Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to another episode of Weekly Wings, your go to podcast from Drone Life.com.
thank you, everybody, for joining us. As always, we appreciate your time and attention as we bring you some of the latest news and insights from the drone industry and some other technology stuff every once in a while.
As always, Paul Rossi with representing 910 drones based out of North Carolina. Boom. Samuel Stansberry. How you doing?
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Doing well today. Excited to talk about some SpaceX stuff. That looks pretty sick.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: Yeah. And the residency of light shows continues. Terry, how are you doing today?
[00:00:52] Speaker C: I'm doing great. Thank you for asking. I'm very excited for today's episode.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Are you, are you pumped for Saturday?
For Saturday?
[00:01:01] Speaker C: I'm very pumped. There's gonna be drones there Saturday.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:01:05] Speaker C: You believe I seen some illegal drone.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Flying there once, so some indoor in the sphere.
Yeah. Big, big UFC fight. Shawn O'Malley looking to defend that title. It's gonna be good.
And try to stay awake as always.
But speaking of staying awake, very, very early this morning, some pretty, pretty exciting things happening extremely far away from Earth, hundreds and hundreds of kilometers.
But we got a great episode today.
Energized. Excited. We're going to start out in space, talking about SpaceX, recent spacewalk. And we're going to look at some recent weather incidents, very severe weather incidents that occurred in some drone footage highlighting the damage caused by these natural disasters here in the US and abroad. Drone tech spotlight looking at a patent pulled out by alarm.com for home security.
We're also going to look at a couple light light shows. Highlight a company that is expanded here to the United States.
From a success story standpoint, we're going to look at Skyfire AI, a recent acquisition by Skyfire, who is now leveraging this development, this acquisition to deploy software for the future of DFR. We'll wrap things up in the regulatory corner where we will be going back to a previous topic, a North Carolina drone pilot that was served as cease and desist order by the North Carolina Society of Surveyors. That's a lot of going on in there.
Excuse me. English is hard.
We'll be looking at this North Carolina drone pilot who's now seeking to take and elevate his case to the Supreme Court.
And finally, the house will discuss what we ended last week's episode talking about.
Unfortunately, looks like the house has passed the countering CCP drones Act. So what? What is next for that? But jumping right off this morning at this was originally scheduled. The launch of the crew was scheduled for days ago.
I think it's supposed to be like earlier this weekend or Friday or Saturday, because of weather, the launch of the crew was delayed, which meant the spacewalk was delayed. And so then the spacewalk was finally scheduled for like 230 this morning, eastern time. So set an alarm, didn't matter. Kids were kids waking up anyway, coughing constantly.
I don't know what's going on, time of year or something. But then, then the spacewalk actually kept getting delayed. I. And it finally happened. I don't know, it was probably around like 530 this morning. So for folks who are tuning in and are not aware, this is the first commercial spacewalk. So the first time. I'm just going to mute this and go ahead and hit play. This is the first time in history that, like a commercial company, not a government, not NASA, Russia, China, you know, one of these majority government has had astronauts conduct spacewalk going outside of a spacecraft. So right now, this hatch is wide open, and right outside there is space in the bottom corner here, there's 740 km above Earth, going 250, going 25,000 km an hour, and they just open the door. So now all four of the human beings inside of this capsule are completely subjected to the vacuum of space, and we're looking at a helmet cam. So what surprises me most is this guy's like a billionaire, right? He could be doing anything else. He's literally crammed himself into this capsule for the last, for days, and now he's like risking his life doing the first commercial spacewalk.
Could be anywhere in the world.
[00:05:34] Speaker C: Well, I mean, that's probably what happens when you get that amount of money. You just eventually get bored of everyday mundane task and you got to go to space next, you know, and this.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: Is just like the video games. Like, this is like Call of Duty, if I, you know, when they had some space stuff way back when. So when a lot of people were in bed here on the east coast, definitely on the west coast.
[00:05:57] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, would you sit in a pressurized cabin for four days to see that, Paul? I'm sure you would.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: I would. And then the flight, once they got loaded in, they delayed the takeoff by like 2 hours. So they sat there on the ground, and then this is where it gets real wild. Like, doesn't this look exactly like a crappy movie? Looks very stiff, extremely stiff. Why? Because that suit, that suit right now is pressurized, meaning that suits being blown up.
And so they talked about how when the suits pressurized, it's actually very difficult to move because the suit becomes somewhat rigid.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: No one else is like fear of kicking in just seeing, like, the empty void of space.
[00:06:46] Speaker C: Well, it's not like you're gonna fall, you know?
[00:06:47] Speaker A: And so see him moving his arm like this. So this, this, as I say, this is the purpose. This was the purpose of this part of this flight was to go into space and see, you know, see how easy is it to move your arm. And so he's testing if I open the volume. But, yeah, you're right, this is very high. And ditch is a four, roll is a two.
[00:07:17] Speaker C: Yaw is a two. So these are the suit mobility checks that Jared.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: Single handed operations, dynamic and with disturbance, are all adequate. Test matrix one complete.
[00:07:29] Speaker C: HUD check.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: 5.3 psi, 48% rh 33 decimal nine celsius.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: SpaceX copies.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Test matrix one and HUD readout.
Just slowly going into nighttime, stepping into vertical.
[00:07:53] Speaker C: Translation.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: We're going to start with the horizontal bars.
