Finishing Up the New Gate Controls and Drone Practice

Thursday April 7, 2022 Guerneville CA.

Auto Gate Control install

I read the manual and was ready to finish the install of the automatic gate controller this morning. I got the tools out and set to it.

Gate won’t work

Things didn’t go well and I couldn’t get the gate to work, but I was able to set it up so I knew it should work. I went back and read the manual again and went online to look at some of the gate manufacturer’s videos on how to set up the gate controller and found the problem. I hadn’t set up the gates limits properly so I did that and things started to work.

Setting up the gate controller was a bit of work.

I got that task done so moved on to a rest and some chair hopping around the yard.

Oh, that took most of the day, the controller setup I mean.

Drone practice

Just before dark I decided to use up the last charged battery on my drone.

This is the kit for the DJI Mini 2 drone I purchased a while back. Price for the kit is 599.

The cell phone doesn’t come with the kit but is used to view the onboard camera and run the software for the drone to control it.

Newer drone coming soon

I heard there is another more advanced model out for this drone, a Mini 3 pro that will be out soon. It has more sensors for avoiding obstacles and it has it’s own viewing screen so the cell phone isn’t needed. And I think the price will be about double but that’s not out yet. I’ll stick with the one I have.

Flying the drone

Here’s the setup with the drone and the controller with the cell phone mounted on the controller. Of course the chicken was looking for something to eat.

I got the drone in the air without any trouble.

My plan is to fly that drone around on this road and out of sight so I will have to use the drone’s camera to maneuver it around the driveway which I’m doing for the practice to be a better pilot.

So I started around the driveway scaring this chicken a bit. It ran into the bushes to get away and I continued around the road and out of sight.

Then I reversed it and came back around the road for more practice.

Yard view

Up, up and away for this photo of me and my house. I’m down there sitting on a chair controlling the drone.

Top of a redwood tree

My battery was getting low but I figured I had enough juice left to fly up to the top of a redwood tree to have a look at the tree’s cones. The cones turned out to be thickest at the top of the tree.

I got the battery is getting low voice and returned it to me and landed safely. It’s really pretty easy to fly.

Gate openers

Then I went over to find my brother Tom to get his gate actuators to test them out on the new gate controller. They checked out ok and opened the gate.