By Sydney

     Today was a big day full of bright ideas and creativity! The weather surprised us this morning with sunny, blue skies so we spent the morning on the athletic fields to get in some more flying time. The class practiced their flying skills by tracing shapes out in the air, such as boxes, circles, and figure 8s using the pitch, roll, and yaw maneuvers that they’ve been mastering over these past two weeks. Yesterday, after watching a very artistic music video filmed with a drone by the LA-based alternative rock band OK Go, we were inspired to film our very own music video — in only one take. It was a lot of fun!

     After lunch, each group worked on their respective final projects, adding voice recordings, editing videos, adding music, adding photos and text, and continuing to write their presentation scripts. I’m so impressed by each student’s vision and seeing the fantastic collaboration and strong progress in their work! At the end of the day, we wrapped up with treats from Woodstar Cafe and a movie to beat the heat.

By Joey and Maddy

     Today was a very productive day! Due to the rain, we stayed indoors. In the morning, we had the pleasure of listening to geologist Bob Newton speak about how drones contribute vital scientific research to his work. He showed us topographic maps, aerial imagery, as well as thermal imaging that he created from some of his projects. He also explained how drone technology is revolutionizing geological research. For example, drones allow him to reach angles that he cannot access from handheld cameras. Shooting from higher angles aided his project in capturing the moving sediment down Paradise Pond. When presenting footage to others, he explained the advantages of showing every step of the process of his project with a drone. “It’s like you’re right there with us!”

     Shortly after this presentation, we each presented a type of drone application in front of the class. There was a wide variety of topics, as individuals were allowed to research any use of drones. Some discussed drones and their role in hunting and search and rescue, while others talked about their role in package delivery, agriculture, and cinematography.

     In the afternoon, we got started with our final projects! We designated roles and topics to each person in our group, began to do voice-overs for our videos, and started to create slides for our presentation. We also began editing video footage in editing software.

     Finally, we wrapped up the day with some friendly competition! We played jeopardy with three categories: Drone Higher Education Applications, Drone anatomy, and FAA rules and regulations. Although we stayed indoors, it was quite an eventful day!

By Alex and Maha

     The morning began with our bumbling group talking about our case studies we were to complete the night before. Jon, our instructor, told us that we would be presenting tomorrow on our picked studies on application use for drones. Next we worked on creating our own mapping missions for Area D and Paradise pond on the school campus. We went through the plans of each student, half taking Area D and the other half on Paradise pond. We picked based on what we thought best and ended up with two mapping missions for each location we were mapping.

Planned mission in DroneDeploy on Invasive Species Area D

     We then went out the the athletic fields to work on our missions. One group worked on Area D, the farmers. One on Paradise pond, Grass. And the other two groups, Cinedrones, and Fire in the sky did flight evaluation checks. After we went back to our classroom and processed our mapping missions, with both missions under processed, before going off to lunch with a plan to go to Macleish field after lunch.

 
     After lunch we drove to Macleish and had the chance to talk to a All-Knowing chestnut expert, Paul. Paul talked to us about the American Chestnut crisis and then half the group, Cinedronies and Grass, mapped his chestnut farm with our drones. The other half filmed the chestnut gap. After talking and learning, we drove home. It was a beautiful Sunny Day.

By Andrea and Emily

     To start off our second week of class, the Northampton police department demonstrated their DJI drone with the thermal camera on it. The drone was described as “trigger-happy” by Officer Mike as it moved swiftly with little movement of the sticks. The drone itself was operated using two separate remotes since the camera could rotates a full 360 degrees. We looked at the different pallets with the camera turned toward our class to see how each pallet can be useful for different situations. After the outdoor demonstration, we headed back to the classroom where we watched final presentations of the last SSEP drones class for inspiration for our final presentations.

White-hot palette from the thermal camera onboard the Inspire drone

     Afterwards we headed for Northampton Airport where we learned about airspaces and heard a personal opinion of drones by the assistant manager. Interestingly, he said he only gets two to three calls for drone flights per week and about a quarter are females. We also got a chance to step into an airplane in the pilot seat and saw how airplanes have little visibility below making it impossible to see a drone.

     Once we got back, we started to layout our plans for the final project. The film and cinematography group decided to talk about camera angles and how we use drones in movies using the footage we got in class. The invasive species group got footage of the invaded areas versus managed areas along with targeted invasive Area D. Many other groups got a chance to play around with the DroneBlocks program and try different maneuvers and angles for the drones.

By Zoë and Robin

     Our Friday began with a guest lecture from Kate Lee, a videographer at Smith, who taught us cinematic and photographic techniques for drones. We learned about useful camera movements and framing, as well as how to use more technical aspects, such as aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. After learning how to capture decent images and video, we wandered around campus carrying Phantom drones and put our knowledge to the test. There was no flying in the first half of Friday, but we took some very cool photos.
     After lunch, we went to the MacLeish Field Station in Florence, MA to fly some drones and try out the first person view (FPV) goggles. Using the FPV goggles was a surreal experience, to say the least. It truly felt like you were the drone. Although it was a bit disorienting and a bit dizzying at first, it was unlike anything I have ever experienced before and would gladly do again. My group used the Mavic Pro and the astonishing detail that the drone was capable of producing was awe-inspiring. I was able to see tops of trees and vast horizons from a vantage point I could only ever dream of in such a rural landscape.

