Know How... 124 (Transcript)

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On this episode of Know How, it´s the best of 2014.

Father Robert Ballecer: Welcome to Know How. It´s the TWIT show where we build, bend, break and upgrade. I’m father Robert Ballecer.

Bryan Burnett: And I’m Bryan Burnett.

Fr. Robert: And we´ve got a little something special for you.

Bryan: uh huh.

Fr. Robert: somewhat, Like a time machine of sort.

Bryan:Yes, yes. We will be looking back at 2014 and the best knowledge filling that we have done.

Fr. Robert: Of the hole.

Bryan: Yes, of the whole year.

Fr. Robert: So, without any further ado...here´s the best, of 2014.

Fr. Robert: Let´s go into in NAS box. Now in the time that video ran, it fully installed itself and it gave us this. You´re not gonna get a neat graphical user interface, it basically just gives you eleven options. None of which you really need except for shut down.

Patrick Norton: Well, yeah….This you don´t care about, you need this number down here, then you can unplug the monitor and never actually use this monitor again. Put it somewhere else, use it somewhere else,just,just...this is what you care about and if you log in to one nine two dot one six eight, dot one dot one one five, we should have something glorious.

Fr. Robert: So if you go to my computer Bryan you´re gonna see, we get this. And the very first thing it´s gonna ask you to do is...it´s gonna ask you to change the password, because, DO NOT use 1234! Give it something interesting like, I don´t know, how about know how? No one is gonna guess that. (pause) There we go. Well , actually, you know what´s good? If you type it the same way. There we go. So, now ...what we´ve got is, we´ve got a..this is a fully reinstalled system, fresh, there´s nothing in here from any previous installations. Patrick what´s the first thing I´m gonna do?

Patrick: so use the name and the password.

Fr. Robert: Oh ok, so where, uh, um...,I´m assuming I´m going to go, where?

Patrick: Probably up to the account.

Fr. Robert: Let´s do that. Ok. Ohhh look at that! I got groups and users. Something I jump into, add user here. Now, why do I have to do this?

Patrick: Because the people at BSD and FreeNAS said you have to do this.

Fr. Robert: Ok good. Yeah, actually, this is gonna set up, this is, where, I´m gonna tell the FreeNAS, who should be able to access the volumes and the shares that are on my computer.

Patrick: I mean...The sense of the glory here is that you have the ability to control who has access to what, and what file systems and what areas of the box, ummm, but you do that by essentially creating individual user accounts either for everyone or one generic user account that you allow everyone to access. That´s if you trust everybody in your house. But if you wanna do things like, have different parts of your FreeNAS where, let´s say the Padre has his backup area, and I have my backup area and then we have a common area where people are gonna upload files and transfer things, and another common area that is read access only, so we can download or stream things...,you...it all comes down to setting up users, umm.

Fr. Robert: So, I´ve got… I´ve got Blackrow added into my user actually if you see right here, you´ll see that, that user has now been added. This is also a place where I can delete users, let´s say someone moves on, I don´t want them to be able to access my shares anymore, I drop ´em right outta here. Now I´ve just added a user, but, I don´t have anything set up on the drives yet.

Patrick: Well you also have to just add a primary group and I, to do that in the most basic form ,would set the primary group and set that up as the wheel, so Blackrow would be part of the group.

Fr. Robert:Mhh hmm...You know what? We´re gonna call it the wheel. Yayyyy!!!So, we´ve got a group and we´ve got a user.

Patrick: So, you know if you´re a sophisticated power user, you can use active directory server or open LDAP and merge that in there. we´re assuming that since you´re watching this you´re NOT, ummm, but your next step is generally speaking to set up this...so you´ve set up a user, you´ve got an account going. And now we wanna take a look at the disks.

Fr. Robert: So we´re going to go down to the storage tab here, and I believe the first thing we have to do here is set up a volume?

Patrick: Yeah. You´re gonna take a look at what...you´re gonna make sure your operating system, your FreeNas install can see everything. And somewhere in there should be…the ZFS volume manager. Now, if you´re using ZFS I wanna tell you 2 things...You wanna have a fairly recent processor, and you wanna have several giga bytes of ram. We could argue about this, but generally speaking I´m following what the Free BSD community says, which is to have...If you wanna do ZFSs which is really cool, which is redundant drives, which is basically the ability to survive multiple drive crashes, you need a whole bunch of drives, you need at least four, ummm...ten would be better,long story there, let´s not go into it. But, you want to make sure you have enough memory, and enough computing power so that it does not take several decades for you to replicate the lost data.

Fr. Robert: Now this is bare bones minimum. This is 4 giga bytes of memory. That´s actually horrible. I´d say eight is the minimum that I´d wanna run, and eight would be my base line, and then I would add one giga byte for every terabyte above that base line.

Patrick: If you are talking about building a less expensive system, you´re probably not going to use ZFS if you´re recycling old hardware, you´re gonna use UFSs...it´s gonna restrict the number of plug ins you have. You also wanna check out something called NAS4free, which is essentially just another distribution or version, like, if you´re familiar with Linux, you know there´s like Linux but there´s this Linux and that Linux, and the other Linux and Bob´s Linux and Bob´s Linux part 2...well essentially FreeNAS kind of does the same thing for free, Nas4Free is something a lot of people really enjoy, uhhh, if they´re setting up older hardware less expensive machine, have less money to put into it.

Fr. Robert: Right.

Patrick: Where were we?

Fr. Robert: Well we were talking about ZFS volume, so we´re in the ZFS volume manager right now and I´ve given it a volume name of KH. I could encrypt it, if I´d really felt like it, but I´m not gonna do it on this one because I don´t want it to take forever. But, uhhh, Patrick...what´s this little thing down here?

Patrick: Oh boy!

Fr. Robert: Slider

Patrick: I´d just slide that all the way to the take it all.

Fr. Robert: He he

Patrick: Take all the space.

Fr. Robert: So, we´ve got four drives in this raid. I´m telling it to take all four. One of the things I really like about FreeNAS is that it will tell you what is the optimal set ups. So right now it´s telling me to use RaidZ2. I´ll get 3.63 terabytes effective date, which means I´m using a hot swear, a hot, a hot spare and parody. So I could lose up to two drives of the surrey, and I´m not going to lose any data.

Patrick: Which is a really beautiful thing, so If you come from the Windows world, you probably have spent a lot of time ignoring the recommendations the operating systems make, and in the case of FreeNAS, do as the nice operating system tells you to do unless you know better.

Fr. Robert: Right.Now we´ve talked about scary rate, I could run this in a stripe and look at that, I get all this storage space, I´d get 7.27 terabytes, but of course, if I lose a single drive.

Patrick: I felt a disturbance in the force, as if someone lost terabytes of irreplaceable data.

Fr. Robert: Don´t ever do this please, I don´t even know why they would put that in there, you shouldn´t be allowed to select it.

Patrick: Because some people, I mean, just, zzzz, a FreeNAS box, an external hard drive, this is not a backup solution or system, this is storage right? A backup solution is a copy on the system, a copy locally and a copy stored somewhere else, so you have multiple copies of you data so if your system falls down and goes boom, you have at least two copies of the data somewhere else, right? Um, but, yes.

Fr. Robert: The only way, the only reason that I could think of that you would wanna use a stripe is if you had multiple computers that were running that stripe and that you were bouncing across boxes so that you can get maximum performance, that´s about it, that´s the only…

Patrick: Only if, in you´re in some insane situation where you´re backing up for maximum performance and then doing a second replication for long term...it´s zzzz ssshh...let it go. ZFSs , Do what the nice operating system tells you, which in this case is ZFS 2. I think it is getting...it´s writing its volumes..