[00:08:03] Speaker C: It's got to be hard to concentrate and do your job while this is happening, just like right in front of you.
Not many people have seen that angle, you know, Irl.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: And after he does these tests, like, he's going up and down the ladder in order to see what is it like to keep his hands vertical and then, like, on the outside of the ladder. And then what is it like to use the horizontal rungs, using the inside of the ladder. So he's testing the.
The suit's ability to gripen horizontal and vertical objects where rotation. So he was talking about the yacht, like the safety. What clip this.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: What's he attached to?
[00:08:44] Speaker A: Oh, his, his, I think they kept calling it the ambiblical, like his.
I don't know if that was the word that they were using, but it's on his leg.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: And so his tether. His tether is also his oxygen. And then, like, his vital signs. So the one cord is feeding information and oxygen as well as the tether that's keeping him from being released. And so Jericho Isaacman was the person you just saw doing the spacewalk, the EV, extra vehicular activity.
Scott Potat, they call him kid is what he goes by. He's the pilot. And then Sarah Gillis, and I think it was Anna. Yeah, Anna Menon. Those two were like mission specialists. And so Jared and Sarah both did a spacewalk.
And it's neat. Like they told him after he did these tests and moves his arms and everything, like, all right, you have a minute left.
Just so you know. And for like, 1 minute, he just kind of. He just kind of looked. There was like, no testing. I was like, that's pretty neat. You do years of training to get here, and they kind of recognize, like, hey, just enjoy.
Enjoy it. See, there's the. The tether you're asking about.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Seeing that now, I was just.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: And so the. The capsule pressure, zero. And the suit, the current pressure of the suit is five psi, which. The suits being blown up, which is causing it to be rigid. But they design it so it can bend but not leak. And that's what's really neat. The helmet, it. It looks totally like Halo.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: I would say this.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: He just watched a cutting edge and.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: Almost science fiction in a sense, but it looks amazing.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: He just watches the sun go away, and then he. And then he pops in, and then it's like, all right, your turn and show. Pop up. And it's just kind of like completely dark.
[00:11:00] Speaker C: But I've seen all the cool stuff. Now you can just go look at the nothing. You know, the empty void.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Strange, too. Like, they timed.
They timed it so he re. He really did go out. Right when they peaked in the orbit. So it was about 7740 is when he was doing the spacewalk.
So it's the highest.
They were higher than the ISS.
So, like, the astronauts currently on the ISS, they were just higher than they are orbiting at their max peak. And so these suits worked, right? These suits just went through a real space.
Could you call that real world? Because it's kind of like out of this world. It's like a real galaxy.
Testing, not a simulation.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: I'm just. I'm a little off topic, but I hope someone made the joke. The joke being I can see my house from here.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: I don't know, but I'm just looking now and it's like SpaceX. I'm like, what's going on with their stock? Good time to invest. Suits worked.
So he pops back in, and then they'll swap out.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: But definitely not a whole lot of space to move. Is there a.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: So now she pops her head out and is like, what are you talking about? It's nothing here.
And the altitude slowly descends in their orbit. But so she does the same test. And again, the importance here wasn't like, hey, you're a commercial tourist. We're going to show you space. It was, we're going up here in order to do these series of motions, get an idea of what the radiation is like.
But, man, watching this super early in the morning, and it kept getting delayed a little bit. So I'm just like, really cool. Kind of chilling.
[00:12:51] Speaker C: Well, it's interesting to see how much smaller this is compared to what I think of a spacesuit particularly like the moon landing suits because I don't really know anything else about them, but I'm sure they've gotten more than that. But it's much slimmer now.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: The thing is, though, is they are getting their oxygen and their vitals and the computing is being done by the aircraft. So their tether, their ambiblical is they're not carrying their pack. Like, if they were to separate from the vehicle, they would need something like the astronauts that walked on the moon, because that backpack that they don't have. That backpack was their life support system. It. That backpack was carrying all the components to produce oxygen. And so that's why this definitely looks slimmer because you're really just seeing the suit and the equipment is still housed in the spacecraft. Does that make sense?
[00:13:54] Speaker C: Yeah. Do they have a concept for those, like, backpack things? Because I'm assuming they've gotten smaller.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: I mean, they do like this.
They do. This is. This is the beginning. And then the next step is if these are going to be worn on Mars, if they're supposed to be used on the moon, if they're supposed to be used to work on satellites, potentially do in space servicing, vehicle servicing, then they'll have to, you know, have she got some good motion with that arm? Look at that.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: Seems like it just takes some getting used to. But, I mean, they're definitely getting the hang of it.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: And so while that was happening, so was this hurricane Francine.
And I just happened to be, again, trying to stay up with this and just notice, tracking Francine. I was actually watching it on the news and seeing. Seeing the different reporters across Louisiana and the Gulf area last night.
So this popped up in fly dream media. This one thing I would say about this for the folks that are seeing this video, this is flooding from Louisiana, from hurricane Francine that came through, hit Landfall late afternoon, evening sun, still sunlight, and then proceeded to drop massive amounts of rain throughout the night. Is Flydream media here? I don't know if they just gave their footage for free to the news station, but they probably likely did. If they paid for the footage, they probably wouldn't have put the company's branding up there. But usually they say, oh, you know, we'll put your logo on it. It's a great way to get your brand out there.
