The General Drone-Related Thread

Thought about getting one of the new Phantoms later this year or maybe even an Inspire, if I can raise enough cash. I had a Phantom 2 and got on really well with it, so I have decided to sell my Yuneec Q500 Typhoon. It's the first model they made, not the 4K job so I will be selling it quite cheaply. I will be putting in the classifieds section shortly, but just wanted to make people aware.
Allan
 
Well had an email back from WEX today to tell me that my phantom had been fixed and is ready to be returned, sadly they couldn't tell me what had been done so I'll just have to wait till its back I guess, but at the moment I'm just very impressed at their turn around times
 
Regarding batteries, for the phantom 3 standard, I notice some sellers have a compatible battery for £79. Given the original costs £125, that is, a significant saving.

Anyone have any knowledge of these 3rd party batteries?
 
johnnypanic said:
Regarding batteries, for the phantom 3 standard, I notice some sellers have a compatible battery for £79. Given the original costs £125, that is, a significant saving.

Anyone have any knowledge of these 3rd party batteries?
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To be honest think about it logically, would you want to trust a non-OEM battery when your several hundred pound copter is hundreds of foot up in air? More over if there was a battery failure that brought down your craft it's 100% certain you'd have voided your warranty

All for a >£50 saving
 
MWHCVT said:
To be honest think about it logically, would you want to trust a non-OEM battery when your several hundred pound copter is hundreds of foot up in air? More over if there was a battery failure that brought down your craft it's 100% certain you'd have voided your warranty

All for a >£50 saving
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Hard to argue with that logic.

Just the miserable sod, in me, doesn't want to pay £125 for a battery :eek:
 
DJI are announcing *something* on the 1st of March, lots of speculation about a Phantom 4 but not sure that will be for a while yet.
In any case a new model will probably be significantly more expensive and not available for weeks.
There was a clear major improvement between the P2 and P3 which was well worth going for, not sure I could be tempted by any new features as yet.
 
4wd said:
DJI are announcing *something* on the 1st of March, lots of speculation about a Phantom 4 but not sure that will be for a while yet.
In any case a new model will probably be significantly more expensive and not available for weeks.
There was a clear major improvement between the P2 and P3 which was well worth going for, not sure I could be tempted by any new features as yet.
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it will be the P4. there are loads of leaked images of it already and they have been out testing it recently so my guess is it will be that.
 
wallyboy said:
What do I need to look for camera wise on the Drone, I started flying Helicopters last year,
with the view to get a Drone for photography.
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A lot of the drones already come with a camera supplied, e.g. phantom 3 has camera and gimbal.
 
wallyboy said:
I realise that,:)
Is there any preference to the cameras on the drones, don't want to spend money then realise the camera on drone isn't up to the job,
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If you don't want to buy separate drone, gimbal and camera, then your best option is the DJI Inspire 1 Pro for stills or DJI Inspire 1 Raw for video.
 
wallyboy said:
I realise that,:)
Is there any preference to the cameras on the drones, don't want to spend money then realise the camera on drone isn't up to the job,
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Cameras on the Phantom range are very good. Look at youtube, should be able to locate, various sample videos shot with the various models.
 
MWHCVT said:
In other news got my P3P back this morning, just charging up the batteries then I'll be giving it a full test flight and work down to make sure it's working correctly
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And it's not :( worked for the first flight, though was very skittish with an odd yaw when turning (nearly put me into a tree) alas I figured maybe needs a compass calibration, so bring it back in, calibrate the only for it to now develop exactly the same issue as I returned it for...really not a happy bunny at all
 
Do the IMU on a level surface, as a matter of urgency - whether it says you need to or not.
For best results it wants to be perfectly level, cold, and have the app ready to go ASAP after turning it on a it soon warms inside, affecting the barometer.
Compass afterwards away from anything metallic - outside
 
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4wd said:
Do the IMU on a level surface, as a matter of urgency - whether it says you need to or not.
For best results it wants to be perfectly level, cold, and have the app ready to go ASAP after turning it on a it soon warms inside, affecting the barometer.
Compass afterwards away from anything metallic - outside
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Well do that before I call WEX up (y) it's getting very annoying, I'm starting to regret ever doing the damn firmware update now as all this started with the update FFS
 
I'm replacing all 6 ESC on my RD290 mini hex, they're having sync issues randomly, that can (and has) lead to a crash.
 