Fr. Robert: Yeah, so what its doing right now is preparing all the drives. It´s saying OK , I´m gonna be using you as a spare, I´m gonna be using you as the main data drive, I´m writing my parody across them all. This is actually where memory would really come in handy and a fast processor would come in handy. if I would´ve run this on like an old single core, that process could take up like hours, yeah, that´s not like great. But we´re done so we´re ready to go, so tell me. I´ve got myself a, um, a volume, where do I go from here?

Patrick:I would probably go up to the gears at the top that´s labeled services, and we should be able to enable CIFS in there, which is what we would use to...yeahhh I´d click that on, and that´s gonna allow iOS10 and Windows to see this box to access the data on this box, to use it as a server, ummmm...there´s a ton of options inside of here Dynamic DNS and FTP if you want remote access for it, iSCSI I don´t think I´m ever gonna touch, NFS, RSYNC, This is like...If you want to get an education in acronyms install a FreeNAS box and start taking a close look at the optional services in there, but generally speaking...once I had CIFS on, I´m pretty good, and I´m gonna go back to the, back to the uhhh,I wanna say the, uhhh...click, sorry, go to CIFS, click on the wrench, make sure all the settings are correct and then we can go in...there it is...I just wanna point out that I´m talking and Padre is clicking, so if it sounds disjointed it´s because..

Fr. Robert: There´s two, two brains going on here.

Patrick: So,Do we wanna change the work group?

Fr. Robert: Nah, I think we´re OK.

Patrick: Description: FreeNAS server, log level, guest account...ummm, we´re not currently assigning a, no, we, you DO have a static IP address signed in.

Fr. Robert: Correct. Right. Cool

Patrick: So as long as I´m on the same network, I should be able to see this with any of my machines.

Fr. Robert: Absolutely, as long as they know the IP address of 192.168.1.115 they should all be able to get over here no matter what operating system they´re using.

Patrick: But first they have to get on your network.

Fr. Robert: But first they have to get my network, and first we also have to set up a share.

Patrick: Yes.

Fr. Robert: Because what we´ve done is that we´ve enabled the sharing service, but we haven´t actually told the box yet who´s gonna access what and what volumes can they access. So I´m gonna call this one, uhhh, DIY,just cause, you know...

Patrick: That´s easy

Fr. Robert: Yeah, that´s easy. One of the things I wanna do, is I also wanna allow for guests access. You may not always want this, sometimes you´re gonna have a share, you may have a hidden share that you only wanna be access, be able to access yourself . If that´s the case please don´t allow guests access, cause if you allow guests access, you´re saying anyone on my network can get into this box.

Patrick: I don´t care who sees this.

Fr. Robert: I really don´t care. And so I click that, and now technically, since I´ve already...

Patrick: Umm, sorry about that.

Fr. Robert: I wanted to go to the share, to the volume that I created, which is Know how...and once this is created...

Patrick: Oh gosh I really wish I had a mouse.

Fr. Robert: I should, theoretically, have access to that, that share, yes?

Patrick: Yes and you should be able to upload data to that share and download data from that share. This is always the moment of truth, will it log in? Will it happen? Do I see it? Does it show up?

Fr. Robert: Bam! And there we go, so what we´ve done is that we´ve just created this. This is a 3.72 terabyte share, on my FreeNAS box that I can load up with anything I want.

Patrick: Quick, upload something to it.Upload something to it.

Fr. Robert: You know what , I don´t actually think I have, oh, you know what everyone needs the Firefox set up .

Patrick: Ha ha ha ha.

Fr. Robert: So, I think it´s the only thing on my computer that is uhhh, uh...

Patrick: Uh,oh.

Fr. Robert: Uh oh, wait. See, and I knew we shouldn´t have done...ohhh, I didn´t grant myself access.

Patrick: Uh oh.

Fr. Robert: I´m a bad person.

Patrick: No, you´re not a bad person. This is why I mean, It´s funny, there´s really, really, good detailed explanations up on the FreeNAS Site that´ll walk you through the configurations. Padre and I have both done this before and we´ve just made a basic error that denied us access to the server we just built. Yesss!!!

Fr. Robert: Now, we don´t have much time left but I would like to say one of the things that I really enjoyed about the FreeNAS is that you can have it up and running in literally 10 minutes. !0, 15 minutes.

Patrick: Yes.

Fr. Robert:But, there are sooo many features in here, I´d like to talk a little bit about the plug ins. What are some of the plug ins that you run in on your FreeNAS box?

Patrick: Anything that allows me to share ummm, musical files and access to my home. I don´t know if you could pull in the plugins to sync on there? But it should automatically have things on there like, ummm, Oh my goodness, ummm, there´s a brain inside of my head that should be thinking about the basic fundamental tool used to share media inside of my home…

Fr. Robert: Oh like DLNA?

Patrick: Thankk you! DLNA.

Fr. Robert: Yeah.

Patrick: That´s a really sad... The crashplan plugin is really cool cause it´ll actually let you sync stuff off of your FreeNAS up to your Crashplan.

Fr. Robert: You could get a torrent.

Patrick: Couchpotato if you´re not into...umm...ohhh...,you know,

Fr. Robert: Getting up.

Patrick: Haa, that´s extremely funny, I was gonna say XBMC, but there should be, scroll down a little bit, I think there might be a PLEX plugin now, an XBMC plugin, umm, there´s just an incredible...there´s the Plexmediaserver available on there. Transmission is a bit torrent client. There´s a bunch of really, really, really cool things you can do to set up on your FreeNAS box that´ll run in the background, umm, bring this also back the less powerful your system is, the fewer plugins you want running, because, uhhh,yeah.

Fr. Robert: Yeah. And actually remember. If you start loading up your system with plugging and you notice that your read and write performance starts to decrease, that´s why. Because you´ve loaded down the cpu and the cpu has less time to handle all the writes across its drives. One quick think before we go Patrick, and that is , a lot of people are going to be tempted to go, Ohh, Wow, this is awesome! I´ve got all these parts down in the basement, and they´re gonna grab any drive they possibly can and drop it in the box. I would say no, what do you say?

Patrick: If you´re doing it as an experiment, feel free to load any junk drive you have inside of it. If you wanna spend money, start looking at greens and reds, if you wanna be serious about a NAS configuration go straight to the Western Digital Red drives.

Fr. Robert: Right.

Patrick: This is, just, we could explain why but we´re actually out of time, ha ha...judging from the waving of fingers I´m seeing from over on the desk, umm, but, you basically...I run a lot of greens, when I´m buying cause basically, I bought, I bought all my greens before I had reds, and the drives are expensive and I stopped buying them. And as I´m replacing them, I´m starting to buy did reds.

Fr. Robert: I have 32 greens.

Patrick: 32 greens!

Fr. Robert: And now I´m thinking about replacing them with reds.

Patrick: Take your time.

Father Robert Ballece: I know, I know, exactly. they´re not bad drives. It´s just that reds are better because they run cooler, they use up less power, they´ll survive longer inside of a NAS environment.

Patrick: And there´s all sorts of other things.

Fr. Robert: Now I understand that you’ve got a little something for us. You wanted to show us a device for time lapsing.

Bryan: Right. Well a few episodes ago, I think it was episode 76, I showed the folks how to make a time lapse just using your Go Pro. But I wanted to expand on that in a cost effective method. Go Pro itself is actually pretty expensive but it has a lot of features and I love playing with them anyway. You might’ve noticed that there is something set up behind me here.

Fr. Robert: I hear something ticking. Does he hate me? Am I going to blow up?

Bryan: No, it should be fine.

Fr. Robert: Now I’ve seen these before. This is a different kind of time lapse. So the time lapse that we’ve seen before have been a static camera that looks out over a scene and records a liot of time in a very small amount of video. Now that is cool but this kind of time lapse camera actually moves the camera.

