Drones.

[Interceptor]

Hey Lori,I am looking at buying the exact same drone that's in your first post,so how does it perform,and is it worth purchasing?Thanks

 

[Loru]

Hey Lori,I am looking at buying the exact same drone that's in your first post,so how does it perform,and is it worth purchasing?Thanks

TBH I wouldn't recomend it. It's toy grade drone with next to none power making useless in the wind and terrible 640x480 camera. FPV beyond 20 meter range gets lots of latency, and with camera it goes only for ~8 minutes.

If you want casual flying, get Parrot or DJi. If you want more advanced stuff, get RTF 3 or 4 inch FPV racer.

 

[Interceptor]

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Evil_Onyx]

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...ft-systems-drones-mid-air-collision-study.pdf

Small Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (drones)
Mid-Air Collision Study

6. Conclusions
6.1 Unlike birdstrikes, the aviation industry is only beginning to understand the risks of
drone collisions. This study has resulted in an increase in knowledge in this area.
6.2 It is clear from the results that helicopter windscreens could be critically damaged by
collisions with a drone in several realistic scenarios. It has also been shown that
helicopter tail rotors can also be severely damaged.
6.3 Whilst more resilient than helicopters, the modelling and testing in this study has
shown that airliner windscreens could be critically damaged by mid-air collisions with
4 kilogram class quadcopter components, and 3.5 kilogram class fixed-wing drones
with exposed metallic components at high, but realistic speeds. These impact speeds
would usually be encountered when the aircraft is at higher altitudes, 10,000 feet or
above, but aircraft do sometimes operate at these speeds at lower altitudes.
6.4 The testing has also shown that the construction of a drone can make a significant
difference in the impact of a collision. Where the toughest and densest drone
components were covered with a plastic casing, or did not hit the windscreen first,
the impact of the collisions was lessened.
6.5 With regard to the comparison with the severity of a birdstrike, it was realised that
drones can cause significantly more damage than a bird of equivalent mass at the
same speed. This seems to be due to the hard metallic components present in
drones and means that birdstrike certification cannot necessarily be used as a
prediction of complete protection from drones.

 

[steph]

yup, mine's done . Clipped the side of the roof when Ivwas bringing it down. Now, IIRC there were spare propelers in its box, but I don't know where that is.

 

[Proximus]

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...ft-systems-drones-mid-air-collision-study.pdf

Small Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (drones)
Mid-Air Collision Study

In a similar fashion to air weapons, I can see drones being licensed in the UK in the near future.
The reality is they are just as dangerous if not more so.

 

[Urwumpe]

Some interesting concept here:

A drone with just two single-blade propellers....

http://www.research-drone.com/DuoCopter.html

 

[Artlav]

Some interesting concept here:

Sounds rather energy-inefficient - it would take massive pulses to accelerate and decelerate the blades fast enough to meaningfully change speed within one side of the rotation.

Also, i predict this thing would sound like a jackhammer in flight. Annoying pulse-prop sound.

---------- Post added at 15:30 ---------- Previous post was at 15:26 ----------

Found the english switch and the video.
They don't actually explain how they change speed or show sideways motion in the video, so not much extra there.

However, the thing is patented, so it's effectively irrelevant anyway.

 

[Ravenous]

There was a single rotor model copter that came out recently - anyone see that? It was using a normal multi-blade propeller I think so not like the ones above, but it was a pretty clever piece of control work to get it flying...

Edit: found a link. ETH in Zurich, "The Monospinner":

http://robohub.org/the-monospinner-worlds-mechanically-simplest-controllable-flying-machine/

 

[jgrillo2002]

I'm looking to get the Mavic pro.
https://store.dji.com/product/mavic-pro

Is it worth the price tag? we have a hundred acre property with forest, fields and a stream.

 

[HarvesteR]

I own a Bebop 2, an AR2 drone and a Rolling Spider minidrone. They're all lots of fun. The Bebop has a badass camera, the AR2 is highly moddable, and the minidrone is great for indoors and training.

Seeing this thread though I feel like I didn't put enough effort in assembling them.

The Mavic Pro now does seem to be the best option if you want a camera drone, because it solves what I think is the biggest problem with drones, in that they're meant to be used as cameras, which means you're supposed to take them with you to interesting places, but they're also awkwardly shaped and take up an entire piece of luggage.

The Mavic doesn't have that problem, it folds up in a very neat way. Even its controller folds into a more compact shape.

Cheers

 

[Proximus]

I'm looking to get the Mavic pro.
https://store.dji.com/product/mavic-pro

Is it worth the price tag? we have a hundred acre property with forest, fields and a stream.

The quality of the Mavic is really very good.
Extremely stable footage in an easy to use and compact airframe with decent range.

