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Originally Posted by navy2kcoupe
Pretty neat Rich! Was the video all one flight? Did you cut out any of the footage? Certainly seems to be a very stable video platform, and the camera movements were nice and smooth and slow. Does the controller let you move the camera at varying speeds, or are you limited to one speed? In some of the videos, it seemed like we were in a helicopter looking at the scenery! From the looks of it, you got your moneys worth! Heck, a Go-Pro is right around that price and doesn't have a drone platform to go with it. What's the spec on flight time with a fully charged battery (or batteries)? Keep posting the videos, Rich! They're informative and interesting.
Andy  |
That was just one flying session and the video was taken continuously. The camera seems to have a 2gb limit on video file size, so it broke the session up into three separate files which I merely stitched back together when I rendered it. I didn't do any sort of corrections or changes to the raw video you see here, and did not edit out anything except at the end when the camera was pointing straight down at that orange and black platform I was using. I forgot to point the camera forward after landing...
The camera can move independently from the drone, but only from pointing straight ahead to pointing straight down. Speed is relative to the amount of pressure that you put on a control wheel on the controller, so you can control speed of the movement pretty effectively. And lateral movement has to be done by moving the drone itself. The three axis gimbal seems to be real effective at making those movements seem very smooth and controlled.
The drone is supposed to get 27 minutes flight time from a single battery, but since it is recommended to start thinking about landing with just 30 percent of the battery charge remaining, I think expecting 20 minutes would be more realistic. When it gets to 10 percent (I think) I believe that the drone just starts to descend for a landing, like it or not. So it is probably going to be a good idea for me to heed the 30 percent warning. I think there was something like 55 percent battery charge remaining when I started that flight, as I used up quite a bit doing the calibrations and updates.
I did get two spare batteries delivered today, so that would mean about an hour's worth of flying time, but in three separate sessions, as of course I would need to land the drone to change batteries when needed.
Yeah, so far this thing is pretty impressive, I think. I do need to play around with some of the video settings, however, as there did seem to be some noise in the video when the scene was moving. Of course, this could just be an inherent limitation of using 30 fps video on a moving platform. I've just got more experimentation to do to see what seems to work best, I suppose.
Had to run some errands today, so no flying. Perhaps tomorrow I'll be able to try it out some more. Supposed to be cloudy all day, but as long as it isn't raining or too windy, that should be OK.
Oh, Connie mentioned that this drone is VERY loud, as she could hear it quite well from behind the house while I was out near the garage. So as for people claiming that people are likely to spy on others using these sorts of things, I seriously doubt it. No way you can sneak up on someone with a drone like this. And since the camera is by design wide angled, you would have to get very close to someone to even make out any details. Certainly close enough that the noise would be nearly impossible to ignore.
But I guess this is another one of those hyped up "fake news" things that seem to abound these days.
BTW, I can see what the camera sees on my attached cell phone quite clearly, so it should be interesting when I finally get brave enough to send it off over areas of my own property. And as hinted at in this video I already took, I will be able to easily inspect the gutters on the garage to see when I need to clean them out again of the debris that gets caught in them. Was getting kind of old to have to haul out the 12 foot ladder just to take a look see. This drone seems to be very controllable as long a I take care to ONLY move the drone in the direction the camera is pointing when I am near any sort of obstacle. I've watched a lot of crash videos on YouTube and the greater majority of them were caused when the operator moved the drone into an obstacle that was not visible from the camera. So that is an error I am going to try real hard to avoid.
This drone doesn't have a "follow me" mode, nor does it have a microphone for the camera. Too bad, as something I would like to do someday is to have a drone like this behind the blue vette and have it follow me while I launch. I don't think any drone could keep up with the vette for long, though. But still, would be interesting, I think. I've never really heard the car from outside, and some people claim it is downright awesome sounding. I think the car would even be loud enough to be heard over the noise of the drone itself.
