Dropping stuff...
- Thread starter lurvas77
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Vilco
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- Dec 14, 2017
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With just 150 grams circa of lifting capability, one must find a very low-weight solution. The mavic carries 5x that weight and is widely used by fishers, to bring their fishing line off the coast and drop it near fishes at kilometers of distance. The Spark would be very limited in this regard, both for max weight and range
Not for spark, gives you a reason to add to your hangar. 
Drone Fishing: GANNET - Fishing with DJI drones
Drone Fishing: GANNET - Fishing with DJI drones
So let me get this straight. You want to drop candies on kids. What happens if one of those kids takes a piece of candy in their eye? Can you imagine the bad press against drones after something like that happened?
Do we not have enough restrictions against flying drones already without making it worse?
Do we not have enough restrictions against flying drones already without making it worse?
Sometimes trying to have too much fun is no fun. Also when your load starts to sway, my friend, good luck.
I've seen a video of a Mavic, also not designed to carry a payload, lifting a 1l water bottle. I also had a couple of occasions in which I was forced to hold the spark with my hands because I wasn't immediately able to make it land or switch it off: trying to escape my hands it would put out quite a bit of extra trust (which, be the way, it needs to have to shoot up at the speed it does in sport mode...). So my guess is that it will be able to carry some small extra weight no problem. Obviously, the recommendation is to have the weight center under its center of mass and stable enough that it doesn't give an hard time to the stabilization system. the safest (but not completely safe, of course) approach is usually to start from very light weight and increase slowly, watching out for any change in the AC behavior.
As of the release mechanism, it is a pity to have a remotely controlled moving part on board (the camera gimbal) and not be able to exploit it. I don't have a good solution, but a couple of ideas that would require experimentation (and they are not necessarily easy to realize in the first place):
- put the candies in a small rubber balloon filled with air, closely attached to the belly of the AC. The balloon will have to be small to start with and well inflated, to be easy to pop. A needle suitably attached to the gimbal should be able to pop the balloon when the camera is tilted down. The downside it that the balloon could have quite an impact on the AC aerodinamics, but if you fly slowly maybe it is not a problem
- similar to the above, but try to realize a very small baloon and use it only as the closing link of the "container" (for example a piece of light clothe connected to the back of the spark body and to the balloon close to the gimbal that holds the candies. The advantage is that you can reduce the impact on the aerodynamics, the downside is that the whole system is more complicated and the small balloon is not necessarily easy to find/realize (if you take a not-so-small balloon and don't inflate it much I suspect it won't work, as it would be too difficult to pop)
- try a "low resistance" release meachanism (like a pin in between two rings, one attached to the AC and the other to the container, and again use the camera gimbal, this time to pull the pin away. Not sure you can make the pin easy enough to pull for the gimbal to be able to do it.
See sketches here
Now, if you do try and perfect some of this, I want to see a video!
As of the release mechanism, it is a pity to have a remotely controlled moving part on board (the camera gimbal) and not be able to exploit it. I don't have a good solution, but a couple of ideas that would require experimentation (and they are not necessarily easy to realize in the first place):
- put the candies in a small rubber balloon filled with air, closely attached to the belly of the AC. The balloon will have to be small to start with and well inflated, to be easy to pop. A needle suitably attached to the gimbal should be able to pop the balloon when the camera is tilted down. The downside it that the balloon could have quite an impact on the AC aerodinamics, but if you fly slowly maybe it is not a problem
- similar to the above, but try to realize a very small baloon and use it only as the closing link of the "container" (for example a piece of light clothe connected to the back of the spark body and to the balloon close to the gimbal that holds the candies. The advantage is that you can reduce the impact on the aerodynamics, the downside is that the whole system is more complicated and the small balloon is not necessarily easy to find/realize (if you take a not-so-small balloon and don't inflate it much I suspect it won't work, as it would be too difficult to pop)
- try a "low resistance" release meachanism (like a pin in between two rings, one attached to the AC and the other to the container, and again use the camera gimbal, this time to pull the pin away. Not sure you can make the pin easy enough to pull for the gimbal to be able to do it.
See sketches here
Now, if you do try and perfect some of this, I want to see a video!
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