And its awesome. Family got me a standard edition for X-Mas and I have to say its the coolest RC vehicle I've ever owned. Super stable, easy to fly and takes great pics and video. Range is also great, its an expensive platform but it really has a lot tech inside for price!
Highly recommend to anyone thinking about getting one, you won't regret it. I'll post some pics soon.
I am glad you are having fun with it. I picked up a P3 Pro when they first came out. I kind of wish I had waited for the Standard though as it is more than capable of everything I was wanting to use it for.
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. Carl Sagan
Thats good to hear Paul, I wanted the advanced version but now that I have the standard, I can't think of a reason for needing the advanced. I've found that six hundred yards is a lot further than it feels and it will still fly farther away if needed.
Photos taken in Mosul, Iraq, appear to show grenade-dropping drones used against the Iraqi security forces.
The improvised weapons consist of a plastic tube attached to a consumer camera drone to carry explosives.
The images were taken by former US Army special forces officer Mitch Utterback, who was in the country as a journalist.
Last week a US Army commander said so-called Islamic State fighters were using such weapons as they tried to avoid losing control of the city.
"It's not as if it is a large, armed UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] that is dropping munitions from the wings - but literally, a very small quadcopter that drops a small munition in a somewhat imprecise manner," said Col Brett Sylvia.
I couldn't really come up with the justification to get a really nice drone, but picked up a factory-refurbed Bebop drone for $150 last month, and while the weather has been making it difficult to fly much, I have had some fun playing with it. It's not as nice as the Phantoms, but for $150, I can't really complain.
Ken Cartwright
No single drop of rain feels it is responsible for the flood.
Dang....you could scare rustlers with that gadget.....with the right rustler scaring gadget attached of course.
Also...it's a black helicopter.
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I have to work on the video quality not sure why its so low. Also had my first lost connection with my iphone, after a few minutes of running to its last position I was able to fly it back visually. Had to hard restart the controller/drone to get app connection back on the iphone. It was a few frantic moments of spotting it (was about 900' away) but good to know it holds position like it should. Also good to know is that the controller itself had a solid connection the whole time. Bad thing is that its supposed to auto return to home when events like that happen and it didn't. I may have to check the settings to make sure no inadvertent changes were made.
In all its been a dream to fly, GPS stability and altitude hold are great features and it handles a breezy day very well. Just so long you have a good sized landing area and not too far downwind when the battery gets low!
Last edited by HitchHikingFlatlander; 02/17/1702:54 AM.
I like the camera control in that video, very smooth. Too bad it's not higher quality - is that what came out of the drone, or did it lose quality in some sort of processing?
I noticed something in that video I've seen in a few other drone videos, which is the drone's rotors. As I mentioned earlier, I've got a Bebop drone, and while it has some limitations compared to others, one thing I appreciate is almost never seeing the rotors. The only time I see them is when I accidentally pan the camera all way the over to one side (normally I'd just rotate the drone to change the view).
I just got the dedicated controller for my drone, and still testing it out, and I wouldn't be confident enough to fly it over water as much as you did. Well done flying it under the bridge, and you made great choices in the flight-path, it looks very nice!
Ken Cartwright
No single drop of rain feels it is responsible for the flood.
^I'm still learning about video/still camera settings and I've got a lot to learn there. On the day of that particular video winds were 15+mph so the camera stayed very stable considering the environmental conditions. That had a a huge effect on how the rotors showed up in the video. When the video starts and I fly under the bridge I was going into the wind and its correcting for the additional effort required to fly forward. Also wondered if that giant steel bridge played with signal quality since other videos have turned out much better.
And to answer the other question the original video from the drone turned out crummy but I'm sure post proc. didn't help it either. I'm think about upgrading with the Argtek range booster kit if not only to increase range but to get a better video connection over the wifi. Its a learning process if nothing else.
Last edited by HitchHikingFlatlander; 03/03/1703:22 AM.
... Also had my first lost connection with my iphone, after a few minutes of running to its last position I was able to fly it back visually. Had to hard restart the controller/drone to get app connection back on the iphone. It was a few frantic moments of spotting it (was about 900' away) but good to know it holds position like it should. Also good to know is that the controller itself had a solid connection the whole time. Bad thing is that its supposed to auto return to home when events like that happen and it didn't. I may have to check the settings to make sure no inadvertent changes were made.
Is it supposed to auto return home on a loss of video signal too, or just on a loss of the flight controller signal? (I thought it was just on a loss of flight controller signal)
... I just got the dedicated controller for my drone, and still testing it out, and I wouldn't be confident enough to fly it over water as much as you did. Well done flying it under the bridge, and you made great choices in the flight-path, it looks very nice!
Have you seen the water adaption mod you can do for your Bebop?:
and it worked:
There are some videos of water mods for a DJI Phantom, also... but the designs are necessarily a bit different.
I think its set to RTH on loss of video signal and/or R/C signal. I've only had the one instance where it didn't RTH as expected but luckily for me it hovered in one spot until I found it with the MK1 eyeball. Still wasn't a good feeling though.
The water mod for the Bebob is pretty neat, I've seen pontoon mods for the Phantom but I'd be worried about water spray give the amount of air the rotors move.
Thanks for the Bebop water mod links - pretty cool! I had seen references to it, but never looked up the info on it. I'm not sure that it would help with my biggest concerns, though, which are the drone losing connectivity to the remote, or doing something stupid and diving into the water. I've thought about tying some fishing line onto it and keeping it loose so that it wouldn't inhibit the flight. The drone would probably be ruined if it went into the water, but at least I could reel it in and wouldn't be polluting...
Ken Cartwright
No single drop of rain feels it is responsible for the flood.
I've done some reading on video and picture quality and my problems are resulting from taking the cached video files from my phone rather the copying from the onboard SD card. I'm going to test it out and see hat happens. I'll also be testing out the argtek antenna modification which can increase the range x10 depending on conditions. So far I haven't really flown more that 1000ft away and that was stretching it.
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