I don't see much but a lot of additional complicated things to go wrong to be honest!
Little mention of the expected range other than maybe 5 minutes more flight time.
The camera seems unlikely to deliver much better results in most conditions.
The object avoidance sounds like the P3 VPS system - not something you want to be relying on to the point I'd hope it can be turned off.

It will be several weeks yet before tit's widely available and various extras like additional batteries come out.
Meanwhile the P3 range is now tried and tested - and discounted so superb value especially the Advanced.
 
As usual a lot of what they are doing is correcting what they did wrong with the previous model. Insurance that covers 'normal use' (was 'return to china' mode 'normal'?) at £270 per year seems pretty much essential as it's even more integrated than a P3.

With the P3 series: Burnt out ESC (fairly common fault)...new mainboard, vibration damage to the flight controller ...new mainboard, small prang ...good chance you'll need a new mainboard as the support cradle will be broken (and they have only just released that as a spare part) and the FC then bashes against the GPS shielding.

Given that they are turning these into 'drones' it seems odd to me that they have only added sensors to the front. Haven't noticed the specs in terms of distance the sensors >might< (based on the P3 VPS ones!) work over but if the same as the ultrasonic+camera ones on the underneath then you'd have half a second for them to react at full tilt....and at full tilt it can't reduce to hover in that time even at full back pedal.
 
wallyboy said:
Does the phantom work OK with iPad mini 2
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I don't use fruit software but DJI develop their software for that before droid.

There is better software around and far cheaper gadgets to run it on.....most of it is geared towards droids

wallyboy said:
So in basic terms would the PP3 be s good buy.
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The Phantom 3 Advanced is probably the best value for money out of the P3 variants. There are other brands out there and everyone is dropping prices at the moment on the higher end hobby models.

Both your questions would be better answered by the quadcopter owning community bulletin boards.
 
morfis said:
I don't use fruit software but DJI develop their software for that before droid.

There is better software around and far cheaper gadgets to run it on.....most of it is geared towards droids



The Phantom 3 Advanced is probably the best value for money out of the P3 variants. There are other brands out there and everyone is dropping prices at the moment on the higher end hobby models.

Both your questions would be better answered by the quadcopter owning community bulletin boards.
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Cheers mate, i went for the p3, a doddle to fly, more batteries are needed, low light tonight i rattled of some shots quite pleased with results.
 
My thoughts on the P4 is that it doesn't offer enough features that I value for what would be an extra £500+ compared to my P3 Advanced, a more adavanced camera (stills) spec would have been better, At 0ver £1200 in the air, that's a lot of money to lose to a component failure such as an ESC or a fatigued prop and the batteries are different for the sake of 3 minutes supposed extra flight time. The electronics are highly intergrated on the P3, onto a single and very expensive main board and a change of the shell is a significant task judging by the Youtube videos on the subject, I guess the P4 will be the same. I love my P3 for its capabilities as an aerial platform but I am cautious about flying it over large bodies of water or areas where it may be impossible to retrieve.

I decided to buy a second cheaper drone with gimbal at a third of the cost of the P3A, a scarcely used DJI Flamewheel F450. These are much cheaper, about a third of the cost of my Phantom although some people on the likes of Ebay are asking silly money in some cases. Same flight controller, with GPS, Return to Home and Intelligent Modes, but a lesser flight time and a need to add an FPV camera feed and a 4.8 mhz TX/RX if required. Batteries are just normal Lipos so are a fraction of the £124 cost of the P3 battery. The F450 is a modular design and everything is easily replaced in the event of a crash. Replacement genuine DJI arms are £4 each, EScs are circa £20, motors £15, all less secondhand. The quad needs careful setting up and a lot of research in my case, but setting up my own transmitter and receiver (DJi DT7/DR16), the quad gains and defaults via a laptop has been a lot of fun and very satisfying. I look forward to flying it around the sky without having to be too precious about it.
 
I'm OK with the price of it, considering the P3 Pro was similar when it first came out.
However the main new features centre on collision avoidance which is far better done by the pilot.
You really don't want to be flying close to the things it's supposed to detect and avoid anyway, and I doubt it will 'see' cables and thin twigs which most commonly catch you out now.
There is also nothing to detect obstruction behind which is surprising since getting slightly disorientated when further away is commonplace.
The more integrated gimbal but otherwise similar camera looks stronger, but the P3 version is OK if you don't crash it.

It's annoying that having changed the P2 batteries so you had to buy more at £100+ each for the P3, they have changed them again.
I suspect this is deliberate as most users will want at least a couple of spares.
 
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