I don't know. This is terrible. The fact, like, the events itself, the flooding, it's pretty intense, folks. There it is.
[00:15:43] Speaker C: They've got to be used to it by now.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: And so.
Right, the being used to it, the understanding, the risk of living here, the floodplains. You can see that most of the homes are built up on the stilts. Not that that is a fix for everything, but it's not like this hasn't happened before. So again, look at this. Fly dream media definitely had to have just given this for.
For nothing. So check out fly dream media. They're out there. Out there hustling.
Exactly.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: Fly dream media and their YouTube pops up pretty quickly.
A lot of drone videos up there.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: And so here we are. It worked, right? Here's fly dream media. Just looks like some basic. Gosh, this is a. There's nothing here, guys.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: The YouTube videos shine a little better than the website.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Oh, look at this. 349 views 3 hours ago total donation had to been. But hustling, man, I know exactly what this is like. I've got some pretty good footage of flooding from back in 2018. Nice little mini whoop here.
And so also, Terry, what are we looking at here?
[00:16:56] Speaker C: These are just wind turbines that got absolutely destroyed by a typhoon. Paul posted the link of the drone video of the hurricane, and I just remembered seeing this a few days ago. So why not just look at this destruction as well? It's a good drone video. I mean, it shows the. It almost looks post apocalyptic, you know, scary stuff.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: It's kind of interesting how these windmills are painted. I don't think all the windmills I've ever seen that I've ever seen one painted with like a. Is that a cartoon character?
[00:17:27] Speaker B: It's definitely a stylized.
I don't know. It's definitely different.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: I've never said such a massive.
Yeah, right here. What is this cartoon character?
[00:17:39] Speaker C: It's a scuba diver.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: This is. What is that game? Cut up sushi. What is that game? Chop fruit.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Fruit ninja.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: Ninja, right there. That was fruit ninja 2014 restaurants.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: I think they still have fruit ninja there, right?
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Strawberry coming down, probably.
[00:17:57] Speaker C: And I'm not exactly sure how much each of these cost, but they cannot be below a million USD, so that is a lot of money destroyed.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: And one foul swoop and somebody's, like, looking at that and seeing all the opportunity, like, hmm, get to fix those.
[00:18:18] Speaker C: Yeah, the Wendy Hill salesman. Thank God.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Get to replace those. Well, yeah. Pretty, pretty interesting weather, natural disasters. Certainly drones can provide a great vantage point to one tell the story. Right. Which is like, oh, everybody wants to see the viral. And. Oh, yeah, there's the. There's starship. Right? So SpaceX space launch had to pull the starship back out. So that's the whole goal, right? Put, put people on starship. Just going back a second, and they're all wearing those spacesuits, the SpaceX spacesuits. Load them all up on here like a, like a 737.
But being able to show this in real time from a news standpoint is, you know, what does the news want? Death, destruction, stuff like that. So that's why everyone goes out and flies that stuff, and then it gets on the news. It's not like, oh, there was another parade. There was another volunteer community. This, there was like, no, it's death, destruction. That. So, but being able to then take stuff like this from a company standpoint and actually assess the damage and come up with legitimate estimates and, you know, accurate insurance payouts and things like that, I think that's a super cool piece. Windmills, though. What do you guys think about windmills?
[00:19:55] Speaker B: I'm a little deterred after seeing that. It's like, oh, boy, that's not good.
[00:20:00] Speaker C: Well, do you live near somewhere that has typhoons, Samuel?
I don't see too much.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: I think it's super interesting. I wonder, I'm just thinking now what, what would the, what would the risk be of, like, the blade falling off, not just in a storm, like, like, you know what I mean? Like, what's the risk when you live around one, how far away does it need to be? But to me, it just seems like, from an energy standpoint, in order to produce energy, especially those offshore ones where you could use drones to do it. Like, I'm like, how? I don't, I don't see the drawback other than the, the visual. Right. Other than the natural it takes away. So sticking it right in a certain area. But even when you look at them on some of these mountainsides, they kind of look neat.
[00:20:54] Speaker C: Yeah, I would. I would say most windmills look cool, and then they even, like, painted those so they looked even cooler, you know?
[00:21:01] Speaker B: Paul, do you feel like the painting?
[00:21:04] Speaker A: I think the characters and the sushi and whatever, all the other stuff, I think there was a lot going on there. But if it was, you could almost blend it in, paint it.
You know, they blend in well, but when they're in patterns, when you see a lot of them and they're actually, you know, spaced out equally, and it's, it is pretty neat looking. Speaking of neat technology, before we move.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: On to say, I thought windmills were pretty cool until I, you mentioned the blade coming off, and it's like, that is. I've never thought about that before, but, yeah, that could be a very viable safety concern. But, yeah, anyways, sorry, I. Windmill's cool, but just don't stand too close.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: Well, it's like one of those things. Now that you heard it, you're like, oh, my God. That's like. It's like saying a battery and a drone could fail and it falls and you've hit a flock of birds. I actually went to the Sullenberger Aviation Museum just to completely pivot here. It's in Charlotte. It's actually right near the airport, the Sullenberger Aviation Museum. So Captain Sullenberger. Sully Sullenberger. Sullenberger, right. He was the pilot. January 15, 2009, when taking off out of New York, hit a flock of birds. Engines failed, lands in the Hudson. No one dies. Serious injuries, no one died. The plane lands in the Hudson river in January, freezing cold.
