There's more than a few quad flyers around here so I thought it was worth setting up a generic thread. So: What do you fly? Do you have any footage/video you want to share? Recommendations, reviews, etc? I'll kick off proceedings: I have a Hubsan X4 H107C (HD) which I've been using to learn to fly: If chiptunes aren't your thing then you're going to want to mute these videos: I'm (slowly) getting the hang of flying so I'm looking to move up to a bigger & better quadcopter. I'm more interested in aerial photography than racing so I'm currently I'm considering either the Hubsan H501S: Or the Up Air UPair One: The UPair One is currently winning my affections, since it has a stabilised 1080P camera on a two-axis gimbal and FPV. The Hubsan has a 1080P camera but doesn't have a gimbal, although it does have a longer range and a "follow me" mode. Over to you!
One of the most exciting hobbies around atm. The speed in which this hobby is progressing is insane and remind me of the days when pc gear was out of date in 6 months. Personally I am only really interested in freestyle flying rather than racing. Tried racing but end up doing my own thing with flips and rolls etc! Currently have 8 different quads at the moment of various sizes but I cant get enough of the 180 size ones (QAV180 frame) My little quad wall... The missing peg is for my 238mm Lowrider that is currently in bits due to a failing voltage reg, This one.. Because of this. 12v removed and 5v one left on. My TX and Goggles.... Taranis x9d+ with speaker upgrade and custome paint and Fatshark Dominator V3 running a Laforge Diversity system. Do I crash them?... yep, everytime I fly! Some worse than others! XB180 frame I was reviewing hit a tree and killed the frame... Before after MY (at the time) favourite quad, qav180 running 5s batteries... and what was left of the electronics after it took a tumble into a river.. mmmm chewy! I also do builds for people including some for my local hobby shop. Dont ask me how much I have spent A single build usually costs me about $5 - $600aud per frame depending on componants but its safe to say Im hooked on this hobby! IF anyone has any questions, feel free to ask!
Got crazy flie atm from massdrop. But do want to get one that i can mount go pro on with a decent follow mode snc hazarad aviodence for greenlainng/off raoding on my motorbike
Nope! But then it's like any hobby: you can spend as much as you can afford if you really want to. As for wind, it really depends on the size of the quad and how powerful the motors are. Little mini/micro/nano quads like my Hubsan H107C, or the Eachine E010 you just ordered, you can forget it - any gust of wind and you're going to lose it. The motors just aren't strong enough. My H107C might survive a light breeze, but I'd want to be in a nice wide open area well away from any people or buildings. Both of the quads I'm looking at will certainly be able to stand up to the wind, but they both have GPS position locking which will help compensate in strong gusts. That's an impressive collection! The Crazyflie looks quite impressive for its size. The Hubsan H501S I've been looking at has a "follow me" mode, but the camera is built-in. You can mount a GoPro cradle to it but the cradle doesn't have a stabilised gimbal. The UPair One I'm also considering does have a stabilised gimbal, but it doesn't have "follow me" and it looks like the camera can't be swapped out. I don't know the market that well, but you might be looking at something like a Mavic or a Phantom for the feature set you want.
Byron, you are a brave man for flying that little Hubsan over water like that. Have you looked at Xiaomi drone? Looks similar to your second one, but 3 axis gimbal. WOW! So jealous. I only had a Phantom 2 Vision for a while, took great photos. Recently sold it and slowly saving up to buy a folding drone like Mavic or Breeze (in the distant future). Now that folding drones are available, for photography, a standard large quad like Phantom no longer made sense for me. Auckland, City of Sails by wuyanxu, on Flickr London Bridge on the Great Ocean Road by wuyanxu, on Flickr Clevedon Pier by wuyanxu, on Flickr
Those are some really great shots. Yeah, I watched a review of the Mavic Pro earlier and that is one phenomenal little quad. Absolutely rock solid in the air. I'd love to say "screw it" and blow my entire bonus on one, but ~£1400 (with spare batteries and a carrying bag) is a lot of money. Yeah, it really focuses your attention when you've got a little quad with no GPS or altitude hold flying over water . Especially when I nearly lost control a couple of times due to wind! They're a *little* out of my price range, but they do look like very good quads.
