Drone vs Osmo Pocket 3

Tool comparison

Peter: When you want low-level footage a small drone is unbeatable. You just float it where no hand-held camera could reach.
Fiona: But with the Osmo, I can get right up close to faces and details. No rotor wash blowing grass flat or scaring animals or bird strikes.
Peter: Low passes over water are a breeze. Zero wobble from walking or breathing.
Fiona: And when I want a “glide along the footpath” feeling, the Pocket’s gimbal gives me near-dolly smoothness, without worrying about GPS dropout or trees.
Peter: But the aerial perspective adds drama. Even one metre up makes a scene feel bigger.
Fiona: And one metre down creates intimacy. I can kneel down and tuck the camera into corners, a drone would crash.
Peter: OK, indoors drones struggle. Obstacle avoidance. Curtains.
Fiona: Indoors is where the Osmo shines. Stairwells, corridors, kitchens. Instant set-up, no permissions.
Peter: But outdoors, drones win on stability. The drone doesn’t notice if I’m tired. It stays steady.
Fiona: Outdoors I win on spontaneity. The Osmo is in my pocket. No boot-up delay, no compass calibration.
Peter: I envy how you can keep shooting in wind.
Fiona: And I envy how you can float above puddles without getting your shoes soaked.
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Voice-over
Maybe drones often do the impossible, Osmo handles the sensible. And if you want a  cats-eye view, use a floor level dolly. There are filmmakers who are using an Osmo on a stick to achieve drone-like footage. Ian Andersen gives a tutorial.

Gulls and Drones

Tin Bird cockpit monologue: Motion detected. Two biological interceptors. Larus. Territorial aggression.
Gull 1: Here comes that tin bird again.
Gull 2: This is wrong. Invasion of our airspace.
Gull 1: Same again? Dive at it? 
Gull 2: Good to go.
Gull 1: Skraa! Charge! Dive!
Gull 2: Kree! Too fast, missed.
Gull 1: Ka! Wind shifted.
Gull 2: Ka-Ka! Tin Bird saw the wind shear coming.
Gull 1: Skram! This OUR territory. BUZZ OFF.
Gull 2: Yah! Feathers forever.

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Voice-over
Tin Bird memo: Larus fly aggressively and are not stupid. But they are emotional.

Flyaway Drone

Rueful…
Roderick: How’s the ATTI mode practice shaping up? Still flying without the satellite safety net?
Eddie: It was going reasonably well… until this morning. Two minutes after takeoff, one tidy practice circle, and then it headed straight out over the mudflats like it had somewhere to be. Crashed out there.
Roderick: Ouch. Did you manage to retrieve it?
Eddie: All the pieces, yes. Broken landing gear, snapped prop arm, and the battery contacts are full of silt.
Roderick: All right. One, compass or IMU disagreement. If the sensors can’t agree, the drone can fly in the wrong direction.
Eddie: I calibrated on Saturday, though not there.
Roderick: Second: GPS instability or mode confusion. Over mudflats you can get reflections, brief dropouts, and sudden transitions the control logic doesn’t handle well. Or radio interference. But there’s also sticky or drifting controller sticks. A bit of grit, wear, or moisture and the stick doesn’t quite centre.
Eddie: So my thumbs stopped, but the controller kept send a wrong signal?
Roderick: Precisely. ATTI doesn’t make flying more difficult. And it removes excuses.

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Voice-over
There was more but Roderick ends by suggesting a thorough checklist before takeoff. 

1. Controller first — always

• Power on the controller before the aircraft.
• Move both sticks slowly through full travel; feel for grit, hesitation, or lazy centring.
• If a stick doesn’t snap back cleanly to neutral, stop. Clean it or swap controllers.

2. Calibrate with intent, not habit

• Compass and IMU only if needed — but do calibrate when changing locations or surfaces.
• Avoid metal tables, vehicles, and reinforced concrete. ATTI exposes sloppy calibration instantly.

3. Know the wind before you fly

• Watch grass, flags, smoke, or ripples — not the weather app.
• Pick a ground reference and imagine how fast the drone would drift in 10 seconds if you let go.

4. Choose the right airspace for ATTI

• Wide, empty, and boring beats scenic every time.
• Avoid water, mudflats, cliffs, and anything that creates optical or RF weirdness.

5. Confirm the mode — twice

• Visually verify ATTI mode on the display.
• Say it out loud if necessary. Pilots skip fewer steps when they sound faintly ridiculous.

6. Short hover test (10–15 seconds)

• Lift to chest height.
• Hands off the sticks briefly.
• Observe drift direction and speed before committing to manoeuvres.