No one dies. They have the plane in Charlotte at this just low.
You know, lots of visitors, they're growing in awareness, and people who know aviation come there, but it's like such insane. That plane crash landed. Failed engines in the Hudson. It's sitting in Charlotte two and a half, 3 hours away.
It's definitely worth checking out, but.
[00:23:00] Speaker C: And if you're on the certain Runway, I forget which one it is, but you can just kind of look out your window if you're on the right side and you'll see it. It's pretty cool.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: You.
[00:23:10] Speaker C: I don't know if you can see the one from the Hudson, but you can definitely see all their other cool.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: The older. Yeah.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: Out of curiosity, have either of you had issues with birds while flying your drone? Like, has a bird try to attack your drone?
[00:23:23] Speaker A: No. Well, I mean, I've had a flocks of, like, usually it's usually if you're flying, you're like, building rooftops or somewhere where birds might have nests or hang out, they're going to feel a little bit threatened. Yeah, I've had. I've had flocks of bird fly, like pigeons. Flock of pigeons just fly directly at my drone. Like, they didn't care at all.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: I was just kind of curious about that because it was somewhat relative, but. Yeah, you once with an eagle, but that was trying to think where exactly that was. It was somewhere near Asheville. So.
Was it. Did some got. Got back down pretty quick after that. Once the bird started circling overhead and I saw him coming in and swoops, I'm like, okay, we're going down. Don't want to mess with that.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: Yeah, it's territorial. You got to recognize when. I don't know when they're just interested, and then when they're more threatening. And I think.
I think if you pay enough attention, you could tell pretty quickly. Alarm.com dot most people right familiar with Alarm.com, home doorbell cameras, home security app. On your phone, you can see the camera, see what's going on.
Well, it looks like Alarm.com has secured a patent for drone based pre surveillance enhancing property security with UAV technology.
So their new system uses drones to identify unauthorized activity while minimizing invasiveness, providing a dynamic and responsive security solution for homes and businesses. So we got a little drawing here.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: I feel mistaken, but didn't Amazon have something similar in terms of patents for an inside drone that could essentially take off and kind of look around the room and then make sure everything is fine? If you're like, a remote solution for home security, just being able to navigate your own house via drone, I could be wrong, but I thought that was something I saw back in 2020.
[00:25:31] Speaker C: I faintly remember that the Google has.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: To say, the company, what is it? Hive, maybe? Yeah, I think the company might be called Hive.
[00:25:42] Speaker C: I think Ring has one. Unless this is like an April Fool's joke.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: And so this. This idea of, like, home security with a drone in the box, that's kind of like DFR.
Sunflower labs. That's what it is.
Sunflower labs. So Sunflower Labs is like this little drone in a box. And when Sunflower Labs first came out, they were supposed to be like, see how they're showing it just at someone's house? But now they've grown to realize, like, there's not a market for home security.
Wherever, you know, people have these compounds, and there's not. Once you have a compound like that, people aren't your gate and all. Like, it's secure, like a house like this. Yeah, but when you look at a business, a company that's already paying for significant security, and then people, because the value of the drones is the drone can replace a person, and that's a. That's money. You're already spending money to pay people to walk around or drive around the property. So why not just put a drone in a box there? And then you don't, you know, in the future, it just flies itself, and it does all this computing and recognition, and it can. It can fly somewhere and determine if it's a person or if it was just an animal.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: As far as you know, Paul, is this patent strictly, like, can you tell us anything about this patent? We're looking out. Terry and I tried to zoom in, but it's a little illegible for us. I don't know if you had any other images or anything, but I do see what they're doing. Like, that whole drone in the box solution thing that looked really cool. And I can see how it could be very useful for those businesses.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, this image here is very. The image is very hunky.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: It's weird. I feel like most of the patents that I do look up that have images are always, like, super illegible, and I cannot actually look at the image itself.
[00:27:46] Speaker C: What website is that?
[00:27:49] Speaker A: The registered epo.org.
so there's, like, all these different documents.
[00:27:55] Speaker C: That were submitted ancient.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: It's most likely why it's dating back to, like, 2022.
[00:28:02] Speaker C: This website in particular.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Well, the. No, the. And then it was August 27 that the passion that the patent was issued. But, yeah, there's. There's certainly a lot of opportunity in this industry. And the home security, I thought I was sharing the other page.
The home security. And then the security of, like, think of, like, people are paying tens of thousands of dollars to put up cameras, you know, like, camera systems. And Asilon's doing it, right. They've got their own drone. They're helping people implement it. So for a company like Alarm.com that, you know, they already have a massive customer base in the security. Like, they already have security customers that have needs and are buying their cameras. And so that's huge because they already have market access. Like, they're already, you know, in businesses. Doorway access, remote access, recordings.
Right. Intrusion detection, video surveillance, access control, fleet management. Gunshot holy gunshot. Everybody's doing gunshot detection these days. Energy management and temperature monitoring. They're working with all these industries. Food, beverage, k. Twelve schools. So it makes sense to integrate directly in. We'll see. Their solution would never be perfect, comparatively, to maybe a drone manufacturer, but for the needs, for the value, right. For the sources of value for their customers, they'll find a way to hit those points.
So it would be interesting to see there's no solution. Like, if I use ring.com now, which I don't, I think I had one at some point. I've got ring. I don't have alarm. Right, an alarm.com, but a ring.com. if they had some sort of drone solution, I'd be like, yeah, let's see. Let's see how this works.
