I had to fish my drone out of the LA River!

Filming the mural that is called, “The Great wall of Los Angeles.” i crashed my drone by being a terrible pilot (i need more practice in tight spaces}). I had to fish my DJI Mini 2 out of the LA River. good thing it crashed onto a dry patch and suffered minimal damage.

The Great Wall of Los Angeles is a mural on one wall of a one mile stretch of the LA River. If you don’t know that, it is the flood drainage system of Los Angeles.  There was a river at one point, but now it is a concrete riverbank accented with chain link.

At first i thought i just needed to flip it over and i could liftoff.  alas, i had to construct an elaborate fishing pole of entangling loops attached to a telescoping dusting pole i had.  Just out of reach, it took nearly 30 minutes and countless attempts to ensnare my little mini.

Drone Crash View Drone Crash Damage

The look on my face when i finally recovered my drone
The look on my face when i finally recovered my drone

My final visit to the Encino Avenue bridge.

Encino Avenue bridge demolition

After reading of its impending destruction, i was hoping to pay the Encino Avenue pedestrian overpass a final visit.  Unfortunately visits were discouraged. The messaging was a bit mixed, as the fence was literally tied up with string.  i took pictures without trespassing.  The 101 will shutdown between White Oak and Burbank over the weekend for the bridge’s demolition.

Encino Avenue bridge demolition - Do Not EnterEncino Avenue bridge demolition - Tied up with string

Camarillo Airshow 2022

camarillo airshow 2022

A saw some great acrobatic flying including a helicopter doing loops and barrel rolls.  The sky was full of Jets, skydivers, simulated strafing runs, a water drop, and so much more.  On the ground i was able to check out a lot of incredible machines including a jetpack and aquatic aircraft called the ICON.  There was a STEM hanger where kids could operate basketball playing robots.

camarillo airshow 2022 - coordinated flightcamarillo airshow 2022 - autonomous helicopter
camarillo airshow 2022 - classic trucks and Corvettescamarillo Airshow 2022 - custom car

Flipper software is coming along nicely!

Flipper with wifi-dev board scanning APs

Thanks to the exceptional work by justcallmekoko, RogueMaster, and many others there is now native flipper support for the unofficial Marauder firmware for the Flipper dev-board.  Marauder is firmware for the ESP-32 chipset full of security tools for bluetooth and wifi. The Flipper dev board doesn’t support bluetooth, but the wifi tools work and are usable from the flipper itself.  I cannot wait to see what comes next.

Flipper Marauder Demo

My garden keeps growing!

Home Assistant: Garden Panel

I’ve kept working on my garden. i have this sweet Home Assistant panel.  I am still working on automation, but integration is coming along nicely. I am using Home Assistant as my platform.  Most of my garden sensors are command line sensors.  I even figured out what i was doing wrong with command line switches (using capital letters).  Now that I have had my camera in place long enough, I have a pretty decent test time lapse.

**  warning flashing lights **

download time lapse

Live cam