Anyone own/fly drones (quadcopters)

#1
InVOLuntary

InVOLuntary

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#1
My father (76 Y/O) strangely enough, asked for one of these for his birthday in August. After much research, I found how expensive these things can get. So my mother, siblings, and I went together to buy him a DJI Phantom 2 Vision Plus. I have to say this is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. It will fly up to 700 feet high and up to 1/4 mile away. It takes both high def video and photos and streams the live video to your phone. It is GPS enabled so it practically flys itself. You can let go of the controls and it will hover in place. Using GPS it will even fight the wind to maintain its position.

I just thought I'd ask to see if anyone else on Volnation had experience with these.
 
#2
#2
I have a little H911 (V911) 4ch helicopter I got after playing with the cheap ones kids got for Christmas last year. It's fun to mess around with & pretty quick & nimble


 
#3
#3
govols/cc said:
I have a little H911 (V911) 4ch helicopter I got after playing with the cheap ones kids got for Christmas last year. It's fun to mess around with & pretty quick & nimble


Click to expand...

Check out some of the videos taken with th Phantom 2 vision + on YouTube. It's amazing. And they are so easy to fly.
 
#4
#4
predator.jpg


Cost a fortune but well worth the investment.
 
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#5
#5
Oddly enough, my business partner bought a DJI Phantom 2 Vision+ two weeks ago. He did a lot of research on it and this was supposedly the top of line model.

We do digital marketing and he had an idea of how to use it to take some aerial video for clients. It arrived the day before he was leaving out of town for a few days so he left it with me to figure out.

On Sat evening I took it to the park to fly for first time. It was surprisingly easy. The hardest part was trying to fly it and maneuver the camera at the same time. It has a radio remote for piloting the craft but it connects to your iOS or Android phone to control the camera. It was pretty awesome! It had green and red LED lights on the bottom and little kids were calling it a UFO.

The video and pictures it took were amazing. Full 1080p. You can download them right to your phone while it's still in the air if you want. When I got home I Airplayed them to the AppleTV. Stunning to say the least.

At this point my only complaint was the battery only gives about 20min of flight time. It did give a warning on my phone when the battery was low. Although it's supposed to land on it own if the it gets too low.

So the next day I call my sister and ask if she wants to bring her kids to the park to see it fly. I would get off the ground and let them control it for a second. Then I let her husband try.

He got it about 15-20 feet off the ground and away from us. He was just testing out which stick controlled what when suddenly the motors stopped and it dropped like rock. Smashed one of the arms that the prop attaches to and bent the camera gimble. It was very deflating.

We plan to call in a warranty and hopefully get it replaced or money back. I'll update when we know something.

In conclusion: it was incredibly fun to fly takes amazing video. Be sure to buy from an authorized dealer just on case you get lemon like we did though.
 
#6
#6
On a side note, it would be awesome to fly it around the Neyland or over the crowd at the Vol-walk.














As long it doesn't fall out of the sky onto someone's head anyway.
 
#7
#7
Lol. I thought this was a bought those go carts with wings. People have to adrenaline junkies to get in those. We worked a crash this summer guy was basically jello after the crash. Felt really bad for his family. Too risky
 
#8
#8
Well I crashed his yesterday. No fault of the Phantom though. I sent it on a ground station mission and forgot to set a waypoint directly overhead so it could gain altitude before flying off. It went on to the first waypoint on a graduadual upward trajectory. In the process it hit one tree, bounced off and hit another tree. It will still do everything but I can't control the camera and it does not give me telemetry data. It pulled some wires and we tried to reconnect but it's almost impossible. I'm going to order the wires today ($20).

Never had your problem. Always flew great. And from what I have heard 20 min of runtime is huge compared to other platforms. Keep me informed as to how your doing with it and I'll do the same.
 
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#9
#9
obligatory CatCopter post

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HnwhGgsgXc[/youtube]
 
#12
#12
my cousin is debating getting 1. After watching videos he sent me, I want to get 1. looks looks like a blast.

somebody did fly 1 over Neyland, supposedly got in trouble.
 
#13
#13
InVOLuntary said:
Well I crashed his yesterday. No fault of the Phantom though. I sent it on a ground station mission and forgot to set a waypoint directly overhead so it could gain altitude before flying off. It went on to the first waypoint on a graduadual upward trajectory. In the process it hit one tree, bounced off and hit another tree. It will still do everything but I can't control the camera and it does not give me telemetry data. It pulled some wires and we tried to reconnect but it's almost impossible. I'm going to order the wires today ($20).

Never had your problem. Always flew great. And from what I have heard 20 min of runtime is huge compared to other platforms. Keep me informed as to how your doing with it and I'll do the same.
Click to expand...

Called DJI today. They want us to send it in for repair. We told them we don't trust it not to fall out of the sky on someone's head. They said they test fly them to be sure.

Anyway, it's a 4 week turnaround. This was just round one.
 
#14
#14
burntorangeVOLffle said:
Called DJI today. They want us to send it in for repair. We told them we don't trust it not to fall out of the sky on someone's head. They said they test fly them to be sure.

Anyway, it's a 4 week turnaround. This was just round one.
Click to expand...

After reading your original post I googled to see if I could find where others had similar issues. Radio interference from about any transmitter could cause issues. I didn't find a case where it just shut down and dropped, more of erratic behavior. Let me know what you discover. I expect my new ribbon cable to arrive today. Cross your fingers for me that the cable fixes my problems.
 
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