7. Keep manoeuvres small at first

• Circles, figure-eights, and slides — all close and slow.
• ATTI rewards smooth inputs, not ambition.

8. Maintain a mental “abort box”

• Decide before takeoff where you’ll descend if things feel wrong.
• In ATTI, landing early is not failure — it’s judgment.

9. One variable at a time

• Don’t combine new modes, new locations, new wind, and new batteries in one flight.
• ATTI is a teacher; don’t shout over it.

10. End on a success

• Finish the session while everything still feels calm and predictable.
• Fatigue and confidence spike at the same time — that’s when mistakes happen.

Drone Course: Go or No Go?

Can fly a drone, knows the rules…

Sam: You’ve been flying drones for years. Do you need a certificate?

Antonio: I don't actually need a licence but am toying with the idea of taking a course with a 101 level course. It costs about $300.

Sam: Can your pension pay for that? 

Antonio: It’s affordable. 

Sam: And the use of it? 

Antonio: I could do some drone photography if I showed them a credential, but it’s not a pressing vocational need. Do you think this an ego trip at my stage of life? Or might there be an existential justification for wanting to take the course?

Sam: Gives you a new credential. A badge. Hones your cognition. Maybe meet new friends. These sorts of things extend life meaningfully. Is it a useful course?

Antonio: It’s asynchronous online. I teach online so I know how that works. Maybe not so much face to face with others. Practical test is with one of their team. Reviews are OK. I’ve got four weeks of relatively free time. 

__________

Voice-over

Less an ego trip, more of an life-extending existential exploration.

Less an ego trip, more of an life-extending existential exploration.

Bee drone to military drone to surveillance drone

 A buzzing sound above…

Veronica: Is it a bird?

Ethan: No, it’s an unmanned aerial vehicle.

Veronica: Pedant. Isn’t it a drone?

Ethan: Well, yes.

Veronica: Why do they call them that? Where did the name drone come from?

Ethan: Some say it was the noise of a bee, droning. It’s also said that there were unmanned airplanes developed to carry bombs and were guided by cameras and radio waves to crash into enemy ships. Like bee drones, they fly out to mate with a queen bee, then die.

Veronica: A short but happy life.

Ethan: Another thing about bee drones is that they have bigger eyes than other bees.

Veronica: All the better to find the queen with?

Ethan: They need good eyes to find the target. Bee drones, and war drones, are single use only. Drones for aerial camera work take pictures of everything. They can be reused.

__________

Voice-over

Drones are much smaller, more sophisticated and more reliable than early military drones deployed on a small scale in World War II in the Solomon Islands.

Barking Drone

Farmers at the pub…

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Trev: Hey Joe, that a drone I saw you playing with in the paddock the other day?

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Merv: Yup. Use it to muster the sheep.

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Trev: Does it work?

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Merv: Sure, it goes up and hovers over the flock and barks and chases them to the next paddock.

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Trev: It, uh, barks?

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Merv: Yeah. I recorded one of the sheepdogs barking, and the drone broadcasts the bark, so now the sheep think the dog flies in the sky.

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Trev: Well, I’ll be darned.

_________

Voice-over

Drones can assist in farm-work. Many are tools, not just toys. They can work with sheepdogs, or even replace them sometimes. Takes a bit of training the farmer, and the sheep. Oh, and the dog, so it doesn’t chase the drone.

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Spied on by a drone

Unnerving surveillance experience…

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I Am a Camera...

Ethan: We were sitting in the garden, and suddenly this drone comes over the wall, and hovers there. Threatening, four or five meters away, eye-level, filming us talking.

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Stefan: Hmm. Unsettling. But drones aren’t dangerous in themselves. They don’t have a malicious intelligence. The operator might but the drone doesn’t.

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Ethan: Hard to separate the two. I see Germany is buying drones from Israel for surveillance.

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Stefan: Just for looking.

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Ethan: Yes, but those same Israeli drones can be weaponized. From a looking drone, it’s a simple step to a shooting drone.

________

Voice-over

Fears that AI will overtake human intelligence. That robots, androids and drones with their superior intelligence will have no need of human beings… A Robopocalypse. Will they allow us to live among them as avatars? Might humans morph into robots, androids and drones.
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Or is it as Steven Pinker reminds us in Enlightenment Now, that artificial intelligence is not in itself dangerous. Confusing AI with evil motivations is a fallacy: “…intelligence in Homo sapiens is a product of Darwinian natural selection… with goals such as dominating rivals and amassing resources…there is no law of complex systems that says that intelligent agents must turn into ruthless conquistadors.” (Pinker, 2018: 297).

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