One difficulty that a marching band faces is getting a good view of its formations on the field. Raiders band member Ashwin Kishen decided to do something about it.
He built a drone.
"I built the system over the summer with the idea of using it to record marching band," Ashwin writes. "I have always been bothered by the lack of quality overhead footage we have access to. At the end of the season there is some decent footage from Metlife Stadium and Rutgers -- but by that point it is essentially useless. The drone was the ideal way for me to be able to record our forms the way they are meant to be seen: from above."
Ashwin put together a "quadcopter" drone equipped with a GoPro camera. "The system primarily relies on a compass, GPS, barometer and camera gimbal to hold the GoPro camera steady in the air," Ashwin explains. "It weighs about 7 pounds and will stay in the sky for 8 minutes."Over the summer, Ashwin gradually added features to the drone. "I started with a simple setup with limited capabilities and then, little by little, added better on-board computers, legs, the gimbal, GPS and many other functionalities. With everything I changed, I would run into all kinds of issues, and troubleshooting them was not easy. I wanted to make sure I built everything safely and correctly because I knew it would eventually be flown near other people and I couldn't risk causing any injuries."
The result was an overhead view of rehearsal that allowed the band to review its formations in time to make improvements before competitions. Here's a drone's-eye video of the band at an October practice.
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