So another post Drones has anyone done theme before

rgabr0

rgabr0

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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
 
One of my neighbours would have police here in minutes others would be too drunk too care lol
 
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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