Bryan: Yeah, it puts a little bit of motion into the video and that makes the time lapse a little bit more exciting you know? So I made a quick video to show you how to do that, but before we get to that we’ll get the overhead out. So at Know How we break things so that you don’t have to! When I first cut the timer, I did not realize you could take the screws out from the bottom.

Fr. Robert: So are those parts supposed to be like that?

Bryan: No, I don’t think so. I lost some in between.

Fr. Robert: I think the problem is that these are curvy. You need to straighten these.

Bryan: One thing I realize is that I’m never going to be a clock maker because as soon as I pulled this off I just gave up.

Fr. Robert: And this is because you didn’t call Padre. Because Padre could’ve told you don’t take off the top.

Bryan: I don’t need Padre for everything. Fortunately, though, Tony or Tony’s fiancé I believe went to IKEA the very next day and bought me two of these. If you go into the store they are only $6. Pretty basic egg timer and fortunately if you don’t know how to use an egg timer, IKEA supplies instructions in every language. So if you’re kind of confused on how to use it, don’t worry if you don’t speak English don’t worry, it comes with instructions! Let’s watch the video.

Bryan: To begin this project you’re going to need a timer from IKEA. This little guy, the Ordning Kitchen Timer from IKEA runs about $6 in the store and if you order on Amazon it is $12. So go into the store if you can. The next part you’ll be needing is a 3/8 inch to 1/4 inch grommets. Now here at Know How we dedicate ourselves to breaking things so that you don’t have to. I took apart this first timer and, well, it didn’t turn out so good! I’m not going to be able to put that back together for sure. But anyway, we’ll use it as a test bench for our un-ruined timer. So the first thing is that I’m going to use this IFixIt kit to pull off some of this adhesive foam on the bottom and reveal three screws which you can remove and then pull off the bottom plate. That’ll leave the plastic bottom exposed and only one screw left to take out to completely take off from the rest of the timer. Now this way I can drill through the timer without damaging any parts. I’m going to do some quick measurements and use a marker to make sure that I have this hole centered. Next I went down to the TWIT basement and used the drill press and with a 5/16th drill to make my hole. It was just a little bit smaller than what I need for the grommets so I also used a different bit to kind of widen the hole a little bit and then I was able to slit the grommet in just fine. Use a flat headed screw driver to get it in the rest of the way. It was a little off center when I had it screwed in so I just tapped it a few times with the hammer to make sure it sat flush against the bottom of the plate. Next I put the screws back in to hold the bottom plate to the timer and Voila! We have a little grommet that we can now use to mount to a plate for a tripod. Now to attach the GoPro you are just going to use a little sticky mount that a lot of GoPro’s come with as accessories. So I have the tri-pod up high in the studio during TNT, I was able to get his 13 second clip by using two second picture mode on the GoPro and as with any time lapse watch out for photo bombers. Especially Jason Howell! He has a tendency to want to be in front of the camera a lot! 

Fr. Robert: What I love about that is that this is cheap. This is crazy.

Bryan: Yeah, $6 from IKEA and $12 from Amazon. And super easy to set up and it turned out pretty well.

Fr. Robert: And those little grommets we actually found on Amazon for 10 for a buck. Get yourself a couple. It is actually surprisingly good quality. It gives you a really nice pan.

Brain: When we first were going to do this project we thought “Why stop at a GoPro, why not do a DSLR”? But it’s a little too much for that. But GoPro is just the right amount of weight and set it to two second and you get that smooth 360 pan. Set it for an hour.

Fr. Robert: We actually tried earlier on just putting a standard JVC camcorder on it was really sad because you heard “tick, tick, tick,….” and it was a little too heavy. Now the other idea we had was putting a grommet on the bottom and on the top so that you could mount it underneath, like an eave. It was upside down this might be able to support the weight. 

Bryan: Yeah. As I took apart this timer there’s not a lot of space on the top to drill down. And if you’re going to drill through it, you’re going to have to take it off and when do that…. BOING!

Fr. Robert: Yeah. On a future episode of Know How maybe you can show them how to reassemble it!

Bryan: Yeah! Everybody is clamoring how to put back their timers after that episode!

Fr. Robert: I’m father Robert Ballecer, the digital Jesuit on the Twit TV chat room. And I’m here at NOC, the network operation center and Las Vegas, Nevada. Now NOC is a networking conference which means it is filled with all the typical tchotchkes you get at conferences. Anything from this light up axe to little balls to this freaking cool fedora. But my real reason for being at the conference is that I make videos. It is how I get content for some of my other Twit shows. It is my primary reason for coming to these brouhahas. And one of the things that I experience is Adobe bloat. Now what is Adobe bloat you may be asking yourself? If you use Adobe Premiere, specifically if you use Adobe Premiere in Windows you may find that over time, especially if your projects are big, if you use a lot of assets and really large assets, your hard drive seems to disappear. Even if you delete those projects, even if you move them off the drive, even if you move them off the computer you don’t always seem to get back as much space as you had when you started the particular project. Well that my friends is Adobe bloat. What has happened is that every time you bring an asset into a project, Adobe makes a cache file, a copy of that file that it can recall very quickly. The reason why it does this, is that it wants to make it more quick, and more fast ways to load your project with a minimal amount of delay. Now that is cool it actually works quite well but the problem is that that Adobe bloat adds up and eventually you run out of space. But let me show you an easy way to get rid of it. The first thing we want to do is enable the viewing of hidden folders. Go to start, Control Panel, folder options, select the view tab, show hidden files, folders and drives and you are good. The reason why you need to do this is because the con and folders which hold those cache files are in a hidden folder, which means that if you don’t enable those options you won’t be able to see it, you won’t be able to navigate to it. Now you need to navigate to your Adobe common media folder. Go to my computer, select C, go to the users folder, go to the folder with your user name, select app data, select roaming, select Adobe, select Common, select media cache files. now you’ll also run into Adobe bloat if you’re Mac user that just look for the same folder. Look for those cache file folders, and you will be able to clear your bloat just as easily as you can in Windows. What I typically like to do is make a shortcut to that common folder and leave it on my desktop. It is an easy way to get there and a reminder that every once in a while I should clear my cache. Now let me make one little comment. If you intend to load the same files over and over again, don’t clear those out of the cache folder because Adobe is just going to have to remake those files. But if you move from project to project and if you really want that space then you can find that you can get 60, 70, or 80 GB of space back on your hard drive and that is a great way to stop Adobe bloat. I’m father Robert Ballecer, and now you know.

Fr. Robert: Now Adobe bloat is actually a serious problem. You were asking me during the break, do I really have to check my machine? That 36 GB was accumulated on my machine over the course of four days.

Bryan: That’s not a long time.

Fr. Robert: That is not a long time. And the other problem is that depending on how much you work with Adobe, that is going to determine how fast those cash files build up. Which is an issue. So what I would suggest is that any time you are using Adobe Premier, just how that folder on your desktop so that you know that you can jump into that any time and just empty those out. Because honestly, the worst thing that is going to happen is that Adobe has to rebuild the cache files and then you continue on from there.

Bryan: Well I was planning on doing a little bit of editing on my MacBook Air, which is not like a great editing machine or anything but I took some shots on vacation and stuff and I want to do something simple. But it has a 128 GB hard drive so I have to make sure that I delete whatever I can on there.

Fr. Robert: I think people became much more sensitive to this when as SSDs started becoming the norm. Because if you had a huge 3 TB hard drive on your computer, and that’s what you were using as your primary OS drive or your primary edit drive then you didn’t care if it used up another 100 or 200 GB. You probably didn’t even really notice. You just thought it was a regular part of the bloat. But if you got that SSD, especially like that 128 GB SSD, you will quickly see that you only have 1 GB free. Where did all that go? It is in Premier.

Bryan: This is good to know.

Fr. Robert: I promised my fans on twitter that I would show you a quick down and dirty, easy way to get back up to 10% of your system performance if you are using windows 7, or Windows 8. Shall we take a look?

