About two weeks ago we were invited by Kim Tyler to survey the new waste water facility in Greenbrier with our drone. The whole city of Greenbrier's waste water goes to this facility to be separated. This was an awesome experience that we learned a lot from, and were happy we were able to have. Although, at the end of our day we were getting the last bit of our data when our Phantom decided to land itself in one of the old lagoons. Included on the drone was the GoPro Hero 3+, FPV systems, and gimbal.
Luckily enough they were able to fetch it out of the lagoon the next day, and we were able to work on it.
Regardless of this hardship we were glad to come and learned a lot about the drone and the facility itself. Here are a few photos of the facility and equipment.
The bubbles you see are actually from aerators. Those pump oxygen into the waste water to separate the sludge from regular water.
This is the decanter which takes the top water away from the sludge in order to put it back into the water cycle.
This is the automated bar grate which separates solids and anything that isn't meant to be in it.
And this is where our drone landed!
Here are some aerial photos the quadcopter captured
While our drone did land itself in the entire city of Greenbrier's waste, we learned a lot from it. After taking it completely apart, cleaning every component, replacing a motor and an ESC board, the drone was actually able to fly.
We believe the reason it landed itself was due to an invalid battery issue. Many others have encountered this. What happens is a safety feature meant to land the drone when the battery is critically low in order to keep it from falling from the sky, sometimes mistakes a full battery for low and will land it. No matter where, you have no control of it.
Here it is though, alive and well!
