That's probably not a great idea since the Spark flight controller was not designed to account for a swinging weight below the aircraft.
GPS tracker for Spark
- Thread starter Alex_Tijero
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You hace a valid point here. Although I think with just 18g it will be ok. I'll test and see 
Another of my projects is a 82g VR camera hanging from a string. THAT will be a more demanding task then, maybe impossible to fly. Maybe requiring an optimized unique string length. The lift limit of the Spark is just short of 150g.
I've seen videos with a Spark lifting a weight hanging from a string. It dances in a rythm opposite to the weight. So indeed, there is a risk that the movement is self-exciting until crashing the air craft. One must avoid to excite the resonance frequency. Therefore, the combination of string length and weight is crucial. A very long string (like 10 m) is probably dampened enough to pose no issues.
Another of my projects is a 82g VR camera hanging from a string. THAT will be a more demanding task then, maybe impossible to fly. Maybe requiring an optimized unique string length. The lift limit of the Spark is just short of 150g.
I've seen videos with a Spark lifting a weight hanging from a string. It dances in a rythm opposite to the weight. So indeed, there is a risk that the movement is self-exciting until crashing the air craft. One must avoid to excite the resonance frequency. Therefore, the combination of string length and weight is crucial. A very long string (like 10 m) is probably dampened enough to pose no issues.
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Having it done with a PH3P and a Samsung gear, there was no problem to fly with something suspended by a wire bellow (I assume it will be the same for a Spark).
But the resulting 360° video was almost useless as there was too much camera dancing bellow, including rotation. You were almost sick after viewing it, but experimenting is always fun and interessant.
But the resulting 360° video was almost useless as there was too much camera dancing bellow, including rotation. You were almost sick after viewing it, but experimenting is always fun and interessant.
I hand picked my VR camera for weight and six axis gyro stabilization (technology emerging in 2017). Dancing below the Spark should still yield great footage, from what I've learned so far. The camera is pre-ordered, I'll keep you posted.
Thethered from the Spark should yield true 360, as the Spark becomes a tiny nadir point.
The holy grail would be a 250m long nylon string. Because the Spark becomes invisible and unaudible this high. You could bring the VR camera into every position. But you need a live link to the VR camera to actually fly this thing to precision ...
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Would need a clever flight controller to handle the 250m string and cancelling the oscillation after acceleration or braking.
Let us know if you try it.
I reckon gps coords logged in your flightlogs SHOULD be enough to recover your Spark if it "flies away".
I still don't understand what "fly AWAY" is/means? Its programmed with naughts and ones, it has to have a reason to "fly somewhere" right? If you take away the human element, it should follow those programmed rules?
I still don't understand what "fly AWAY" is/means? Its programmed with naughts and ones, it has to have a reason to "fly somewhere" right? If you take away the human element, it should follow those programmed rules?
It would be if the downlink is still connected when the Spark lands/crashes. That's not always the cases though.
It's a phrase commonly used by pilots who don't understand why their aircraft was not following their commands. The flight log often explains the explainable.
First attempts in.
Because of the weather, I only could fly a single test, the string was 1m, the weight isn't final and was 98g. I ascended to up to 100m at the highest point.
Observation: between calmer periods, the craft showed wild, I mean WILD, oscillations! The camera turned and swung too. At times, it almost didn't descend when landing, either because of obstacle detection, or instable flight.
Lessons:
1. I still got nice stable footage from the six axis stabilized VR camera. Looking straight up to the craft (with a VR headset) you see the Spark fight the elements, swinging, rotating and tilting in all directions like crazy. One is really thankfull that one isn't hanging in person from the craft
2. The Spark's flight controller can handle quite extreme flight situations! Neither did it fall out of the sky, nor did it fly away. Even the gimbal tried its best, but often failed when the craft started to spin or tilt 45º ...
Next test will be a much longer string and less weight. I feel like 1m may be worst case.
I was an early adopter of Tile and it works well and it keeps shrinking in size. However, I switched to Chipolo because it has replaceable batteries.
I tried the Tile but realized it wasn't really any better than the "find my drone" in the Go4 app. The app will show you the last GPS location, which, unless GPS was lost, will work. Tile, being bluetooth, has a 100 ft. range, although I got the "sport" version which has a 200ft. range. If you have no idea where your Spark went, you'll never find it. The "crowd finding" system won't work in the middle of the woods somewhere. A person who is running the Tile app has to be within range for you to get the notification. A small GPS tracker is the answer, of course, but the right one doesn't seem to be available yet. I'm sure it will come soon. They're all too big, heavy, cheesy, or simply don't work.
AMERICALOC GL300W may be the right choice. It is small enough to fit on a drone. It's actually a vehicle tracker, but I think it's also possible to use it as a small GPS tracker for tracking drones.
At cape Canaveral I fly mostly at the beach that is about 150ft wide from water to the bushes and weeds about 50ft wide before it gets back to the condos and owned properties. I was flying low back over the bushes not over the people and was 1000ft away when I hit a tall blade of grass and it fell into the weeds. My first and only crash was an easy lay down but I was worried.. I touched my map in the lower right of my ipad4 to blow it up and could see right where the track white line ended and started walking that way. The cool thing is as I walked there was a blue dot on the screen that showed exactly where I was also that moved along as I walked. The learning never ends with these things but anyway I just walked the blue dot to the end of the white line on the map and there it was. Isn't that already GPS tracking on the Spark and on my ipad4?
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