Bryan: Yes let’s do that.

Fr. Robert: Now we all like speed. We long for it. We crave it. We want it in our PCs, our laptops, our Macs, our devices. Pretty much anything that can go faster we want it to. And so, we spend a lot of money, we spend a lot of time building and breaking and upgrading and replacing all in the quest for speed. But what if I told you Windows 7 and Windows 8 users that there was a way for you to get up to 10% of your speed back? Without upgrading anything. Without replacing anything. Without really changing the way you use Windows, or even opening up the case. I know it sounds like a pipe dream, I know it sounds too good to be true, but folks this is something I have been doing since Windows 7 dropped on the world. The tip centers around two servers that are always running in the background of Windows 7 and Windows 8. The first is called remote assistance. Now technically, the feature is very very cool. It sits in the background and it waits for someone to connect to your computer and use their keyboard and mouse to show you how it’ll fix something that is going wrong with your computer. Again, a nice feature that I would be willing to bet that very few of us have ever actually used. So if we are not using it, why let it sit in the background using up your resources? This second service is called system restore. Now this actually is a very useful service. It allows you to create safe points that you can jump back to so if you warp your PC system you always have an easy way to go back to an image that was clean. Here is the problem though. Very few of us have safe system restore points. Very few of us have actually done the work to make sure that we have gotten the safe point where we want them. And so we are normally going to go back to the original factory image. So if we are going to do that, and you've got the factory install disk, if we've got the factory installed partition, we have some way to go back to how it was when we first received the computer. If that is what we are going to do, and especially I would suggest you do that if you have a virus, then why even have that running? Let me show you how to turn them off. The first thing you need to do is get to the system option and control panel. I usually just right-click the computer icon on the desktop and choose properties. Once in the system menu you will see all the stats on your computer, but to the left of the stats you will see control panel home. Along with four shielded options. Click remote settings. You will see a field for, allow remote assistant connections to this computer. Go ahead and uncheck that box and then click apply. You’ve just turned off the remote assistance server but now we need to shut off system protection. In the control panel there is a tab for system protection, go ahead and select that and you'll notice under protection setting that it will tell you if one of your drives is protected. Usually it protects the drive with the operating system but not the others. Select the drive that is protected, then click configure. Now select the radio button to turn off system protection and apply the change. That is it! You have just turned off the two background services and you will recover all the horsepower that had been going to feed those two services. Now I am sure that some of you are skeptical that you can actually get up to 10% of your horsepower back, so I ran PCMark Vantage before and after the changes. With the services on this PC scored 13394, after I ran the benchmark again making just these two changes the PC scored 14578. If you do the math, that is a 9% increase all without buying, upgrading, or installing anything. I’m Father Robert Ballecer the Digital Jesuit and now that you know how to take your horsepower back, go do it.

Fr. Robert: Now Bryan, you can overdo it. In fact I know a lot of people who have overdone it. They turn off all the services that they possibly can.

Bryan: Yeah, I’ve been a victim of that.

Fr. Robert: Which is good. It is good to turn off things you don’t need. But, you can go too far and suddenly there is not a service there that you need.

Bryan: And then you reboot and you wonder what the heck has happened to your system.

Fr. Robert: Right. That is why I chose these two services. These two services are actually pretty cool features. But I would be willing to gather that 99% of us have never use remote assistance. And at least 75% of us have never used system restore. So if that is the case and you are not going to use those things you might as well take them out.

Bryan: Very rarely. I was actually, this weekend thinking about formatting my computer. And system restore, I never used it and most of the stuff I backed up to external hard drive.

Fr. Robert: In for me, the only thing that really makes me think about reinstalling or going back to a previous version is if I think some way my system has been compromised, or I installed something that is messing it up. And in those instances I never want to use system restore. Because it doesn’t quite clean everything.

Bryan: And it doesn’t always fix it. Doesn’t get rid of everything.

Fr. Robert: And so I just go back to the factory fresh install. And also, I kind of like that. Maybe because I’m a Windows user but every once in a while, like every 18 months or so I like to reset everything. Not necessarily because the Windows is messed up that because of all the junk I’ve added on. And I just want to clean house.

Bryan: It is nice to just start fresh and then the way I do it, is I just add things as I need them. Like, I’m not going to use Premiere this week I will install it next week when I’m going to be editing something.

Fr. Robert: So we’re doing a little something something. Remember we talked a while ago about Novak.

Bryan: Very expensive.

Fr. Robert: Very crazy expensive, But very good for cooling. It is good at thermal conduction. So what you would do was you would use it in like sealed server racks with a lot of blades to pull the heat away from the components so you could do away with air cooling.

Bryan: Completely submerged hardware and so that is why we bought like 5 gallons of it. We got access to Leo’s…

Fr. Robert: $4,000 worth. No… there have been ways for people to cool with liquid in the past. In fact, this is from Alex’s set up. This is some of his coolants, computer liquid coolant. it is just water but it has a few additives in here so that it doesn’t mold up.

Alex: I think the key ingredient was glycol.

Fr. Robert: It is basically anti-freeze. But then you also need things like this. Hold on to this because this is heavy. That is the radiator assembly. That is how you would get heat out of the system. As you are pumping liquid through your devices and this is how you would get the heat up. This will fit onto the CPU. It is a water block…

Bryan: And it will pump the fluid through.

Fr. Robert: and then it would eventually run through here. So you needed a water block on all the major heat sources. So the hard drives, the CPU, the video card, it may be the chipset that is on the motherboard. It is a cool system. In fact, Alex, do you have any pictures? I loved playing with this stuff. It is fun to play with, it is fun to tinker with. But as you experienced it is a pain in the butt right?

Bryan: It is a mess to maintain and unless you are doing some over clocking, it is not that much better than just using air.

Fr. Robert: The other problem is that you need to have a cooling block on anything you want to cool. Because that is how the heat gets removed. And since you don't typically have a cooling block on everything, there is still heat being generated. You still need to have a fan in the case, which kind of defeats the purpose of having liquid cooling in the first place.

Bryan: So you wanted to go all out with liquid cooling you would just submerge the whole thing.

Fr. Robert: Which is why we were talking about Novak. Know that could allow us. If you look at the computer this is the computer I built over the weekend. It is playing a little video, it’s got barely enough power to do that. This is really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. But we could put know that right into this tub and then put some sort of… actually the problem with the surface area is that it would be radiative enough that we wouldn’t need anything else. No cooling fans, nothing. know what allows that to happen is the fact that that liquid is what we call dielectric. Which means it does not conduct.

Bryan: If you tried water it would short everything out.

Fr. Robert: It would be the shortest experiment ever. Actually if you want to see what happens when you tried to cool directly with water, look for Leo Laporte liquid pel iPhone, because that is basically what happened. when we do this with a dielectric fluid like know that, which is specifically designed to do cooling, the heat gets pulled away from the components and because Novak has such a low thermal retention rate it wants to give that heat back. It wants to keep it out. So it will conduct it straight off the components into whatever radiator you are using to quote your system.

Bryan: It will transfer the heat away from the source.

Fr. Robert: Before know Novak, there was a fluid also by 3M called Fluorinert. Actually Fluorinert was used as a plot point in the Abyss. You can actually also super oxygenate it. You can attach a bunch of oxygen molecules to it and you can saturate the fluid and breathe it. In the Abyss they used it as a plot point the idea was that you could breathe it so that your lungs don’t compress. This was real. They actually did that. They really did put rats and the oxygenated Fluorinert. When Ed Harris did it it was a special effect. Because humans probably wouldn’t be used.

Bryan: It would be a frightening experience.

Fr. Robert: They did testing with it and what they found out is that it would work, but once you get the Fluorinert out of your lungs you still have what is called dry drowning. Your lungs would actually pump fluid into your lungs and then you would die.

