As some communities get ready for big fireworks displays for the July 4th holiday, others are making different plans — including drone light shows.
An Oakland entrepreneur is taking his small business to new heights and capitalizing on the increasing popularity of drone light shows as an alternative to fireworks displays.
Inside John Eric Henry’s office in Oakland’s Jack London Square, he likes to create 3D animations of things flying in the night.
“This is where the magic happens,” said Henry, owner of Pinnacle Drone Light Shows . “This office used to be called the Holodeck [a Star Trek reference], but now it’s called Area 211 in honor of Area 51.”
But rather than build UFOs, Henry likes to build and tell stories by programming and mapping the flight paths of drones.
“Each drone represents a pixel or sphere,” said Henry.
For the past six years, Henry has slowly grown his drone light show business at a time when cities and counties are thinking about or even shifting away from fireworks shows.