About

Hello!

I'm Straw Hat Sam and I am the original creator of "Le Pigeon". The image above is a bit symbolic because when I joined the U.S. Peace Corps in Zambia my goal was to find out what my next step in life should be. My education background is in mechanical engineering and I worked at companies like 3D Systems, Daimler, TriMet, and Maersk. These experiences helped me learn the technical skills I have now today, but my experiences in the Peace Corps helped me develop my people skills and working in an uncertain and slightly chaotic environment.

Toward the end of my nine months of Peace Corps service (cut short due to medical issues), I found myself still obsessed with FPV drones and from my bunk at the medical office in Lusaka, I drew out the plans and components for my first cinema drone in September 2018:

 

This was my first attempt at a dual operator compact FPV "cinematic" drone which allowed for independent movement of the GoPro with analog direct video output to the camera operator who is also my good friend. This little beasty we named "Lawnmower Man 1" as an homage to the cheesy sci-fi film loved by both my friend and I. This got us some of our first footage that I felt unashamed to show publicly. From then on I sought to achieve the perfect FPV cinema platform and from 2018 to present I have been developing all kinds of wacky drones.

 

This one I named "Scorpion" was a total disaster. The gimbal was too weak, even for the tiny Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera and the arms were too skinny for the large 3115 motors. I cut the frame from 1/8" thick G10 sheet using a Dremel tool.

The "CineBeast" I called here was another failed attempt at creating a larger drone capable of carrying the Blackmagic Micro Cinema camera. I knew so little about choosing the correct components and PID tuning X-class rigs that this drone barely flew (hence the crutches).

I then learned how to properly design a beast class rig and the 8S monster I am holding above proved to be quiet smooth, but heavy and under powered. It would also play a role in the demise of my pocket 4K camera...

My little secret to getting the Osmo Pocket to work on a ultralight drone was using zip ties as vibration isolators. Some of my best early footage came from this little guy and the quality was good enough to submit clips to BlackBox.global. I still make about $24 every year from a single 15 second long sunset clip I submitted.

Another duel operator drone I created right before COVID, this one was absurdly heavy and could only fly for three minutes maximum. It was quite scary to operate with its large footprint and weight. But at least I did get a nice little video out of it. 

This was the first version of my fixed angle cinema drone the "Osprey". Just a simple 9" or 10" quad. This camera mount, although a clever use of wire rope to act as both angle adjustment and damping, flopped around too much during even the most gentle acro maneuvers.

This is were things started getting serious, with videos I was really proud of like my adventure at a rock quarry. I found that rigidly mounting the BMPCC4K with a ball head actually worked quite well. The downside of this drone was that micro vibrations did appear occasionally and it was a bit underpowered so I had to be conservative on the sticks.  

I got the idea for this abomination from Catalyst Machine Works and I just had to try it myself, on 6S... It worked, but because I had a flight controller with only 4 PWM outputs, I connected the ESC signals in parallel and this caused the motors to start making a ticking noise after each flight. It flew reasonably well, but was just way too large and had terrible yaw authority. 

This beast class drone I built from scratch using aluminum tubing and cutting G10 sheet with a Dremel tool. The vibrations in the frame were so bad though that I didn't even get much useable footage out of it. 

With my self-discovery of the magical X8 platform, I now ventured into a territory where I could really fly how I wanted to fly and get smooth handling with very little propwash. This frame was made from two 5" miniquad unibody frames and some 3/4" aluminum square tubing.

To get the X8 platform lighter I Frankensteined two iFlight DC10 frames together and drilled out the motor holes, then added some G10 motor mounts I Dremeled out. With the lighter weight I was starting to get a little too comfortable with these cinema rigs.

This was my first cinema frame I designed myself from scratch using CAD and I had it cut by cncmadness up in Vancouver, BC. The camera mount didn't work so well and had some bad oscillation issues, but that's nothing that some squishy foam and battery straps cannot fix!

With this setup (2812 900kV motors and 9" props) I was really able to throw the camera around like I always wanted to. Now I was feeling like I was able to not only get smooth-ish footage, but fly aggressively as well.

And this is where it all started! I crashed my BMPCC4K while messing around with my beast class 8S cinelifter. It didn't quite have the juice to pull out of the dive and after bouncing off the ground, I disarmed and the drone landed upside down right on the camera. This marked the beginning of my journey into the naked BMPCC4K territory.

 

 After a lot of design work and investigation into what it takes to keep the camera operational in the air, I came up with "Le Pigeon". Named after the dumpy city bird for its fat body and skinny arms, it flew surprisingly well and I knew I was onto something great. 

Things just kept getting better and better with the naked BMPCC4K route and I was pleasantly surprised at how smooth the footage was despite the small size and light weight of the drone. I was starting to get closer to the holy grail of cinema FPV. 

I wanted to share "Le Pigeon" with the rest of the world and this was when I decided to release my first frame kits for purchase. I sold 25 frame kits while I lived in Portland which was a promising start to a new career of designing FPV cinema drones full time down in Los Angeles.

I decided to pursue my own company and make Le Pigeon my flagship product. This meant I had to greatly improve the workflow of the naked camera drone because dependence on a Bluetooth connection was not going to work for most people on serious sets. That is why I spent many months developing flex PCB extensions to take Le Pigeon to a whole new level.