Bryan: Well, thank goodness this machine doesn’t have lungs and we can do it to that.

Fr. Robert: Now we could do it with Fluorinert, which is not as good as Novak but it is still Pretty good at pulling heat away. But the problem is if you buy that it is about $1500 or $2000 a gallon. You can get it for about $300 a gallon if you don’t mind it being used.

Bryan: Wish it could have but…

Fr. Robert: I would not do that.

Bryan: Well you were saying too that you want to make sure before you even attempt this is to clean the hardware is best as you can because if there is any metal particles that could float from the surface and then make a connection it will short things out.

Fr. Robert: I’ve gone over this computer thoroughly with a soldering brush just to make sure there are no particles hanging out. Also, know that if you submerge your computer and liquid a lot of these things like the stickers use solvents. It is going to break down and peel off. Just be aware of a few things you are going to do. Now, we know that theoretically dielectric fluids shouldn’t conduct electricity, but they will conduct heat. Theoretically. Mineral oil is a dielectric fluid.

Bryan: And it is a lot cheaper.

Fr. Robert: It is a lot cheaper versus $2000 a gallon. And this is $25 a gallon.

Bryan: The tradeoff is that will retain heat.

Fr. Robert: It retains heat a little more, so it doesn’t readily give it off. Which means that if you want to use this for some extreme cooling you are going to have to have a really good computer. Now we haven’t actually tested this yet. It is a mild laxative.

Bryan: It says for animal use only. So should I not have been putting that in Jeff’s coffee?

Fr. Robert: It lubricates the intestinal track. So theoretically, we should be able to port this entire container of mineral oil on top of that computer, submerge it and it should continue to show Ghosts in the Shadow.

Bryan: That is Know How for you. Let’s see if it works. Are you going to do the whole thing?

Fr. Robert: Yeah, why not. Okay, here we go. I don’t want to hit the fan.

Bryan: Easy, easy Padre.

Fr. Robert: Are we still showing some activity?

Bryan: We’ve got some steam coming up. Well folks, that is a visual effect. We are okay.

Fr. Robert: Here we go. That fan is going.

Bryan: Even the USB is submerged.

Fr. Robert: That is a gallon of mineral oil. This is what I like: look at the fan. The fan is still going. It is actually going. So even though the fan is under the mineral oil it is still going. This is cool. It can agitate the oil, because you still need to agitate to get the heat spread around equally. That is cool. So theoretically it works. And guess what? In actuality it works. Now, we are not going to put a rat in here. Now, there are a few things we should say about this. We are actually going to build ourselves an aquarium PC. We are going to do it with a much higher spec motherboard than this. This is like an atom processor, it barely has enough power to run. But we are going to squeeze a lot of power into this thing, we are going to see how fast of a processor we can get away with, without putting any serious cooling. We wanted to just radiate through the sides of the tank. The other thing to remember about this, is that it is cool but mineral oil is very fine and it stays on everything.

Bryan: So basically when you do this you are not going to undo this.

Fr. Robert: The other thing is we will eventually put this power supply in it. Dielectric is dielectric. It’s going to work for AC or DC. The only reason why we didn’t put the power supply in here is because this isn’t the finished thing. This is our nice power supply and we didn’t want to mess it up with mineral oil.

Bryan: It is still going.

Fr. Robert: It works just fine. So folks, what you want to do is go home and find your parent’s computer, dunk it in mineral oil and tell them Padre SJ said to do it.

Bryan: Don’t try this at home.

Fr. Robert: I think that is about it for this episode of Know How. Alex?

Fr. Robert: You´re going to show us a little something something about Yosemite.

Bryan: Yes, I kinda put this off a while because Yosemite, it´s been out for a few weeks now. But like any new software, you don´t wanna be necessarily an early adopter. There was a beta, I kind played with and stuff. But finally I felt like, Okay, Yosemite is solid, at first I was a little hesitant with the new color scheme, it felt like I was using iOS and not like a real computer, but, it´s grown on me and finally I decided to make, show people how to make a bootable USB cause it´s super easy and it´s really helpful for people who have to set up a lot of MACS or you don´t have online access to certain ones, or you have a bandwidth cap so you don´t wanna just keep downloading Yosemite cause its 5 and a half gigs?

Fr. Robert: I´ve taken this from my windows site but I always like to have the installation files, just because I don´t wanna have to do a multiple terabyte download just because I wanna do a fresh installation to my OS.

Bryan: So once you´ve made this you´ll have the USB around and you can plug it in and just restart your computer and boot it up, but, here´s a quick little video that I made of that.

Bryan: The first step in making your own bootable USB drive is: you´ll need a USB drive, it´ll have to be 8 gigabytes or more, so think about that. And you´ll need a MAC. That´s all. Plug your USB into your main MAC device and head on over to the apple app store. Search for OSX Yosemite and download. This could take a little while, it´s about 5 and a half gigs, so, sit back relax and wait. Once Yosemite has finished downloading you can open up terminal and if you´re feeling a little bit crazy try and type in the code yourself, but, I recommend taking the code that I have listed in the show notes, just copy and paste it into your terminal and hit enter. You´ll have to put in your password because you are using the sudo command, and this will pull the OSX Yosemite download and make your USB drive bootable. It´s really as simple as that. And once you´ve completed that, it does take a while so keep that in mind if you think it might be frozen, wait, it could take up to 30 minutes, depending on how fast your USB drive is. And once it´s done, you can plug in into the MAC that you want to update to Yosemite, reboot and launch the USB drive.

Fr. Robert: I really like the background music. There was a piccolo in there somewhere.

Bryan: It´s a demonstration video. Gotta keep people interested.

Fr. Robert: It makes sense. If you´re gonna download the files anyway, why not make it into a boot drive? Even if you never use it. Keep that thing in a drawer somewhere, and the next version of OSX do the same thing. Make a boot drive for that so you´ll be ready to go when you wanna update your laptop, your desktop, whatever it might be.

Bryan: And there is a programm you can download. I forget the name of it off the top of my head, but it has an interface. it´s like, I´m gonna have the code that you need, so just copy on the show notes, so just use that and paste it into terminal and just...it´s easier just to do it that way.

Fr. Robert: well how about this. Would you like the ability to fast prototype stuff, but without the 3d printer?

Bryan: Yes.

Fr. Robert:: How about just like using you hands like lumps of clay?

Bryan: I am used to doing that.

Fr. Robert: Okay. Then we´ve got something for you. This stuff, is called InstaMorph. now this is what? 34ounces of it. You could buy this on Amazon for about $40 bucks, This has become very, very popular in the costly, and the modeling community. Because the idea is, these little plastic pellets, if you go to the overhead. These little plastic pellets, actually...,look delicious. it´s hard to see... there you go. They look like little rice grains, right? Well they soften up when you expose them to hot water, temperatures of 150 or more. I like 160 degrees. And then you can mold them. It becomes like clay. it´s malleable. so in fact let´s show you a little bit of a, a little something something. So here´s a demonstration.So here´s some, hopefully, hot enough water. We´re gonna go ahead and take some, this is just a little bit of InstaMorph, so when you pour it into this water, what´s gonna happen is...you´re gonna start to see it turn transparent. So it´s gonna go from white to this clear color. And when it becomes the clear color, it means that it´s ready for you to mold. The cool thing about this is you can use it like clay. So once it becomes malleable, you can cut it, and squish it, you can stretch it. You can form it into any shape that you need in order to make the form that you´re trying to make. This is so much faster than 3d printing because it´s no longer, I have to make the design, and then print it and then reprint it when the design is not right. This is all, you just, like when you were in kindergarden.

Bryan: Yeah, as long as you´re like making play do, clay thing.

Fr. Robert: I´ve got one we started a while back. It might have actually cooled off. But, uh, I wanna see. Then we gotta get the excess water. Okay, so now this, this is a little,here, you take this. Go and start molding that.