great pics! So what do I use to power my quads. I run a 4s battery on all of mine in two different sizes depending on what quad, but I can run them all on every quad if I need to. the small ones are 1050mah 4s and the big ones are 1300mah 4s. I get around 3min flight time per battery depending on how hard I push. and I have a few of them
Thanks Mavic official bundle is 8000 RMB in China, equivalent to £850 pre-Brexit pounds. The standard Mavic and controller is 6500 RMB direct from DJI on Tmall, £770 when I had it on back order last year Nov/Dec. Not too expensive IMO. But £1100 for the drone over here is indeed too expensive. I hear these Li-Po batteries are not the safest things, so I charged and stored the Phantom 2 batteries in a "fireproof" pouch. That case of batteries look quite flammable, are they actually quite safe?
They can indeed be very dangerous. Treated right they are quite safe though. Lipo's must be kept at storage charge (3.8v per cell) if not used of periods of time. The case is sealed when not in use and I always charge outside in the courtyard. I have yet to set up a dedicated charge station as I dont have space at the moment. Any damaged or suspect batteries are left outside to make sure or discharged and disposed of.
I started off with an RTF system: DJI Phantom 2 Vision+ Great place to start for me for aerial photography for the company I'm in during my site visits to document out work and the progress of the sites (integrated constructed wetlands (ICW) for wastewater management). Despite having issues with GPS signal at times and a very limited range (only ever managed to push out to 300m twice with it), it has served me and VESI incredibly well for the last 2 and a half years. My skills with electronics is laughable and whilst I'd love to get into building my own systems, I just don't have the time for it at the moment. I've considered getting a little STORM racing quad from HeliPal to fly around in some of the fields here on the family farm, but money and time... I recently got a DJI Mavic (Fly-more Combo) direct from DJI. I wanted to get it from the main Irish distributor, but DJI shafted them and every other distributor that I know of in terms of stock. They had ordered in a few hundred I believe and by the time I got my one from DJI, Coptershop had received 3 units in total. Poor show DJI. The Karma is a joke in comparison to the Mavic from all accounts. A friend of mine got the Hubsan X4 Pro, and after adding all the extra bits and pieces, modding, camera etc, the amount he spent on it came to the same as the Mavic, just to have almost the same functionality. Here's 2 photos from the valley beside my house, first with the P2V+, the second with the Mavic. 1) DJI Phantom 2 Vision+ http://i.imgur.com/wj6tR3A.jpg 2) DJi Mavic http://i.imgur.com/3krg6xQ.jpg
Well, my Revell Spot is rumoured to be a rebranded Hubsan H107, and in a light breeze, it charges off as soon as it goes higher than the roof So you'll want absolutely no wind. The even smaller ones I only used inside.
If after playing with the small one indoors and I wish to progress I will be doing months of research to find something at will not fly away if a bird breaths on it. But that is way off.
There's probably something screwy going on with the voltage regulation. Those 5V phone chargers aren't always 5V - sometimes they're not even within the 5% tolerance that the USB spec allows for. This happens with "big brand" companies like HTC, Samsung, LG, et al; officially they'll claim that they're only designed to work with the device they're supplied with, and can use that as their excuse for being outside tolerance. Apple does this when their wall adaptors cause issues with charging non-Apple devices. The voltage regulation in your laptop might have much higher tolerances than your wall adaptors. This was a big problem when the original Raspberry Pi was released. The power circuitry (aside from being a little flaky at the best of times) was designed for the official USB spec: 4.75v to 5.25v. It turns out that many chargers don't operate within that spec or go outside that spec when you place significant load on them. This is fine for phones, since you only really need 4.2v to charge a standard LiPo/LiIon cell (plus a bit of overhead for voltage regulators in the charge circuit) - they can probably tolerate a drop to, say, 4.5v or 4.6v. But the original Pi couldn't - it would brown out and either hang the USB bus or hang the device. There could be a similar thing going on here: perhaps your charger is intolerant of supply voltages outside spec - a perfectly plausible safety feature - and your chargers are just a little bit off. Although I can't explain why switching the AC polarity would cause the LiPo charger to start working.
Wow I am impressed. Who'd have thought what my old mum would call a dogs breakfast could fly. I have seen the races on you tube and they look impressive.
