Watching Me Watching You

Had a fun morning with Adrian Bradshaw and Mike Birtles from RailCam.  We checked out the cameras on Horton in Ribbledale and Ribblehead stations, getting the sound working at the latter.   I had wired it wrongly.  Ahem.

Before the two RailCam men set off for our camera at Kirkby Stephen they couldn't resist having a fly around the Ribblehead Viaduct with RailCam's drone.

On the return leg of the flight I asked if the drone might hover in front of the webcam on the Ribblehead Station Master's House:

click to enlarge

and here's the webcam that took the picture of the drone taking a picture of the webcam.   It begins to make the brain hurt!

Here is the drone's eye view of the Viaduct and area

This remarkable image of a drone in flight demonstrates the amazing depth of focus of the webcam too.   The rapidly rotating blades of the drone have been frozen at 12.14.07.   The drone is under the control of Mike Birtles, who flies an even bigger drone in his day job - he's an archaeologist.

This machine is serious kit and actually weighs quite a lot.   Mike marked the take-off spot and the drone landed right alongside it automatically, on a 'home' command as in this case, or on its own systems if it flies out of control range or its batteries are running low, courtesy of GPS.   The batteries are good for 20 minutes or so apparently.

This is another new world of technology with huge potential.