Bryan: Oh, that´s crazy.

Fr. Robert: It´ll start becoming like a puddy. This is a little too cold, so we didn´t get it quite up to the operating temperature, but again, the nice thing about this is, you can cut it, you can slice it, and squish it. And I´ve seen some absolutely gorgeous designs, made with InstaMorph. Some people use it for masking, so what you do is you make a mask of someones face, then you can mold what you want on the outside. So it´s great for cosplay because you can get...yeah, there you go…

Bryan: Wow, this really does feel, it´s just, like clay. Kinda like clay just it does´t break apart.

Fr. Robert: An that´s not even at the right temperature, so that´s still a little bit too cold. But, when it cools down, Oh, actually Berks bringing us more hot water.

Bryan: I think Alex knows what I´m making right now. You do this a lot in elementary school, and after.

Fr. Robert: Ok yeah, that did it. That did the trick. See how that´s all transparent?

Bryan: It went super clear, yeah.

Fr. Robert: it went very, very clear. Now, with material….

Bryan: Help me, help meee!!! Sorry.

Fr. Robert: Here´s the best part, If I had put dye into the water, it would take the color of the dye. So you can dye colors into this thing if you wanted to do colored designs. And you can cool it off so, if we had like a tub of water, you could flash cool it so that you could say, ok that part is fine, stay there. Or you could use a heat gun if you need to like just get a bit more, just heat it up.

Bryan: Can I dip it back in here?

Fr. Robert: You can recycle it so, if your design does´t work out, just put it back in. give it a little bit more heat. Are you making the wicker man?

Bryan: No, no. I´m just making a little guy.

Fr. Robert: Thanks Berk.

Bryan: What are you gonna make?

Fr. Robert: A cross. Du huh!

Bryan: Boooring!

Fr. Robert: That´s what I do, it´s my deal.

Bryan: That is cool.

Fr. Robert: Oooh, mine´s good. Ow! Mine´s really hot.

Bryan: Be careful, be careful.

Fr. Robert: Show them your design.

Bryan: Ok, so i´ve got... that was pretty easy to make actually for me. Like if you have any experience messing with clay, I have done a lot. It´s pretty much like that. It´s so cool how it sticks together so well, and it feels, it just fells like, you know, like plastic. It´s got that smooth texture to it.

Fr. Robert: If you like it, you shoulda put a ring on it.

Bryan: What is that?

Fr. Robert: Or a bracelet.

Bryan: So is yours that much clearer because..?

Fr. Robert: You know, when I was a kid I made a lot of ashtrays. It started as something and it ended up ashtray.

Bryan: nobody I knew, smoked, but I always made ashtrays.

Fr. Robert: Here´s the issue though. InstaMorph is great, but if you have no creative skills it´s still gonna look like this vs. like that.

Bryan: Alright, I´m gonna start making some stuff with this Padre. So is yours this much clearer because it´s still hot?

Fr. Robert: Because it´s still hot, right. As it gets colder, it´s gonna get more and more opaque. And then eventually it will become stiff, so this is still pretty easy to move. But if I were to put it in my drinking cup, yeah...we´ll just leave it in there for a while. So he´s gonna cool off and it actually becomes hard plastic. People have made chassis for Quadcopters, along with you know face masks. Essentially anything that you wanna make that holds a shape or holds an edge, InstaMorph is perfect for it. And it´s cheap because the idea behind this is once your done with your design if you don´t like it, you just put it back in the hot water and it´ll turn back into this opaque stuff…

Bryan: I guess there´s just one thing you have to be careful of though. Like if you make a quadcopter frame out of it, and it gets too hot and the motors fly off or something.

Fr. Robert: So it turns back into modeling puddy at about 150 degrees. It starts to soften at about 100 degrees. So you gotta be careful. But yeah you got a lot of ton to model. This thing is, we can still go, we can still stretch this out.

Bryan: Padre your creativity is showing.

Fr. Robert: Oh I know what you can make. You can make orthodental, orthodental? Or you can make bite plates with this stuff!

Bryan: Yeah you could, I´m not gonna do that cause I´ve seen you touching it.

Fr. Robert: Patrick Delahanty , he could make baby Groot´s face with this stuff.

Bryan: Well I bet if you had like a mold too, you could like just kinds press it into it the mold then pull it out.

Fr. Robert: User 24224 says: How many times is it gonna be used? It´s endless. It´s plastic, so it does´t lose its elasticity. The worse thing that can happen is it starts to get dirty. so if you, if you happen to heat it up when it´s covered in filth, that stuff will, it´s like clay, it gets stuck in there. But you can always add new virgin material to increase the strength of it, if it is a little sticky, a little tacky. But I´ve used the same bits of InstaMorph over and over probably 2 or 3 months. I have a little holder on my computer, for my camera, cause I wanna keep it at a certain level. It´s perfect, yeah. So, if you want to do some fast prototyping or 3d printers likes set up...this is a very very good alternative because it´s cheap, it´s super easy to work with, and it´s pretty much good for all occasions.

Bryan: That is neat. Specially like if you don´t have like a drafting background. Or you´re not used to extruding models and making like a 3d thing, but you have worked with clay, you just wanna make something simple.

Fr. Robert: If you like to work with your hands. if you´re a visual person this is actually a better medium, because unlike a 3d printer where you have to have everything finalized before you start printing, you can change the design as you go. In fact, what I´ve seen some more advanced 3d printer guys do is, they´ll use something like InstaMorph to make the first design, and then they´ll either 3d scan it or they´ll draw their cad from that design so that they can get the final version on the 3d printer.

Bryan: That is cool. And it is, it is getting harder.

Fr. Robert: It will get harder and harder until it becomes like hard plastic. It will become the same consistency as these beads so, I mean, if you feel this, it´s gonna end up, this this strength. It´s got a nice density to it. It´s plastic, yeah.

Voiceover: So Bryan can we see your guy?

Bryan: My little guy?

Fr. Robert: So this is something that you did a lot.

Bryan: Oooohhh!!! I was wondering if you´d find those pictures.Yep, that was, um, That´s actually in my drafting class. Back in high school. So, uh, yep, I have lots of practice at making these little guys.

Fr. Robert: And as Beef said, the longer you play with it, the harder it gets.

Bryan: That´s terrible.

Fr. Robert: Now folks, we´ve got a special occasion, because…

Bryan: Episode 123.

Fr. Robert: Slow on the drum!

Bryan: He´s doing a bunch of other stuff back there.

Fr. Robert: But because it´s episode 123, we do have, the much promised, first flight video. We´re gonna show you the last steps to take your 250 class that we´ve been building over the last couple of weeks. And take it outside and put it in the air. So Alex, without further ado…because it´s episode 123…

