Hey, I’m still dirty about that!
Can any of these things follow you around out of the box, autonomously? I want to play with a drone but I don’t want to fly it. I want it to follow me around or go to a location I tell it via GPS app.
Are we there yet OTS or is that all stuff you have to hack in yourself?
The follow functionality is there in a few different ways (Mavic uses visual recognition, I think Karma tracks the controller), but it’s very v1.0 right now. IE: Mavic can lose you if you’re moving fast. Karma has no obstacle avoidance so it might fly into a tree following you. Guessing it’ll be a lot more solid in about a year.
The GPS functionality is there, though. With the Mavic or Phantom 3/4 you can download a third-party app called Litchi that lets you fully plot out a course, with altitude and camera commands, and send the drone to do it all automatically.
I have Litchi but haven’t used it yet. It uses the official DJI API, but I’m always nervous about automatic modes. I haven’t even tried Return to Home on the Mavic yet – I prefer to manually fly when everything’s working.
Oh man how can you have a feature called “Return To Home” and not try it! That’d be the first button I pushed.
Let me research the Mavic a bit. I’ve always wanted one of these things.
Oh and don’t take my stories as an indication of what it is like to fly something like the DJI camera platforms - completely different thing. The little jobbies I am learning on lack the fruit like GPS and altitude hold precisely because you want them to be acrobatic. You will still have a little practising to do, but I think it will be markedly easier with access to those features.
Do you camera drone folk also tend to fly much in headless mode? I presume it might be a handy mode, depending on what you are filming (ie yourself).
So it doesn’t have object avoidance then, which is … bad. But still, pretty cool.
Return to Home on the Mavic does in fact have object avoidance. You can also set an altitude to rise up to before heading to your (2D) GPS position. It’ll attempt to fly over obstacles in its path, though, too.
It’s vaporware. They stopped taking orders in October but still haven’t shown any sign of actually shipping.
And the basic design is flawed because it’s a “follow me” drone with zero obstacle avoidance. So unless you need a follow-me drone for the beach or wide-open fields…
Yep. Though I’ve seen one YouTube video (with pre-release firmware, so maybe this has gotten better?) where one didn’t see a small branch with spread-apart leaves and flew into it. So that dropped my decision to trust object avoidance as a solution!
Yeah, here’s a Phantom 4 (same technology) not noticing a tree. Obstacle avoidance is still v1.0.
Thanks @sharaleo, now I’ve gone out and bought one (off ebay)… ;)
I used to fly a little Blade Micro chopper a while back, I think it’s time to try out a quad.
My (small, tech consulting) company gives all the employees a tech-related gift each year. In years past they’ve given out iPads, XBoxes, GoPro cameras, etc. This year’s gift was the Hubsan X4 drone.
It seems to be a decent little entry-level drone, priced at about $300 (I’m sure my company got a bulk deal for much less). It’s got an HD camera that seems to shoot reasonable movies and take pics – not a 4K camera like the Mavic or DJI Phantom, but a GoPro-level 1080p.
After a single test flight and ten minutes of playing around with it it seems to be a little iffy. Although it’s easy to control and steer, the GPS station-keeping seemed to be fairly off… it seemed to drift one way or the other a great deal. This MIGHT be because I was keeping it below a 100 feet or so (I live next to an airport and didn’t want to run afoul of the law), and with all the houses and trees it might never have gotten a good “lock” on the six or so satellites it says that it saw. Likewise the “return home” feature that theoretically sends it back to the same spot that it was originally took off from was spotty – the first time it seemed to get within a couple feet, but the second time (with what seemed like clearer lines-of-sight), it was off by a good 20 feet, which is terrible even for a car-mounted GPS. I’m REASONABLY certain that these flaws might be correctable with some fine-tuning; I probably need to read the manual a bit more.
Also, the “follow me” feature where the drone is supposed to lock on to the controller and follow you around while pointing the camera at you at all times did not seem to work. I’m willing to put that down to “user error” right now; I’ll probably do some research on it.
The main points against it are the lack of a gyroscope and (most significantly) the lack of a gimbal for the camera - this means that you’ll never really get the drone to look “down” at you or even to center a camera target if you’re looking to properly frame a shot. The camera angle is fixed, which limits its ability to be used as a good video-capture device.
On the other hand, it was VERY easy to control. I was never in any danger of flying into the (many) trees, houses, cars and whatnot around us and the RC device was pretty intuitive in terms of taking pictures and setting the controls.
So anyway, it seems pretty decent for a high-level toy or low-level hobby drone. It should scratch the itch that I described in the above: a lightweight device that I can take with us hiking or kayaking or snorkeling off the beach in Florida this summer. If I get a huge amount of use out of it, then perhaps I will look to upgrade to a better model like the Mavic or Phantom next year.
Very nice! I’ve flown a few RTF helis and they weren’t really my bag, I am now dying to get a Mavic Pro:
You still digging yours Vesper?
Absolutely. It’s just been too cold to fly lately. Waiting for a nice Colorado 60 degree winter day to take some mountain footage.
Stupid question: you just mean it’s too cold for your comfort, or does temperature literally affect the quadcopters?
Both, actually. It’s not rated to operate under freezing (32 degrees F).
Loving my Mavic!
Pardon the Facebook link, but check out this 360-degree photo I shot with mine. (26 photos stitched together.)
That was my first try, and I didn’t have time to do any editing on the photo to fix the color balance, etc. Anxious to give it another try soon when weather allows!
BTW, Vesper, according to the DJI guys over RCGroups, you can fly in colder weather as long as it’s relatively dry and you keep the drone (specifically, the battery) warm before you fly. If there’s extreme cold you could have other issues like brittle props. Some info and links in this thread on the Phantom.
It was about 30 degrees when I shot the 360 above, no issues.
Man that 360 pic is awesome!
That’s really baller Denny, nice job!
New today:
Please keep me in mind if you find anyone with a Fly More package in stock, I am not going to prepay on Newegg or whore myself on Ebay. When it’s in stock some where I will get one.
No Christmas miracle for me, still waiting!
Anyone get new drones for the holidays? If you want to start howling use Twitter search for tweets with"lost drone"
“You actually can fly within 5 miles of most airports; you just have to call the tower first and alert them of your location, and you may have to fly lower to be safe. It’s 1.5 miles that’s the hardcore no-fly zone.”
You have no clue how annoying it is to be CiC/WS/dude in charge and get tons of phone calls about drones that we’d never otherwise give a crap about.
Not saying to not call, but…
Happy UASing. :D