’ve explicitly given it to you. The issue will rarely come up on the jobsite, it’s comes up when the owner of the propert sees it in an advertising or online. Most of the contracts we have state that we are not allow to post data we collect online or use it for promotional purposes without written permission. I have seen this happen a lot when commercial drone operators post images on their website promoting their work. This Is a contentious issue that really has little to do with the drone and it applies to JSU about everyone on a jobsite. This is one of those things that says a lot about your integrity. If you have permission it’s an indication you have integrity, if you don’t and someone sees the imagery of their property you might never know that’s why you lost out on future work. It’s not worth the risk. Obviously common sense should prevail, it also depends on what your shooting/using. But there are lots of things that happen on construction sites where the prime or sub contractors don’t want someone looking over their shoulders.

That probably depends on whether you are the prime contractor or a sub. Yes the owner of the development can prohibit you from publishing likenesses of their property on social media or in advertisements. This is probably less about your rights and more about do you ever want to work for that company again. Depending on how influential that company is, you might make finding more work very difficult.

Nicely done. where is this shot? Parts look like Tahoe, some of it looked like New Zealand, some like the Northern California shoreline.

For what it’s worth, I think your assessment and the way your looking at the commercial UAV market is good. A lot of people looking to make this sort of career transition are too focused on the drone. There’s a lot of misinformation regarding the federal ban on DJI and data security. The ban includes the Pentagon (DoD) and any federally funded “critical” infrastructure projects. Some things to keep in mind that may influence your decision. The Army Corps Of Engineers is part of the DoD and included in that ban and they manage two thirds of the civil infrustructure in the US. There is a lot of infrastructure that is not considered critical and a lot of utilities, construction and inspection companies, and DOTs etc use DJI, but the amount of infrastructure that is being reclassified as critical is growing quickly. https://www.wileyconnect.com/home/2020/3/20/draft-executive-order-would-tighten-limitations-on-chinese-drones-covid-may-spur-other-similar-measures How long will it be before DJI is precluded from federally funded projects is anyone’s guess. It’s conceivable that you could use DJI drones on non prohibited projects for years. Having said that, it’s doubtful that as a single commercial operator that you can win much of this work anyway. Some companies like PrecisionHawk might hire you for industrial inspection but that will likely require 50-100 hours of direct experience flying an Inspire2, M200 or M600 inspecting substations, transmission and distribution towers etc.. Again, try not to focus so much on a particular drone, focus more on what customer are you trying to solve a specific problem they’re willing to pay for and how. What problem does the US-1 actually solve? One of the logistics all commercial operators must deal with is battery management and safety. The US-1, the drone is the battery (so to speak), so managing battery consumption might be a lot more difficult on a drone where you can’t change the battery. We fly a mission and can swap the flight batteries out as many times as necessary, while concurrently charging the spare batteries. Also, batteries are only good for a limited number of cycles. So for that reason I’d be sceptical of aligning its capabilities with the right application. If I were just starting out with this decision I’d go with the Skydio2. The Skydio2 is an intelligent UAV, which means it’s likely to be successful on a much broader range of missions. The Phantom series is long in the tooth and if you need it to perform any kind of inspection beyond what it was designed for, it can’t. It really depends on what the application is. With its global shutter you probably can’t beat the price performance for mapping applications but that doesn’t require thermal. The Skydio2 will have thermal on it way before DJI has an intelligent drone. We’ll have to wait and see how good a theremal sensor but it can’t be any worse than the XT2. When you talk about LiDAR your getting into a very expensive and heavy niche which requires a whole other level of UAV. We develop and manufacture our own UAVs in the US but we don’t sell them. There are many others, here’s a few: https://terraview.com Obviously these are more expensive but they can do so much more of what a professional operator needs. There’s no simple, right answer to your question. If you want easy and something the DOR is likely to accept, go with DJI. But if your looking for a serious career then you’ll need to research the path less traveled.

The problem isn’t the gimbal, it’s DJI. DJI makes it very difficult to use non-DJI accessories on their drones. The Gremsy H3 works great with the Sony A7R3/4 and if you want to use the Canon 5DS you’d need an H7. But good luck getting it to work on a DJI M200. Also keep in mind that depending on lens and camera this is about 4-5 pounds, an M210 won’t lift it for very long if at all.

Your life...

That's how it should be done. Nice work.

Very we’ll done. It would be great if you’d share your settings, length of flight etc.. Either way, please post more, I enjoy your work. Thanks for sharing.

A camera and gimbal weigh about 2-2.5kg.