      In the last edition of project Quad, we assembled the airframe, wired our electronics, tested the radio, set the proper rotation of our motors and calibrated the ESCs. Today we´ve got one last step before we can take our Quad on its maiden flight. Configuring the flight controller. Unlike most other controllers, the kk2.1.5 has its own screen, meaning that you don´t have to connect it to a laptop or a mobile device to change settings. As you grow more comfortable with flying and dialing in your configuration you can move to more feature filled flight controllers like my personal favorite the flip mwc. But for the novice there´s nothing like the kk´s ability to let you tweak your flight characteristics in the field with no extra gear. Power up your Quad and the kk board should be at its SAFE screen. The four buttons below the screen from left to right are: back, up, down and enter. Hit enter to drop into the menu. The first step is to low the proper motor layout. This tells the controller how many motors it has to use and what their positions are relative to the controller. Use the down key to navigate to load motor layout and hit enter. You´ll see a menu of preloaded configurations that include single and dual rotor helicopters, tricopters, septacopters, octacopters, plus mode, quads, and of course, our Xmode configuration Quadcopter. Navigate to Quadcopter X mode and hit enter. You´ll be asked to confirm your decision and hit yes. The screen should change to show the motor layout including the required motor rotation. If you followed our tutorial in the last project Quad segment, then your Quad will match the onscreen layout. But this is an excellent reference screen if you ever need to reassemble your quad. Next we need to configure the onboard accelerometer. Navigate to acc calibration and hit enter. Make sure your quad is on a solid, level surface, and that it´s free from vibration. Hit continue. Don´t touch the quad again until calibration is complete. Now we want to configure the self-level control. Navigate to mode settings, hit enter. The first entry should be labeled self-level and should read AUX or auxiliary. This means that you can use an auxiliary channel on your transmitter to turn the kk self-leveling feature on and off at will. You can also use stick and activate or deactivate the self-level with a stick command but I don´t recommend it unless you only have 4 channels. If you wired your quad as specified in the last project Quad segment, then channel 5 should be the on/off switch for self-leveling. If you´re using the Fly sky t6 transmitter and you want to reassign self-leveling to a more convenient input, then watch our segment on transmitters. The last setting we want to configure is the auto level itself. Navigate to self-level, and hit enter. For most, the default value should work fine on a 250 class Quad, but I like to turn down my p gains between 30 and 60. The P gain will regulate how quickly the controller will try to level the craft and too high of a P gain can cause oscillation, as the craft constantly overcorrects its level. Before we get into the air let’s do a quick check of our handywork to make sure that our quad will respond as we think it will. Put your quad on a leveled surface and turn on your transmitter. Connect the battery to the ESCs and verify that the kk has booted into safe mode. Position yourself so that you are behind and above your quad, for the front of the craft pointing away from you. Now arm the controller by moving the throttle to zero and pushing the stick to the right. You should here a beep and see the arming light turn on. Toggle your auxiliary channel number 5 and see if the self-level turns on and off. You´ll want self-leveling off for the following test. Take a few steps back, then give your Quad about 20% throttle. You´ll want to spin up the props but not take off. If you start to leave the ground, reduce throttle. Look for any uncontrolled vibrations or wobbles. Now move the right stick forward slightly until you see the craft start to tilt forward. Be gentle. You´re just checking input, you don´t want to flip your Quad. Move the stick back and see if it rocks back on to landing gear. Now move to the left and to the right, checking to see if the Quad leans into that position. Lastly, move the left stick left and right to see if the craft will rotate in the right direction. If any of these inputs fail to cause the expected action then you need to check your transmitter for reverse channels and your wiring for incorrect connections. Run through the last project Quad segment again and check those connections. When you´re done testing inputs, move the throttle to 0% to the left. This will disarm the controller. make sure to do this, before you ever pick up your Quad otherwise you risk the props spinning up if you tap the throttle. Once you´re satisfied that the Quad will respond properly to your inputs while in the air, it´s time for your maiden flight. Confirm that your kk is on in the safe screen. Then flip your auxiliary channel to turn self-leveling on. Once again, stand a safe distance behind your Quad with the front of the craft pointed away from you. Arm the craft, bring the throttle to about 30%, let it spin up then, continue to advance the throttle until your craft leaves the ground. Your controller should keep the craft level as it lifts off. If it starts to wobble, oscillate or out of control, chop the throttle. You can fix your Quad, you may not be able to fix what it runs into. Assuming that there were no problems, let the Quad rise until it´s about 4 feet off the ground. Modulate your throttle to keep your Quad at the same altitude while you use the right stick to hold position. You want to use small, constant inputs. Always be adjusting the flight of your Quad without large control inputs. You´ve probably just encountered the first challenge to flying, the ground effect. The prop creates a cushion of turbullance near the ground. the bigger the props, the bigger the cushion. As a result, the air near the ground is choppy and unpredictable. You´ll get a much smoother ride once you´re above that layer. About 4 feet. Hover. A lot. Use an entire battery or 12 to practice hovering. You can vary your altitude, but always keep it low enough so that chopping the throttle won´t cause extensive damage. Note that your Quad will be unstable if you try to bring it straight down. That´s because it has to fly through the turbulence it´s creating. If you want a smoother flight, always descend while moving. It does´t feel like much, but you´re learning the characteristics of your new Quad and your brain is learning to control your fingers to keep the Quad where you want it to be. At first, you should be practicing 3 inputs: elevator, eluron and throttle. keep the Quad´s rear pointed towards you, and don´t worry about rotating your craft just yet. Mix up the hovering practice with an occasional landing. Landing sounds easy but the problem is the mentioned ground effect. As your Quad gets closer to landing, it will want to hover just a few inches off the ground, even as you reduce throttle. Pick your landing spot, reduce throttle until you hit the ground effect. Correct your angle to keep your landing spot, then quickly reduce throttle to drop through the ground effect. Once you´ve mastered take-off, hovering and landing, it´s time to try something a bit more challenging. Walking the Quad. Find yourself an open stretch of field or wide abandoned street. Take off and place your Quad in front of you about 5 feet away. Now start walking and keep your quad at the same distance from you as you walk. You´re training your brain to handle multi vector spatial reasoning. In other words, your brain is learning how to adjust the flight of your quad while you are moving. Use another dozen or so batteries to walk the Quad. Once you´re comfortable with basic movement, practice moving your Quad from left to right all the while keeping it within your practice radius. When that becomes easy, practice rotating the Quad a complete 360 degrees as quickly as you can while it´s stationary. Making sure to manage the throttle to keep altitude. Once walking the Quad becomes second nature, it´s time to move on to the circle of death. okay it´s not really a circle of death, but it´s a good way to add ya in to your practice. You´ve been using the throttle, elevator in your practice thus far. but we haven´t actively rotated the craft while moving. The circle changes that. Take off and push your Quad about 10 feet from you. Now, without moving from the spot you´re standing in, start to slowly turn your body while keeping the Quad in front of you with its rear always facing your body. In order to do this, you´re going to have to use all four controls, on the right stick you´ll have to move left or right to keep the Quad in front of you, and forward and back to keep it a safe distance from your body. On the left stick you´ll need to use it to slowly rotate the craft in order to keep its rear pointed at you and the throttle to hold altitude as you turn. Start slowly then pick up the pace as you get accustomed to the control combination. If you start to get overwhelmed, stop your rotation and reset the Quad a safe distance before starting again. Once you´re comfortable with these exercises, you can move on to more challenging flight.

That folks is why you buy extra props.

Bryan: Yeah it looks like you might of broke something there.

Fr. Robert: Nope. No props were harmed in the making of that video.

Bryan: Except for that last one there.

Fr. Robert: Now, you know, here´s the thing….there are a few things that people disagree on training. For example, the flight test guys, who, we´re gonna have over on Padre´s corner in a bit, they will tell you to never chop power. I kind of train inside of a city even though I do have a field to myself, and so my thing is, if I´m training and I´m keeping it low, and I´m keeping it within you know 4 or 5 feet. If it starts to get away from me, I will chop power. Just because there are more things that I can damage with the Quad, than the Quad will be damaged by dropping 4 feet.

Bryan: Right. And for me, when I was out at my uncle´s ranch. I had plenty of space, nothing was gonna get hurt. But the Quad was so far away. I could´t tell which direction it was going. And like beads of sweat were coming down. I was like, don´t chop the throttle, don´t cut the throttle. It´s gonna go straight int a a creek.

Fr. Robert: So, what I would say is that´s like uh, when you´re starting, that´s your thing. That´s your go to move. But as you get more experienced, and as you start flying over, chopping the power becomes no longer an option. Because once you chop power, you lose all control over your Quad. You have no altittud control, it´s all gone. So, just remember this, if you start to get into trouble, have a checklist that you can run through really quickly in your head to slow things down. What you want is you want to give your brain time to catch up. That also means that you never put your Quad in a situation where it´s doing something too quickly. Like for example there´s one shot in that montage where I´m spinning it around, and I´m watching it really closely so I know when i´m gonna get the full rotation and I can stop it. You don´t wanna just do that randomly because then you end up with your Quad in a position that you don´t know and now your sticks don´t respond.

