RC Drones, Quadcopter, and real-time Video

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garygid

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 21, 2010
Messages
12,469
Location
Laguna Hills, Orange Co, CA
Apparently there has been a huge surge in the popularly
of the quad-copter based picture and video-capable
drones, some with real-time live video feedback to the
"handler", in addition to quality High-Definition video
recording and picture taking.

Some suffer in low light conditions, and at night, but
some include GPS to fly back "home" if they lose
their control signal. How do they avoid obstacles?
Many features available, it seems.

Some are short range (limited to perhaps 900 feet),
and others are somewhat short duration, like
around 10 minutes max.

Are there versions with 5000 feet (or more) range,
and 30 minutes flight time?

Apparently some can travel 20 mph.

I would love to know more from those who have
good experience in this area, especially with the live
video feedback in addition to the high quality
recording and picture taking.

What is the best control and video feedback
system to get good, reliable operational range?

Most of the power is from Lithium-Polymer
battery modules, I suspect, but what capacities
and voltages are typically used, 3S (3 cells in
series)?

Most reliable brands and models?

The things to avoid?

Merry Christmas, Gary
 
The DJI Phantom is the most popular and, when it works, works really well. Spooky well. Even in a light breeze, I can park it and it hardly moves *with both hands off the controls* Creeps my wife out when she comes out to speak with me when I am flying. I just park it 20 feet above my head and talk to her without giving it a second look. It just sits there in space hovering.. waiting. The GoPro takes excellent video and photography and someone of your handiness can easily modify it to add the First Person Video. I switch between a gopro for quality daylight photos (used to take this photo) and a Sony starlight CCD with IR illuminators for night time grounds patrol. Doesn't need the IR illuminators if there is any moonlight - that CCD and the big lens has amazing night vision.

There is a new version with fpv and camera built in but coasts more and I cannot comment how it compares to a gopro in quality.

Careful, though. It is a slippery slope! :) The Phantom was too small to carry my LWIR camera so I am building my own octocopter. I decided to go full custom using the PX4 platform because it is open source. The DJI and other RTF drones use propietary flight control and make you pay for every extra feature (and don't have all the features I want like autonomous object avoidance, camera-assited stability, etc). The octorotor can carry 30 lbs so no problems carrying any camera I like and it will not fall out of the sky if one of the motors fail (this is a risk with quads and hexas). If you have money to burn, the Wookong is an excellent flight controller.
 
Wow, what a splendid picture to see over the wall. :eek:

Do you have fpv (first person video) on the that
quadcopter to be able to get a good picture
composition, or is is just one frame of a blind
video.

The picture quality seems excellent.
Is that a GoPro, what model, please?

Could you be more specific about your components
since there might be a variety of models or
variations, and I would like to get the good and
avoid the parts with less quality.

I am very pleased to hear of your interest and
experience. I think JasonA flies also.

Years ago, I had to fly my hot air balloon to get
views like this one. Very well done, indeed.

Any more advice is welcome, Thanks, Gary
 
Your DJI Phantom rigged for night patrol is really
very nicely done, keeping the IR LEDs behind the
camera lens.

Details on what Phantom model you started with
and what parts you added, would be highly
educational, and much appreciated.

Is this the same Phantom that you use with
the GoPro for daytime, or a second rig?

How is the fpv handled on these rigs?

The quadcoptor project is magnificant,
with lots of helpful links to parts.

Is it flying yet, or what is its status?

Reading through the material in these two
very helpful links will be great, Thanks.
 
The Photo is with a GoPro3 black edition attached to the original DJI Phantom. It is the same quad for day and night - I just swap the camera (I don't usually have to bother with the IR illuminators). I do have FPV video which is great for flying and framing the shot but too low quality for photography (320x240). The gopro will feed a video output while taking and storing the hi-res raw files onto a local flash drive. I am using a customize setup using a combination of right-hand and left hand spiral and circularly polarize 5.8G antennas with a diversity RX to push the FPV range. However with all this I can still only reach just over 1/2 mile. Others are claiming > 1mi with much simpler and cheaper setups so I'm not sure I would recommend my setup. Probably worthwhile to buy a FatShark FPV setup - those get a lot of good reviews. You just connect the video output of the camera to the video input of the transmitter and stick it somewhere on the craft. I started out using a pair of goggles for FPV flying which is a lot of fun but they broke (were cheap import goggles sold on eBay for watching TV). I now use a LCD attached to my TX which, although not as immersive as the goggles, has the advantage of being able to easily switch between line-of-sight flying and FPV flying.