[00:30:09] Speaker C: Check out that link I sent in. Discord. That's pretty cool. It's like an indoor drone. You have to get, like, pre invited to use it.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: Is it the one that has the ring? Camera on it. Like the doorbell camera.
Yeah, yeah. That is the one that I was thinking of from, like, three years ago.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Yes.
[00:30:27] Speaker C: Just like an indoor camera. I don't know exactly why you would like that.
[00:30:31] Speaker B: That's kind of funny. Like, I don't think.
[00:30:33] Speaker C: I just kind of do a perimeter check every few hours.
[00:30:35] Speaker B: Yeah. What'd you say, Terry? You have to be in the cam.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:39] Speaker C: I don't know. I think you fill, like, a form and then, like, hope you get selected.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: This is super. Like, if you think about it, it's a flying ring camera, and it's super light, and it can always charge. In your house is a super small footprint.
And depending on the size of your house, not super small footprint, but now.
[00:30:56] Speaker C: Introduce, like, some type of AI, like, scanning technology. And then if you lose something, you can just type it in and use AI to figure out where it's at in your house.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: But then for, like, kids. But, like, as a deterrent for kids. Like, if you have kids, they can't just hide from the camera. You can be like, where are you? I'm, you know, ready or not, here I come. And so it's just. It's a deterrent if anything else. Hmm, interesting. Well, yeah, technology, man. Pretty cool.
[00:31:35] Speaker B: We need a. Terry, can you sign up for that and get it so we can review it?
[00:31:40] Speaker C: I'll try my best. I'll try to game the system online. Say I own, like, four ring products or something.
[00:31:46] Speaker A: Well, pretty neat yesterday. Two days ago, drone light shows are finding their way into the political scene. We had a drone light show trying to see how many fall.
We're trying to get people pumped.
[00:32:07] Speaker B: Can you guess? The audio is already low.
Yeah, there we go. I don't think the audio is here. This.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: Got to be a hundred. It could be 150.
[00:32:21] Speaker B: This is out in Philadelphia.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: Out in Philadelphia.
[00:32:25] Speaker C: This is very interesting. I'm glad their budget has enough money to throw drone light shots.
[00:32:29] Speaker A: They got lots of money.
[00:32:31] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. It's the. This is the most funded.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: I was gonna say that would be the best ever, that. I was gonna say that might have been the best show I saw a week, but then I watched part of the VMA's last night, and.
Wow.
Wow. No, a part of it. Did you guys. Did you watch any? Yeah. Did you watch any of it?
[00:32:58] Speaker C: I didn't even.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: I saw the clips.
[00:32:59] Speaker A: Holy moly.
Yeah.
[00:33:03] Speaker B: Crazy stuff.
[00:33:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, some. Yeah. For sure got me interested.
[00:33:09] Speaker C: What happened? Whoa.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: Whoa. Just a lot of. There's a lot of, uh, stuff back ends out these days. There's a lot of, there's a lot of uh, suits and.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: Crazy. It was, you know, it was, it kind of reminded me of the opening ceremony of the Olympics.
Yeah. You know what I mean? Like if I had to explain it, that's probably a good way to explain it is like some confusion maybe. Yeah. Kind of seems a little bit like there is a group of people that kind of want to take the american culture and make it more of like the french culture. But then I'm thinking about this and I'm like, but what is the american culture? Because it's right. This melting pot of. So there is this idea of what we were founded. We're going way off on a tangent here. There is like this group of people where the country was founded on, but then it was founded on like, hey, you know, bring in other people. But I think there was this like unwritten idea of like life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, you know, right to bear arms. But it was like they didn't write down in there and maybe they did. I haven't studied it. Like you need to be a positively contribute positively to society. You know, like that general idea. We should still uphold that while being a melting pot that is welcoming of all other things.
And then also like what we're subjecting young people to just as they're growing. But anyway, go check it out. Go watch the highlights of the VMA's staying with some drone light shows here company illumine drone shows expands to us with spectacular southern debut canadian drone show producer dazzles audience with story driven displays and cutting edge technology across Florida and beyond.
So canadian based drone light show company is expanding into the us market. They've been doing light shows and operating in the aviation industry for years.
The company is very familiar with safety and regulatory compliance. Over the Labor Day weekend, 400 drones in Toronto and 600 drones at the Friday harbor.
And that's the largest drone show in Canada to date. 600 drones.
And they went and did some light shows in Florida.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: That is quite the distance Canada all the way down to Florida market to.
[00:36:21] Speaker C: The southernmost point of the US.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: All the way down. It's crazy though.
[00:36:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I thought I was hoping there'd be a video here. I'm up to go to their website.
[00:36:33] Speaker C: Yeah, their websites like landing page is pretty cool. I can't lie. It starts off with like some dude like raising drones.
Sick.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: Oh yeah. You know exactly what we're seeing in all the other drone shows. That landing page, the we got their drone popping up right there. To get in touch. 20 plus team members makes a lot of sense. Again, here's the FPV, right? Every company that's doing the drone light shows has that.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: Like, they got a guy.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: There's no way you've built. Yeah, there's no way you've built a team.
And maybe they're working with someone who's, again, offering their services for free, but there's no way you have a team of 1520, you know, folks helping advance drone light shows, and one of them isn't an FPV pilot. There's just no way.