Bryan: And then you do something that´s more reactionary and it’s like oh, it´s going in the wrong direction.

Fr. Robert: That´s the worst part. The worst part is you do something you think is gonna fix it, and it makes it worse. And now your brain´s just going ahhhhggg. You just chop.

Bryan: I went back over my go pro footage and it felt like, for me, it felt like it was forever, but in the go pro footage it was like 5 seconds. But it was floating out and I just was trying to hover it and figure out which direction it was going.

Fr. Robert: Time slows down.

Bryan: I wish, that would´ve helped.

Fr. Robert: The other thing is, and again the guys over at flight test they´re big on this, they tell their beginners to learn with the self-leveling off. That´s absolutely a way to do it, and they´re right, in that once you learn how to fly without any of the self-levels assist, you´ll be golden. I kind of go the other way in that confidence is really what´s gonna help you. Specially confidence on the orientation, so what happens on your perspective and your control inputs. So I like to fly with the self-level on and then I turn it off once I start to feel a bit confident and you get a feel for what the Quad will do by itself.

Bryan: Because even, starting with this, like I feel 100% comfortable with it, but it´s still a pretty big jump to this. And I would like to get a feel for it before I turn off all the computer aides.

Fr. Robert: Now, uh, a nice medium is, and that is why we suggested the flip 1.5 the MWZ for this. It will do horizon, which essentially will let you go all acrobatic, so it´s like flying it on full manual, until you release the sticks. If you release the sticks it will default back to self-level, which is nice because like for example on the MWZ when I was doing that flip in the montage, and as I´m going into the turn, I just flip a switch and it turns off all the self-level assist.

Bryan: I feel like there should be a little sound that says like: Luke, you´ve turned off your targeting computer.

Fr. Robert: I wish there was a microphone in my brain because it was like, Oh God this is gonna be bad, this is gonna me bad, click. Ahhh, ahhhh, turn it back on.

Bryan: It should be like a big red button.

Fr. Robert: But the big thing is this folks, no matter what you´re gonna build, I would suggest no matter what, start with a trainer. If you learn on one of these...yeah, we still fly these, right now it´s raining in California, I fly these things indoors. It´s a great way to just get your hands on something that flies like one of the big ones.

Bryan: It´s the only one that I can fly into Berk without him, you know, coming to hurt me.

Fr. Robert: Okay, but learn on that and then move up to one of these. And above all else, just use your head. Don´t be like those DJI fools that you see on you tube, who are flying over a beach of people who have no idea it´s up there, or who are flying it into the side of a building because they decided..

Bryan: Or above the clouds, and you lose GPS.

Fr. Robert: My favorite are the ones that, we´re flying through Chicago, and then they say, Oh, we could´t have known that the signal would cut out as we went past the building and then it went returned home and slammed into the side. That´s the sort of stuff that it doesn´t have to happen if you´re safe about how you fly your Quads.

Bryan: As much as I would love having a pilot’s license. I don´t wanna have to have one for flying my Quads.

Fr. Robert: Stop messing it up! Do it right.

Bryan: Alex would be fine with it though.

Fr. Robert: He´s the guy on google. I don´t wanna fly that, I wanna fly the real thing. Ok so, this is gonna be the last Quad copter episode that we´re gonna have of the year. We´ve got another arch, a big arch coming up because we´ve gotta go into some of the more advanced topics. Once we start getting up to these v 6, 7, 8,10, 12 inch props, you´re gonna have to learn how to balance them, we´re gonna show you how to do that. We´re gonna show you a bit more about power systems. We´re gonna show you about, some of the more cool things you can do with acro modes, so, if you wanna learn how to flip your Quad, or how to do some crazy back and yank turns, we´re gonna teach you how to do that. We´re also doing builds. We´re gonna build a Trycopter, we´re building a jugcopter. Actually we got a challenge where we´re just going to scrounge to the basement and find something that we´re gonna turn into a Quad.

Bryan: I was wondering why all this styrofoam and stuff was piling up behind me.

Fr. Robert: Actually right now in this studio, we´ve got the guys from game of drones, that make a practically indestructible Quad copter, hopefully we´ll get our hands on that and we´ll prove them wrong.

Bryan: Google search game of drones, I think it is game of drones.biz

Fr. Robert: Wow Bryan that´s been an awful lot of Know How in 2014.

Bryan: Looking back on 2014, you could tell we had a good time doing this show.

Fr. Robert: We did! You know what? I use the same standard for Know How that I do for when I celebrate mass. As long as no one dies, it´s been good.

Bryan: As far as I´m aware, it´s been alright.

Fr. Robert: Now, we´ve got...we´ve got plenty planned for 2015. It´s not just Quadcopters. We´re actually doing another upgrade project. We´re gonna show you how you can get some crazy performance without spending a crazy, crazy amount of money. We´ve got some science projects. We know that we´re coming up to a time in the year where high school students and even a couple of grade school students are getting together their science fair type delay bots. We´re gonna show you some of our favorites, maybe it´ll give you a couple of ideas for something that you can do. By the way, yeah Quad copters are coming back.

Bryan: Yeah, cause, there´s the next step, in the Quadcopter segment, which is FPV, which is probably the coolest part of the Quadcopters series.

Fr. Robert: Which is freaking awesome.

Bryan: And, I´m planning on doing, making beer, because, we´re like that.

Fr. Robert: We´re gonna be doing coffee, like the perfect cup of coffee.

Bryan: So, we´ll be featuring some food stuff in know how.

Fr. Robert: You know one thing I noticed in those videos, I was so fat!

Bryan: I don´t know, I think it´s all the cameras that we used to have. We´ve cut back in 2015.

Fr. Robert:Oh folks, don´t forget to stop by our show notes page, because that´s where you can find all of our previous episodes. If we´ve got a project that you wanna check out, and by the way, our website is gonna be changing this year to make it easier for you to search for projects. You gotta stop by, where can they find that Bryan?

Bryan: That will always be, and is Twit.TV/KH and I encourage all of you to go back, watch previous episodes, check out the show notes if you had any questions about something.

Fr. Robert: Because we normally leave pretty detailed notes. So, if you want to do the step by step, we´ve got it written up there. You don´t have to watch over and over.

Bryan: And all the links to where you can get the Quadcopter parts, or like the step by step stuff that we´ve done so…

Fr. Robert: Because ultimately the whole reason why we do this is we want you to take these projects home. And that actually decides the kind of projects that we choose.

Bryan: And there´s a place for those people to display their stuff.

Fr. Robert:. Exactly, that can do it on the google plus group and that´s also where we pull our ideas. just go to Gplus.to/twitkh or jump on to google plus and search for know how. Join the group. Make it your 2015 New Year’s resolution, and who knows, maybe you´re gonna be connected with the next great maker, the next great DIYer or maybe your project will end up right here on the show.

Bryan: Definetly.

Fr. Robert: And if you´re not into Google plus, you know we´re also on the Twitter, you can find me at Twitter.com/padresj, that´s @Padresj

Bryan: And I am @cranky_hippo

Fr. Robert: And don´t forget you can also find our TD Alex Gumpel at twitter.com/anelf3 thats @anelf3. If you wanna find out what he does to keep us on the rails, that´s where you gotta go.

Bryan: That´s right.

Fr. Robert: Until next time, I´m Father Robert Ballecer

Bryan: And I´m Bryan Burnett.

Fr. Robert: And now that you know how...

Bryan: Go do it!

Fr. Robert: Bye, bye.