Tuesday, September 6, 2016

It's been a while...

It has been far too long since we have added a blog entry for Wildersport Outdoors, and there is a LOT of good reason for that...

Since I believe it was May this year that our last entry was put in, we have been diving into videography, heavily as we feel that a video blog, or VLOG would be far more engaging than a simple text and photo blog, so we have been going out, taking tons of videos, trying out new equipment, and breaking same said equipment. Some things that we have figured out...

#1. I don't quite know how to not fly a drone into a tree yet. Getting there, and I just finished replacing the drone body and testing it. Thank God for serviceable drones. Replacement parts, and ease of service are 2 of the main reasons we opted for the Horizon Hobby Blade Chroma camera drone, that, and proven compatibility with the SJCam SJ4000 WiFi. I know GoPro is the big name in action cams, but I REALLY like my SJ4000...

#2. Gimbals which are a sort of motorized camera stabilizer, are well worth the money if you can grab one... Thank you Eric Jacobs, A.K.A. the Nomadic Fanatic for the idea, and recommendation on Gimbals. Admittedly ours is the model that replaced his, but so far, no complaints, at least not since flashing the firmware that is!

#3. Having Elderly members of your household, with 2 legs, or 4, means you tend to stay close to home. We have been discovering things about Houston Metro area that we otherwise never would have seen, and we can't wait to bring it to you.

#4. A good number of video editing applications do NOT like AMD / ATI video drivers. We have tried Corel, Adobe, and CyberLink, CyberLink's PowerDirector is giving us the LEAST problems, but is still full of performance issues. Our next laptops are going to have to be Intel withthe  NVidia graphics... That is going to hurt.

#5. Trying to capture video of public places, on major holiday weekends is a fools errand. Just don't even bother. Galveston Island Seawall? Forget it, bumper to bumper traffic and more people than grains of sand it would seem. San Jacinto Monument wasn't any better....

#6. What I thought was a scratch in a waterproof body lens isn't, it is a machining mark. I need to call and get a replacement while I am under warranty.

For what it's worth, I found a good couple of videos on Youtube on how to replace a busted airframe on a Chroma camera drone, neither of which gave me 100% of the information I needed, but given both videos I was able to figure out how to repair the hardware, sadly, calibrating the compass and GPS takes a LOT more info than anything posted.

You see the problem is that the Chroma camera drone comes in a LOT of variants, different transmitters, cameras, or not, gimbal, or not, etc... Our unit is the Chroma with Go Pro ready Gimbal and Spektrum DX-4e transmitter. The manuals for this particular model are lacking in useful info on this. I had to engage Horizon Hobby tech support, which I wanted to mention a couple of things.

#1. Getting a hold of a human at Horizon Hobby isn't easy. BUT they do have a call back service so you aren't waiting for hours burning your airtime on a mobile phone trying to get in touch with someone...
#2. Once you get a hold of a human, they are VERY helpful.

Working with Horizon Hobby support, we found that the manual for the model without a gimbal at all had the info we needed in its manual. So we got that solved.

The remaining issue I have with the Drone is gimbal tilt control.

For now, until I learn what I am doing, and can pass the FAA UAV test, I am going to leave the drone video out of my paid videos, and keep it registered as a hobby drone. I am hoping to change this status before years end...

There is a lot of footage in the queue being processed, and a good deal for you to enjoy, from the mansions of Galveston Island, to the U.S.S. Texas, and San Jacinto Monument just outside of Houston Texas.

As we go along we are working to branch further and further out for you.

So stay tuned, and enjoy what we have to offer!

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