Friday, April 12, 2013

Color Dash is Now More Fun with MultiRotor : Our Eye from the Sky!


What is that flying contraption with four propellers and somewhat like a spy camera hovering up in the skies of the Bonifacio Global City (BGC)?

It's going to be an eye from the sky that will be used by the organizers of Color Dash fun run to capture videos of the running event on May 11. Hopefully it will be able to give us an amazing aerial view and perspective of the happenings at the ground from a bird's eye view.

It's no doubt bringing more fun to the Color Dash event as everyone will have the opportunity to watch how they look like from above. Truly spectacular!


 


One fine morning at the BGC with the lead organizer of the Color Dash event and proprietor of BuyBranded.PH to test the equipment we will be using during the running event.

We had a dry run of the multirotor with helicam, a flying machine almost similar in concept to the helicopter toys used by the hobbyists, but this gadget has a camera installed on it that's recording videos as it flies. The video file format is MP4, small in size but clear enough for playback from any video player or optical drives.




The multirotor is controlled by a remote (that looks like a head of a robot), and the video images can be seen from a video receiver.


Emil prepares his hi-tech flying equipment. Too bad I was too afraid to try flying the multirotor myself. It would have been fun to experience it.


Four arms for the propellers and four legs for the feet - Hhhmmmm, spider-like multi-rotor gets my vote for the most ingenious gadget I've seen that day. How I would love to use this to get a top view video image of events.


The main part of the machine is also shaped like the body of a spider.


The lower portion holds the video camera.


And the other side holds the battery. The operator, Emil, says that the running time would be around five minutes, so he'll have to replace batteries very often to keep several video footage of the events, and enough lead time to setup the machine to catch everything. It is recommended to have two of this gadget so that the second one can be prepared ahead before the running crowd reaches another point of the track.


The remote control sorts of remind me of the head of the lead robot character from the animated movie Robots. Eyes, nose and mouth that are all in the right places - coincidence or intentional? You be the judge.

 

 
  This gadget allows us to receive the video images being recorded by the multirotor while it flies in the sky.


Flying the machine was easier. It was the landing that was a bit tricky! You have to be very careful and take it down slowly but surely.

 
It looks like the flying machine can be a very useful spy camera from the sky...hahaha


Here's the link to the video of how things look like from above (starring us in action):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c6Fvb5XHVWk


Landing on the ground takes a bit of time just enough to find a spot to land.
 
Playback of the video was done on an iPad after Emil copied it to an SD card.
 
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Color Dash is now really more fun with the inclusion of the helicam via the multirotor.



Incidentally, the Color Dash running event was also announced at a leading free tabloid newspaper, Commuter Express, see below.

So what are you guys all waiting for? It's now time to register for the Color Dash run so you could enjoy seeing yourselves running at a bird's eye view. It will surely be an exciting run at the BGC on May 11.

There's still plenty of time to register so read more about the Color Dash run from their Facebook page to see the registration areas.

https://www.facebook.com/ColorDash

and also the event invite from  here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/123871804466288/

2 comments:

  1. Great idea! I will tell my family and friends about this so that we can experience the fun on May 11. See you soon.

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