So I think that's really cool how they're leveraging that and using it from a marketing perspective, illumined drone shows, doing concerts. The thing is, it's like I was thinking, there's so much, there's so much opportunity, right, for these shows. And the thing is, is you don't have to have it. Like, this concert has to have the people it has to have, not the people. It has to have the stage, it has to have the performers. Like, those fireworks really add to that song and the drones are cool, but everyone's going to have a great time, even if the drones aren't there. The cost of these shows, as more people pop up, I don't think it's going to be. The margins aren't. I don't think they're going to stay as high as they probably are now, but more competition. People are going to be getting more quotes. Well, this company can do it for this much.
[00:38:38] Speaker C: There's a band called Ramstein, and from the little I know about them, they spend like a ton of money on pyrotechnics and visuals for their performances, and they don't really care how much they spend. So a drone operator needs to get in contact with them and see what they can do with fireworks.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: That's only a matter of time, to be honest.
[00:38:59] Speaker C: Yeah, I bet they're planning something. As we speak.
[00:39:02] Speaker A: They did the total solar eclipse in Niagara.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: That's crazy.
During a solar eclipse.
[00:39:10] Speaker A: And the other thing, too is it does look like, oh, his last name.
[00:39:14] Speaker C: Is destined for him.
[00:39:16] Speaker A: Huh.
[00:39:18] Speaker B: He manifests pretty wild.
[00:39:19] Speaker A: Chris Lumen, Christian Lumen.
And so the other thing, too is they're spelling words. They've got some pretty creative, creative stuff here. So it does look like they have that piece that we've talked about in the past where what's going to differentiate you from. From anybody else is how creative youre just like video. If you can't edit, you can record stuff, but you got to have the transitions, the fades, the audio, everything that goes with it, man, but fire. Drone shows from drone shows. We got a couple more articles to touch on here. In this week's episode of Weekly Wings, we've got Skyfire. Skyfire and Echelon join forces to launch Skyfire AI, advancing AI powered drone technology.
So Skyfire Consulting, a drone sales training consulting organization, has, I was trying to see, I thought it said acquired. So it's saying partner acquire. It announced its acquisition of echelon Aihdenhe company that specializes in autonomous and swarming artificial intelligence for uncrewed system.
And so when these companies, when Skyfire Consulting acquired Echelon, they created Skyfire AI. And Skyfire AI is bringing together teams, a team with expertise in AI machine learning, swarming and uncrewed flight systems in order to start establishing and producing product for law enforcement, military and emergency response AI at its core. So software as a service platform in order to support the growing demand for DFR.
[00:41:19] Speaker C: It's going to be interesting to see how companies start to use AI to like almost automate and I guess, like, predicted what's going to happen and, like, where the biggest security risk would be.
[00:41:33] Speaker B: So what I'm getting from that article is it's mostly, it's kind of using drones and automating those drones for emergency services such as maybe going to a possible wreck or going to an emergency situation and monitoring. That's kind of what I'm seeing. What did, what were you seeing, Paul?
[00:41:53] Speaker A: Yeah, edge AI, edge computing, real time analytics.
Again, Skyfire, if you have their website navigating new skies, so what do they do? They work with, you know, public or private sector, oil, gas, engineering, federal, state, public safety. So high level clients, not necessarily individuals, they've got training drones as a first responder, but equipment and software. So they're selling equipment, more people are selling equipment when it comes to training. Right. Every online part 107, everybody's trying to provide their online courses and classes, but at the end of the day, if that's not your main thing, you're not going to be best at it. And we've partnered, 9th and drones has partnered with pilot Institute and we just resell their online training and all they focus on is making the videos.
So their product offering works really well for individuals. We do the in person training for, you know, business clients and the hands on flight stuff, drone sales, but more people can do that. When you're trying to establish a business, you're trying to have a secure, established, you know, some sort of security long term security for a business that gives it a competitive advantage. When you're just reselling drones that other people can resell.
You don't have much of a competitive advantage when you're doing training and more companies are popping up to provide training.
You know the value, right. The cost, the price that you can charge decreases in a more competitive market when the buyer has more power, right. They're getting three quotes. You're trying to provide the best price when you're like the only one. So even when you build a solid brand, there's a lot of other companies that are doing the same thing. So moving into software, from a company standpoint, it kind of makes sense. If they can acquire this company and now they have direct access to the software piece and they can create a software that works with the drones that they sell. Now, it doesn't matter if other organizations have the same hardware because they have a software piece that makes that entity much more competitive. It makes sense. And then the reseller, the company Skyfire Consulting, they have direct access to the people that need to use the software that the software company has been trying to sell. So it's kind of a win win, at least it seems that way. We'll see where it goes for sure. Not a lot. Not very chatty about the AI analytical software stuff. Noted.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: I want to kind of see some action before, I don't know, there was just a lot of words and not necessary necessarily anything we could see in action. I think a demo does quite a lot for us, at least for me. I love seeing what your software, what your technology is capable, capable of in action. But I mean, it seems like that still being developed with the software.
[00:45:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's more of like a press release for an acquisition stating that these folks are now partnering. One's been acquired by the other, and the goal of this merge acquisition partnership is to now have the resources together to produce a product. So the product isn't there yet, but this is like step one in getting there. Of course, everybody wants to just build up the hype right from the get go.
