So another post Drones has anyone done theme before

rgabr0

rgabr0

Puzzlers elf
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Hi all,
Now I know Im getting ahead of myself as I haven’t even done my first display yet but I’m thinking drones and wondering if this has been done at all? Is there a cheap bulk system or like an easy diy way. Kind of tempted to make 2 massive drones and make it hold a floating matrix but also interested in the traditional drone show
 
rgabr0 said:
Hi all,
Now I know Im getting ahead of myself as I haven’t even done my first display yet but I’m thinking drones and wondering if this has been done at all? Is there a cheap bulk system or like an easy diy way. Kind of tempted to make 2 massive drones and make it hold a floating matrix but also interested in the traditional drone show
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You are likely to be better off hiring a crane to hold a matrix, drones require batteries to stay in the air for a very short amount of time, even less with a load suspended from them, those batteries require charging which will take away time from being able to run your lights, unless you have spares (expensive etc). A drone with that capacity is going to be mega expensive in terms of a private (and most likely) hobby run no payments taken to view light display.
 
Yeh, crane is Urm gonna be a bit much what’s your thought of the traditional drone show with like 5 pixels on the bottom of like 20 drones
 
rgabr0 said:
Yeh, crane is Urm gonna be a bit much what’s your thought of the traditional drone show with like 5 pixels on the bottom of like 20 drones
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20 drones.. I'd estimate around $500 per drone perhaps, then the software to control them (unknown cost, probably a few hundred $$) expertise to program them (external source $$$) learning yourself - free but probably a very steep learning curve. Licensing to use aircraft probably in the dark in a residential area.... free to expensive, especially if a neighbour says no.
 
Hmm well i can tick some of that off as Im am fluent in most programming languages and well advanced in aviation rc and control electronics as well as CAD I was going to make my own web ui to design and program the flight path. But yeh drones probrably 300-500 each although I’ve made little drones with esp32s for 20$ each and could probrably straps pixels onto them to test. But also permissions is the hard thing as Im near a airport
 
So, outside of basic shapes and patterns, what exact would be the benefit of 20 drones? If you think of a drone as an individual pixel, there are not a lot of things we do with only 20 pixels. At least with pixels there is the coro to give a basic outline so the viewer can form the mental image of what it is. To get something effective I think you would need a minimum of 50. Just my thoughts.
 
Disney used to do a drone show over the lake at Disney Springs. It was a precursor for the drones that are coming to Epcot soon. That being said, Disney spent well north of $1M on this show alone is investing tens of millions in the technology in upcoming years. Cool? Absolutely! Feasible? Probably not for you and me.

My son has a couple of DJI drones and uses them to take cinematic video as a side job (it's honest work for a 14 year old). He's done some flyby videos of our light show and then edited the results which has produced (what I think) are very nice aerial shots and vids of our property lit up with 25,000 lights!

From a practical standpoint I think that's where residential drones kind of find their limit in Christmas light shows, unless you're willing to dedicate a heck of a lot more money than most of us make in a year.

However I am a crazy engineer who doesn't want to discourage creativity, so if you have $10,000 to drop on 20 drones and can afford something like DJIs Flight Hub to do fleet management of your swarm I would be very interested to see what you create :)


View: https://youtu.be/AKjvPKoSAbk
 
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