By Sydney and Alice

     Today we had a presentation from the Northampton Police Department about their special drone unit. This presentation focused on the various ways drones can be used to protect the community, such as providing detail about fire positions, suspect positioning and tracking, and quick accident reconstruction to provide court evidence. The police department presented us with three of their drones, which varied in shape, size, and use. Unfortunately, due to the unpredictable and ever-changing New England weather, the planned flight demonstration had to be canceled until further notice. Therefore, we broke for an early lunch, damp and devastated. In the afternoon, we did some indoor flight practice, as it was predicted to rain more in the afternoon. We used the Droneblocks application to code our flight missions. The application, however, did not work well indoors because the walls and blockage of the GPS signal interfered, causing one of the medium-sized drones to crash into a wall. Fortunately, the drone and its propellers were damaged quite lightly. Once the skies cleared and our drone was confirmed okay, we decided to go and fly outside. We took full advantage of this time to practice flying the phantom and Tello drones, using different types of controllers. Additionally, two of the students flew a drone over the nearby dam and took some interesting photos. All in all, we had a productive day of lectures, learning, and hands-on experience with our drone fleet.

Northampton Police Department

Investigative police work using thermal imaging

Arson scene

Tellos in the gym

By Jasmine and Freda

     Today in sensing drones we made our own checklist and added more things to check for before flying a drone, we did this so that we could fly the Drone out to grow food Northampton to fulfill our mission. Even though the weather was cloudy and rainy this was beneficial to our mission as the clouds decrease the shadows in the pictures. However the fact that it was also raining didn’t let us finish our mission, during the mission there were other people playing soccer so we had to be careful as to not fly the drones over them.
After lunch we looked at the pictures we took and we were given the opportunity to search for places we wanted to map, we spent the rest of class discussing how the world would be if drones were fully Incorporated in our lives. For this purpose we watched the film from the 2016 New York City film festival called Donnie the Drone and we each picked a fortune cookie at the end of class and then read The Fortunes out loud adding the phrase with drones at the end of them.

Portion of planned mission with Ground Control Points. The GCPs weren’t captured because we had modified the mission to avoid flying over the soccer players.

By Lisbeth

During the first half of class we talked about the homework readings. We brushed on the different uses of drones before going in depth about the regulations and safety procedures drones pilots have to follow. Some of the most important points in the FAA 107 Summary were:

• The drone must stay in the range of the visual observer
• The pilot must do a pre-flight check of the drone to assure that it is safe for operation
• The drone must not exceed 100 mph or 400 ft above ground

We then received our guest speaker, Dan Carter, who works on the FAA’s Safety Team. He talked to us a little bit about the fast growing industry involving drones. He spoke to us about the regulations and about his own experiences on the job. He has recently acquired his certificate and told us that the FAA’s regulations are constantly changing because they’re trying to adjust to this new technology. The FAA doesn’t regulate military aircrafts, only civilian ones.
We ended our morning session with a fun game of Jeopardy.

By Lizeth

The next half of the class was used to have a discussion about invasive species among Mill river with Gaby Immerman. Immerman identifies herself as a gardener rather than a botanist, her job is to look after the plants within the botanic garden. Which is essentially the entire Smith Campus, since we are located directly in the middle of the garden. Recently smith’s native species of plants have been pushed out by invasive species along the river bed. Immerman and her team continuously battle these nuisance but recently relied on drones to identify these species. Immerman took the entire class towards Mill River, before crossing the river, she identified ⅝ invasive species without moving her position.

After this adventure, our professor took us out to Smith softball field to exercise our piloting skills. We all gotten the chance to learn the controls and key components of the Ipad, such as

• The battery percentage of drone (announce every 10 % depletion)
• Altitude (measured in meters)
• Warnings of dysfunctions within the drone (such as an issue with the camera or gimbal)

We also practice to steer clear of other aerial vehicles or curious birds. We had to lower the altitude in order to prevent any accidents, our observers continued to point out aircrafts in the distance, which communicated to the pilot that they must lower altitude. We practiced our maneuvers, such as roll, pitch,yaw, these controls allowed us to move the drone in a certain way. We concluded our first drone flight class with allowing the drone to find its way home manually, by hitting the “Home” button, this allows the drone to fly back to its inital take off point after flying 30 meters up.

The weather let up briefly for the class to get in their first flights!

By Roxy and Julia

     Today we started the class off by introducing ourselves and we went over the schedule for the next two weeks. We talked about all the different field trips we will be taking. After lunch, Jon explained the different components in drones and what they are used for. He passed around the different parts so we could get a feel for them and understand their purposes and how they work together. We were each assigned a different component to research in detail and present tomorrow. Then we practiced our drone flying skills on a couple different simulators to test out the mechanics before we try our hands at the real thing.