Whatever you pick, you should also pick up some sort of tracking device - there are a lot of horror stories of these things just flying off (with >$2K of the operators equipment) never to be found again (or, in some cases, to die an untimely death by Leaf). I am embarrassed to say I have lost mine more than once before I got the FPV setup but both cases I was saved by the Return to Home feature. It's easy to do - you don't realize just how big the sky is until you trying to spot a speck in it. I just turned off my transmitter and 2 (loooong, anxiety-ridden) minutes later it came home by itself and landed where it took off.

I have my mantis flying but am in the process of tuning - it is currently a bit jumpy and hard to control. Nice thing about the DJI is it was already tuned and ready to go. There are a number of PID coefficients you need to tune to get a nice smooth and stable response.
 
:shock: I had no idea these critters were this far along. Excellent question, Gary - and TickTock - amazing photos! That looks like a really fun flying machine!
 
garygid said:
AR.Drone video Tutorials:
#1. http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=EYvTJnWrH2Q" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
That link doesn't work for me. The AR Drone is cool and was one of my top candidates when I was trying to decide. I ended up going with the Phantom, though, because it felt (and is) much more sturdy. It can really take a beating (and has). Down-side is you *really* don't want to try flying the Phantom indoors whereas the AR.Drone excels with indoor flying (although it can do outdoor, too). The Phantom is more dangerous - it can do a lot of damage since the prop speeds are faster. However, the Phantom has a higher payload capacity (although even that ended up being insufficient for what I wanted to do).
 
I only have small quads, but some of the guys I fly with fly AR drones and phantoms. The flight times I have seen with the phantoms is from about 6 minutes to 8 minutes. What flight times are you getting, and what battery packs are you using TickTock?

I have a small quad ($37.00 from Value Hobby http://www.valuehobby.com/multicopters/multicopter-rtf/v949-rtf-purple.html) and a tiny keychain camera (about $13.00 on Ebay) that I use for aerial video shots. It's not FPV, but it's fun, and costs next to nothing to get going.

There is a LOT of information available on aerial photography http://www.rcgroups.com/aerial-photography-128/ multirotor copters http://www.rcgroups.com/aircraft-electric-multirotors-790/ and FPV (http://www.rcgroups.com/fpv-talk-469/ at RCGroups.com.
 
DanBaldwin said:
I only have small quads, but some of the guys I fly with fly AR drones and phantoms. The flight times I have seen with the phantoms is from about 6 minutes to 8 minutes. What flight times are you getting, and what battery packs are you using TickTock?
I used the stock battery for the Phantom so ~7minutes is right. Considerably larger (6S 10,000mAh) for the octorotor and I have flown that for over 20 minutes.
 
Does the AR.Drone 2.0 "power edition" like this:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EKTRZ0K/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=AGDPRO53CEC7G" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

with the GPS "flight recorder"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DAL6D3Y/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

have enough quality to get some good pictures and video?

The WiFi link from the drone to the Android smartphone or tablet
seems to be a rather severe range limit.

Does the Absolute Control work when using the Android AR.Freeflight (?) app
instead if using an iPhone?
 
Any suggestion for a suitable "tracking device"?

Although, it might be harder to get the short-range AR.Drone
very far from "home base".

However, I suppose that it could just "fly away", and keep
on going until the battery gets too low.

Normally, when the communication is lost (or terminated),
it "should" go into a hover mode, right?

And, if it has the GPS unit, and enough satellites to
get fixes, it would try to return "home"?

Clearly I need to read and learn more.
 
The Garmin GTU 10 seems to be the favorite. They can still be found on eBay and elsewhere but has been discontinued. For $100 you get the device and a 1 year subscription to the service enabling you to find it using any computer or smartphone assuming the aircraft is somewhere within cell coverage. So far the automatic Return to Home feature has worked for me but I suppose it only takes it failing once to convince yourself it is foolish not to have a tracking device. The web is full of burnt operators preaching this. I don't have one but I *do* have the GPS coordinates (and other parameters) being overlaid on the FPV video feed:
osd.jpg

This saved me once when I crash landed in a huge 100+ acre corn field (you can't resist trying to get that high speed, close-to-the-ground video) . Unlikely I would have ever recovered it if I hadn't had the exact coordinates. Make sure you add OSD to your shopping list, too. Mine is GhostOSD which has been developed specifically for the original DJI Phantom. That image is actually from the FPV video feed operating on a moonless night with the IR illuminators. Video actually looks smoother real time. The illuminators light up the area pretty well for the camera even though it is invisible to the naked eye. Makes investigating those "bumps in the night" actually kinda fun. :)

garygid said:
Any suggestion for a suitable "tracking device"?

Although, it might be harder to get the short-range AR.Drone
very far from "home base".

However, I suppose that it could just "fly away", and keep
on going until the battery gets too low.

Normally, when the communication is lost (or terminated),
it "should" go into a hover mode, right?

