Bandwagon's Drones Thread

Aazrael said:

The drone seems to be working fine. The normal controller is wierd though as the right stick is hit or miss. Tried calibrating once and it got better but does not respond all the time. No weather to try outside just now as it is -15C.

I think I want to use the phone to control it anyway.

Edit: The same with onscreen controlls. I guess I need to read the manual and stuff. But as I got no room to try it out just now I'll have to wait for better weather.

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I only flew the spark a few times during tradeshows and stuff, so not a ton of experience fyi.

If it looks >mechanically< sound, but both the controller and the phone app show that's unusually with inputs on one stick, I would have tried the same thing you did first. After that, try updating the firmware or rollback/update. Afterwards, do an IMU calibration and another stick calibration.

edit: Ohh, I missed your note about "seeing walls". Yea, that is probably the obstacle avoidance. It's a good idea to leave it on for now. Don't get too crazy with flying that thing around indoors until you're really comfortable with it. They can't survive too many bumps before they start flying funky.

Aazrael said:

Thanks!

Yea I think all that is enabled and it freaks out. It seems very stable and the control calibration worked showing all the inputs. Cant wait for spring. This cold ass winter sucks.

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You should pick up litchi in the mean time. Looks like it supports Spark. (I didn't check to see if Spark supports waypoints, though) Litchi for DJI Mavic / Phantom / Inspire / Spark

If Spark supports waypoints, you can do some fun stuff and it's a whole lot easier using the Litchi mission hub and planning on desktop Mission Hub - Litchi

You can swap batteries in that right? Wouldn't be surprised if the batteries were damaged with the way people fly them. Try to land with 30% remaining to start, backing down to 20 when more comfortable.

Sounds like you got a good deal though. Play with those wqypoints in litchi!

Going to leave this here over the weekend so the Phantoms know they're on thin ice.

Skydio X2. I like the airframe, not a fan of the app after the first flight. I didn't realize it didn't come with a controller though, so withholding judgement until the one I ordered shows up and I can try again.

Haven't had it up in the wind yet. The props are small and more aggressive than the phantom and the airframe is much more solid and low profile, so I assume it'll be better in the wind. Lower endurance though.

I've now gone through 9 new phantom 4 pros, all bad. Convinced other people to try there's as well. All that have the newer one (3 people) are bad.

Ended up sending a full writeup and examples to every drone-focused outlet i could find, as well as some photogrammetey and remote sensing organizations. Called my Congressman on the off chance the China/IP theft/security concerns/domestic manf alternatives is an appealing political angle, too.

Just stirring shit up at this point. I want feasible domestic options and the jury is still out on Skydio.

Pretty site

Here's the PDF of the terrain model for this one.

Cheeeeeeee Pono. I'm pretty happy I got this working, and it only took me about 6 hours. This probably would have taken me 2 weeks to figure out last year.

I created two new data layers to relate to my mapping boundaries. One is accuracy stats for control and checkpoints, the other is an image quality report from Agisoft (and some other camera stats). Once I get a hundred or so flights in here, I'll start summarizing the whole dataset to look for trends as they relate to deliverable precision. I need to add some more stuff in here like terrain following, flight speed, the specific drone used and I'm trying to figure out how to pull in atmospheric conditions (mainly wind and lighting, if that's an option) as well. This currently takes me an extra 5-10 minutes per flight to keep the database updated and my goal is to keep it under 15 minutes per project. Most of the other automation I want to do is beyond my skill level right now, but I think I learned a lot setting these ones up. Dealing with dates in different formats is the biggest PITA though. Need to get all of the field staff using the same codes for GCPs and Checkpoints, too.

Going to set this up to automatically email an accuracy statement to the surveyors once all of the stats have been uploaded right now.

Aazrael said:

I'll summon Bandwagon back to the thread so I'm not alone here!

While the Spark was a fun little drone it has really bad flight time, 15mins on the box but last only 8-9 minutes in real life. Also the 1080p camera isnt the best quality. But when it was released it was probably really good.

A guy at work bought a DJI Mini 2 and is really liking it. So I youtubed it up and it gets a lot of praise as a beginner drone. It's basically the Spark but way better cameras and flight time (25-30 minutes). Well I just ordered a Mini 2 Fly More Combo for around $700 or whatever the exchange rate is nowdays.

Should arrive on wednesday. It's really fun filming and snapping photos but being stressed about battery with the Spark took a little of the fun out of it.

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We have 2 minis and just had a gimbal on one break yesterday. Sounds like a common problem.

The other guy that flies one just asked me to order a mavic air 2 for him because the mini has shit range and shitty wind tolerance.