The only gripe I have is with the video quality at anything above 25fps.
HD and 4k footage can suffer from aliasing and moire at 60fps so I tend to keep the frame rates low to get the best quality out of the sensor.

Worth the price tag IMHO.

 

[Woo482]

Finally built a quadcopter that stays in the air for more than five minutes without having some type of failure (after many rebuilds and spending more money than I'd like to admit :lol

 

[treelovee]

You all have such cool drones that I want one so badly!

 

[Fabri91]

I too built a thing: new inexpensive 210mm quadcopter, this time with presentable electrical connections and solderings.

I essentially followed this guide:

I fitted an SBUS receiver (and related transmitter module) which makes the electrical connection a lot simpler since only three wires need to be run from the receiver to the flight controller.

No camera installed as of yet, even though the chassis is built for one.
Any recommendations there? The ideal solution would be a camera with integrated transmitter and recording function (think FPV camera and something GoPro-esque in one) but I have no idea wether such a combination is available and what it would cost.

All-up weight as seen is about 450g.

---------- Post added at 17:57 ---------- Previous post was at 17:37 ----------

Also tried flying for the first time in "rate" mode, without auto-level. That'll take some getting used to!

 

[Woo482]

Your images don't seem to be working, maybe a privacy setting?
Rate mode is tons of fun, just try and avoid doing this :lol:

Camera wise I'm currently running a Foxeer Monster along with a Xiaomi Yi for HD recording, I haven't had any issues with this setup; I've used the Runcam Split in the past which integrates the FPV camera and HD recording into one unit, but I had too many reliability issues and ended up swapping it out for the current setup

 

[Fabri91]

Ah, now that was a serious impact! Nah, I'm still getting the hand of hovering and basic LOS maneuvering in rates.

FPV flying is technically illegal here :/. Thanks for the suggestions regarding cameras: right now I got an older HD camera with a similar form factor to the one you linked but image quality is a bit meh.
Out of curiosity, what are you using for FPV image transmission and on-screen display?

---------- Post added at 20:28 ---------- Previous post was at 20:27 ----------

Image links are fixed now.

 

[Woo482]

Well, she's a little cleaner than mine is at the moment! :lol:

My Matek F405-AIO flight controller has integrated OSD, so that handles that for me (along with power distribution & regulated 5v and 12v, it's an awesome little board!).
My current VTX is a Matek VTX-HV which has taken a beating and is probably due for a replacement. I've not had any major complaints with this, all the faults on it are my own doing (like the antenna connector breaking, resulting in that horrible solder job :lol though I'm likely to look at one of the higher end TBS models when I replace it, just for a little bit more range.

---------- Post added at 20:18 ---------- Previous post was at 20:17 ----------

Here's the full (I think!) parts list for the build:

Frame: 
	GepRC Leopard LX5 - http://geprc.com/product/gep-lx5/
Motors:
	emax RS2306-2400KV - https://www.hobbyrc.co.uk/emax-rs2306-2400kv-red-bottom-racespec-motor
Camera:
	FPV - Foxeer Monster V2
	HD - Xiaomi Yi
VTX:
	Matek HV - http://www.mateksys.com/?portfolio=vtx-hv
Flight Controller:
	Matek F405-AIO - http://www.mateksys.com/?portfolio=f405-aio
Radio RX:
	TBS Crossfire Micro receiver V2 - http://team-blacksheep.com/products/prod:crossfire_mrx
Radio TX:
	TBS Crossfire Micro TX module in a Taranis Q X7 http://www.team-blacksheep.com/products/prod:crossfire_micro_tx https://www.frsky-rc.com/product/taranis-q-x7-2/
ESCs:
	Chaos BLHeli_S 30A

By the way, it may be better to stick your battery connector on a short length of wire rather than directly to the PDB, it should lessen the stress to the board in any impacts that end with the battery coming off

 

[Fabri91]

Thanks! Yes, those all in one boards seem to be really convenient. The 4-1 ESC I got made assembly a lot easier on its own. And good point on the connector.

---------- Post added at 22:41 ---------- Previous post was at 22:21 ----------

Also since it's been a couple of rainy weeks, here's an indoor demonstration of ground effect in the basement:

I was surprised by how stable and self-correcting the effect is and how much slower the motors were turning compared to a "clean air" hover.

 

[STS]

Last year I built a multicopter based on a Tarot Ironman 650 chassis and a Raspberry Pi connected to the Internet via a 4G dongle to act as the RC receiver and video stream server.


[ame="http://youtu.be/WcwMg_XjmfI"]TurryCopter - Presentation (Tarot Ironman 650) - YouTube[/ame]