And, if it has the GPS unit, and enough satellites to
get fixes, it would try to return "home"?

Clearly I need to read and learn more.
 
The AR.Drone 2.0 seems to have substantial troubles in
WiFi contested areas, like around here.

Apparently it looks for a "good" channel (1-11) when
it powers on, but if it loses connection, it does not
reconnect even when nearby.

Apparently the "lost connection" behavior is to just
continue doing whatever it was doing, so that it can
just fly away, but I have no experience, just comments
from reading the Parrot forum.

Also, the Android development of Flight Control software
lags substantially behind the iPhone versions.

So, in spite of the attractive entry-price for a fpv
quadcopter with a GPS option available,
I guess I should pass this system for now.
 
Now I am looking at the DJI Phantom 2 Vision, which has
a 3S (3 cells in series) LiPo battery of about 5200 mah, nominal 11 volts.
So, around 55 watt hours, it would seem, though
probably only about 50 wH available for use.

About $1200 including their HD camera, and one battery.
Extra batteries are $164 each.

They say (up to) 300 meters for the boosted WiFi used
for the FPV version of the HD (1080p) video which is
recorded to an on-board micro-SD card. Apparently
an Android smartphone can be used as the FPV viewing
screen, and I happen to have too many of them already.

The built-in GPS is said to fly the quadcopter home
and land, upon signal loss.

Any comments, please?
 
I like the original and I think they fixed the main problem with it which is using 2.4G for the control. That often was subjected to interference from nearby Wifi (many think this is the cause of the fly-aways). The new one, instead, uses the 2.4G for... Wifi (who woulda thunk? :)) and moved the transmitter frequency to 5.8GHz. Should work well as long as you maintain line-of-sight. 5.8GHz doesn't do well with obstruction and can run into multi-path problems if line-of-sight is broken but at least you won't have nearby home's 802.11b/g Wifi interfering... at least until 802.11ac or n starts to permeate hosuehold use. A nice helical antenna will give good low-angle multipath rejection (I use 5.8G for FPV and the helicals do seem to help a lot) if this becomes a problem but most of the comments I've seen online are good so far. It is cool how the app uses the sensors on the smartphone to control the camera pan and tilt. With the quad in a hover, if you tilt your phone down, the camera tilts down. Left/right will pan left/right. It's a great all-in-one craft but if you want a platform to build on this isn't it. Kinda like an Apple - does what it does very well but you are out of luck if you want to use it for anything that Apple didn't intend you to. Still, even if you do want a customizable platform, the Phantom isn't a bad one to learn on and it's small size is nice for taking out into the field so I expect I will still use mine a lot even after my octo is finished. The octo is a bit unwieldy for travel. Also, I easily spent more than the DJI Vision costs before I had mine set up with all the features the Vision comes with stock (in fact it has more - I wish I had that camera pitch control) so I think it is a pretty good deal.

garygid said:
Now I am looking at the DJI Phantom 2 Vision, which has
a 3S (3 cells in series) LiPo battery of about 5200 mah, nominal 11 volts.
So, around 55 watt hours, it would seem, though
probably only about 50 wH available for use.

About $1200 including their HD camera, and one battery.
Extra batteries are $164 each.

They say (up to) 300 meters for the boosted WiFi used
for the FPV version of the HD (1080p) video which is
recorded to an on-board micro-SD card. Apparently
an Android smartphone can be used as the FPV viewing
screen, and I happen to have too many of them already.

The built-in GPS is said to fly the quadcopter home
and land, upon signal loss.

Any comments, please?
 
Merry Christmas to Me!

I pulled the switch and ordered the DJI Phantom 2 Vision
from B&H Photo (which includes an extra 5200 mah battery) :

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/999838-REG/dji_djphvision_phantom_vision.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

No tax or shipping, so $1199 out the door, and in stock they say.

No, my wife does not know yet, she was tired and went to
bed early, so I will need to do some 'splainin' in the mornin', Lucy!

Now, to the DJI site to do some reading.
Ho, Ho, Ho, thanks Santa.
 
Oh Horse Exhaust!!!
I just sent this to DJI Support.

I just ordered the Phantom 2 Vision from B&H Photo.
I am trying to get ready for its arrival, and tryig to
get the DJI-Vision Android App at the Google Play Store,
however, it says that my Vizio VTab1008 Android Tablet
is not suitable, but does not say why.
In the DJI WiKi, it says that Android 4 or better is required.
However, my Kyocera Event Android 4.0.4 smartphone
is also rejected, with no reason.
What is going on?

What is required of the Android device, I cannot just
go out and buy random Android SmartPhones to test.
Do I need to cancel my Phantom order?
Does anybody here know the answer?
 
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