[00:46:08] Speaker B: I do feel like too, like just calling it Sky Fire AI, it's kind of building off. I feel like there's a big hype around AI currently. So I feel like that's another reason, the whole naming convention and whatnot, because I'm wondering what type of training, like, what is the software learning off of? What pre established stuff is it going to look at and learn based off of? But more to come on that, I suppose.
[00:46:34] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll see edge. Edge computing, right? Drone just came out. It's got an Nvidia processor on board so that the drone can do, do all this on in real time. Whereas a lot of AI analytics software, you're actually feeding the drone video into the software, the software ingests it, and then the software is producing a, you know, overlay of where people are or a report.
But there's very few drones at this point that actually have onboard processing to just like, see something and go after it without any human input being told that that's the. The subject. But we'll follow, we'll stay up and keep people up to date on where that goes.
So last couple articles here. Just a few minutes left. In this episode, we're in the regulatory corner and we're talking again about a local drone pilot. North Carolina drone photographer seek Supreme Court support for First Amendment rights we are talking about Michael Jones again, who asked the court to uphold his right to provide aerial information to clients. So this article came out September 10. On September 9, the Institute for Justice filed a petition with the United States Supreme Court on behalf of Michael Jones, a drone photographer in North Carolina.
We talked about this previously where the case did not turn out in his favor. Here in North Carolina, where the North Carolina's land surveying board has targeted small drone operators, including Michael Jones in the claim here in the case that is going and being appealed to the US Supreme Court. According to the article, unlike many states, North Carolina classifies even basic aerial mapping as surveying and requires operators have a full surveyor's license.
[00:48:57] Speaker B: That's kind of so crazy that if I threw my drone up and mapped it, then it's technically. They're saying that is technically an aerial map that I would need a license to. That's kind of what I'm getting from that. And it's a. Yeah, like, it seems a little silly.
[00:49:13] Speaker A: Fly. Your drone software.
I mean, software stitches it together.
[00:49:19] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a little different. If I'm trying to go in there and like, say, this is your property line. This is at this, like, height. Make sure you're aware of this, marking things out. But that's.
I mean, I've even been clear with what I'm doing. It's not setting property lines, it's simply providing pictures and information. I guess I'm curious what the information is. But if you're just giving a picture, that's kind of crazy of someone's property.
[00:49:45] Speaker C: Well, you have to think that, I mean, the laws weren't really wrote within, like, with drones in mind. So nobody knew this was going to happen. So when they. The laws came to be nobody, you know, but they does seem like on the, like, lower level, it does seem like these people are just being, you know, a little, without using bad words, a little mean to the lower level drone people.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: Yeah. And here it's just stating how, you know, taking photos and providing information is as old as the nation itself.
And it's.
It's. It's weird. I don't know. I wonder if there's a dollar amount that would make the North Carolina Society of surveyors, like, happy. Like, is there? To become a surveyor and use your traditional equipment, it is important that you know what you're doing. And so you're going to school for years. You're, you know, working as maybe an apprentice journeyman, gaining the experience, and then you're doing that specific job.
But even, like, the licensed surveyors aren't necessarily out there collecting the points. They're the ones signing the maps, and they're just vouching for the people collecting. So, I don't know. It just seems like, couldn't there just be a class? Because the Society of Surveyors has these classes and trainings all the time for equipment and boundary surveying and all the different types of surveying. So it just seems like a middle ground here would be, you know, create some kind of one day course, set a fee for it, like $150 or $200 or whatever. Whatever makes sense. And now, if you hold a remote FAA, remote pound certificate, you should be able to just apply to the.
To the board. I said, the society of Surveys. Not the society surveyors, the.
The North Carolina surveying board. You should be able to apply to this board and say, look, I fly a drone, and I just want to use this drone to. For photogrammetry. I just want to make maps, pictures, visual, no measurements.
[00:52:10] Speaker B: Like, if you wanted to make a 3d model or, like, pop that into a 3d software, it sounds like you couldn't even do that technically.
[00:52:18] Speaker A: It's hard to say for real. It's. It's. Yeah, yeah.
[00:52:22] Speaker B: I know. A lot of people just, like, circle a building with a drone and they're able to make an STL file, like an OBJ file, like three D. Three D model files, and then you could even 3d printed. And it's just like, it sounds like they. That's not even something they want to consider with if you're not very interesting. Yeah.
[00:52:43] Speaker A: And so, because then the. These companies have integrated drones, so they're flying drones. They're not saying you. They're not saying drones can't be used for surveying. They're just saying you can't use drones for this application because it requires technical knowledge and skill.
We'll create a low cost course that matches the cost of the technology.
And let's get more, you know, qualified, trained people out there making maps to this acceptable standard. I don't know, that might make too much sense, right?
[00:53:23] Speaker B: Just a little bit too much, huh?
[00:53:25] Speaker A: It's a huge opportunity to ingest money in for one industry, kick a little bit to the transportation aviation side in the state of. And, and you have more funds and you have properly educated people. I don't know. Makes sense to me. It's good for the industry.
Companies know how to vet. There are pilots that they're going to hire, businesses that they're going to hire. So I'm for it.
Everyone in favor of Paul's idea, say aye.
[00:53:59] Speaker B: Aye.
[00:54:00] Speaker A: All right, I'm pass that with a, uh, with no eyes.
