61–70 of 78 posts
tl;dr Looking into systems administration and do my programming at home on my own time and my own projects.
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Sounds cool. Fellow FPV'er here. I think this hobby will explode in popularity really soon, if that isn't already happening.
Agreed. Components are just getting cheaper and cheaper. The biggest obstacle right now is information and experience, in my opinion. All the good information is locked up in billion-page forum posts. I've considered writing a bunch of in-depth tutorials and info-guides...but just haven't found the time. Experience...well, you just have to crash a few times because the servo is installed backwards before you really u…
On the side, I'm building experimental composite frames for quadrotors. If I come up with something usable, I plan on selling them to the quadrotor FPV community. Not really a startup, but hopefully a profitable side business. Most high performance quadrotor frames are made out of carbon fiber. This makes them expensive, brittle, prone to horrible vibrations and not so great for RF interference. I'm basically tooling…
Have you done more research into CF layup? A lot of the characteristics of carbon fiber and defined by the weave of the cloth and layup of the module. The problem with quadrotors are that they're effectively 4 tubes on CF bolted together. A single module system with proper dampening would probably be perfect. For example go ride a really cheap carbon fiber bicycle where they just stick carbon fabric into a mold and t…
I'm working mostly with wet-layup fiberglass cloth and sandwich panel constructions, as well as some semi-silly experiments with glue/paper/fiberglass. Also exploring some designs that use tension cables to support the load. Lots of fun, if not entirely fruitful so far
[1] I could probably find space for a vacuum bagging setup...but my girlfriend barely tolerates all the stuff as it is. Best not to push my luck :)
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Agreed. Components are just getting cheaper and cheaper. The biggest obstacle right now is information and experience, in my opinion. All the good information is locked up in billion-page forum posts. I've considered writing a bunch of in-depth tutorials and info-guides...but just haven't found the time. Experience...well, you just have to crash a few times because the servo is installed backwards before you really u…
What's your take on batteries? I've heard a lot about hobby RC LiPo batteries turning into flaming fireballs due to both improper charging or over-draining.
They are mostly safe, you just have to treat them nicely. Improper charging is the biggest risk, so as long as you charge slowly with a proper balance charger there is basically zero risk. It takes longer, sure, but I'd rather charge at 2C and not burn my house down than charge at 10C and play LiPo roulette. I charge and store my batteries in a flame-proof LiPo bag, and will be getting a fireproof safebox soon.
A lot of people will fast-charge when they are outside charging from a car battery or something, so it's less of a big deal if it explodes (since you should be charging it on a concrete block or something away from people).
Over-draining isn't really a problem, since even cheap ESCs have over-drain protection and won't let you drain the battery. I don't think explosions are a problem when you over-drain anyway...you just permanently damage the battery.
Otherwise, the only thing you really have to worry about are crashes. After a good crash, check your batteries to make sure they are uninjured. If they look a little deformed, best to play it safe and store them somewhere safe (bucket of sand, metal box, etc) for a few days to see if they get puffy.
Puffy == dangerous, discharge safely and dispose.
Now you should feel TONS better about what you do! :-P
I work in Business Intelligence, on the backend side of things. SAS, Python, Bash, Excel and Access (SAS is the tool of choice on most BI environments, especially on enterprise - Hadoop is not known in this world yet).
Thins are heavily manual, I am writing python scripts so some of the things get automatized and also to wrap some of the various data sources (lots of TXT files dumped by mainframes).
Also, I have to deliver some data files in Excel or Access. Python and Tablib are very useful on that regard.
Before that, I worked a lot of time as a sysadmin and some as a mathematician developing models in finance.
On the side, I'm building experimental composite frames for quadrotors. If I come up with something usable, I plan on selling them to the quadrotor FPV community. Not really a startup, but hopefully a profitable side business. Most high performance quadrotor frames are made out of carbon fiber. This makes them expensive, brittle, prone to horrible vibrations and not so great for RF interference. I'm basically tooling…
Nice project... I am also an ex-biologist and 4 years ago was working with Sugar Cane genetic engineering and Bioinformatics, it's sad that here in Brazil they pay you s * to research like that and a lot to program in Java. So here I am.
(I ran away from there because of the shitty payment) ((Nowadays I work in finance...))
Data scientist/consultant using a blend of Python, Postgres, Mongo, d3.js, R, Hadoop and other ML goodies. I was a grad student tired of my PhD program and ended up gathering a group of fellow alums at Stanford to become a small data/analytics shop.