[00:54:05] Speaker B: I was gonna say that's a resounding eye.
[00:54:07] Speaker A: Both of us just put words into blindly.
Yeah, um, stop sharing. I meant to share this.
And so lastly here, uh, just ending the, uh, we talked about how the House would be voting on the countering CCP drones act during what was deemed China week. And what occurred, I believe it was September 9 when voting took place. The House of Representatives passed the countering CCP Drones Act, a bipartisan bill introduced by congresswoman Elise Stefanik out of New York. Blame everybody from New York designed to address. I was trying to figure out how to say that nicely. That was what the pause is for. Like, you know, how do I. How do we say this nicely? Just blame people from New York.
[00:55:04] Speaker B: Is that for the New York listeners? I think we might have one or two of those, so keep that in mind.
[00:55:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, a couple.
Thanks for that reminder. It's all. It's all John's fault. No, so it's not New York's fault, it's politicians. Right. Trying to make things better. And then sometimes it's like, oh, well, things are just going to have to get worse and we're just going to have to deal with it, because the ends justify the means. And if the ends means that the us drone market grows, then we're going to do whatever we have to. So they're going to go after country of origin, CCP affiliated companies. So the House is passed this.
And what does that mean? It certainly means that we're one step closer to restricting the right, the future sale and distribution of DJI drones.
The Senate has introduced, had introduced the carrying CCP in supporting drones for law Enforcement act on July 30.
So there is also, right, this still isn't exactly in, but it's just another one of those steps. It's another, you know, puts us one, one vote closer to potentially the loss of any future DJI drones in, in the United States at a, you know, at scale, not for any one individual industry or market. So the Senate still has to go through the Senate.
Right. Time will kind of tell what's going to go there.
But with it happening in the House and getting approval, it certainly makes, you know, a lot of folks on the Senate side. It puts people in a position to now have to make a decision as to whether they're for or against it. And the way that it's all positioned, it just seems like, why would anybody be against having America be better than China?
[00:57:30] Speaker C: It does look like Scott, Senator Scott proposed a short term grant program that would be for, like, first responders and stuff to help replace their chinese made drones. So if that goes through, that would be, that would help the, like, lesson the blow.
[00:57:50] Speaker A: Yeah. It's what they did in Florida. They had like, a pool of money where when they, when they pulled DJI drones from public safety in Florida, they had this like, grant program.
It'll be interesting. Off to talk to folks traveling down to Miami next month for elevate. I think we talked about, elevate the conference.
Dronerds does a conference that they started annually in October. It's called elevate UA's. Check it out. It's October 8 through the 10th, and it takes place in Miami.
So it'll be interesting because, you know, we'll see on the public safety side down there what folks are leaning towards because they can't fly DJI or, you know, chinese. Chinese products. But check it out. Elevate Ua's plan a trip to Miami. Probably a good time of year to go down there, right?
[00:58:46] Speaker B: Won't be too hot.
[00:58:48] Speaker A: See hurricane season be over.
Well, good episode today. We were in space for a little bit. SpaceX first commercial spacewalks. Super exciting, super cool. Check it out. If you haven't seen it, we looked at a couple natural disasters, drones being able to not necessarily survey, survey, but visually survey and show what things look like in the aftermath of natural disasters. In the tech spotlight, we looked at how alarm.com pulled out a patent for a security drone, and we looked at a couple other solutions that have been in existence for home security, like ring and the Sunflower Labs product.
We also looked at drone light shows again and how Lumen drone shows out of Canada is coming into the us market.
We've seen more drone shows in the last, what, two months, three months than we had in two or three years. So it really makes sense that more companies are going to be able to support the demand.
You know, now that I think about it though, if a canadian company has a market to come here and make money, boy, we just need some american, more american companies because, hell, that's, that's american jobs, man.
[01:00:13] Speaker B: That's, that's Canada all the way down to Florida. That's quite the distance to travel.
[01:00:19] Speaker A: That's an opportunity there. Yeah, that's wild.
That's wild.
Talked about Skyfire consulting acquiring AI organization in order to bring Skyfire AI to the drone industry. A software being tailored for DFR applications. So we'll keep an eye on that, see where that goes. And finally wrap things up in the regulatory corner. Talking about North Carolina, the society of surveyor or the. Goodness, goodness, what did I say? The North Carolina Land Surveying board cease and desist order on drone pilot. North Carolina drone pilot Michael Jones and his elevating it to the United States Supreme Court. So this case has been going on for an extremely long time, and it'll be interesting to see how this finally wraps up. And will the North Carolina Land surveying board find a way to, you know, better manage this new technology and the fact that, you know, drone pilots are educated and knowledgeable and the drone's doing the flying itself. So how do we meet in the middle and help, help continue to advance both surveying and the UA's professional industries? And then finally we talked a little about the countering CCP drones act. It passes the house. It still needs to go through the Senate. It's got some momentum.
We'll see where that goes. Time will tell. As always, we appreciate everybody tuning in. Your time, your attention.
Awesome episode today. It's like we were on totally on time when I looked at it and it's like, oh, we only had a couple more things to talk about here. And then of course, just like any topic we bring up, we could probably talk for hours on just that one topic. So really, really great episode. We appreciate your time and attention. Thank you, Samuel. Thank you, Terry, for another great episode and some of your insights and thoughts.
Until next week, everybody, fly safe.
