Drone recommendations

SeanKroll

Treehouser
Joined
Oct 13, 2016
Messages
12,256
Location
Olympia, WA
I'm interested primarily for video for hooking up and backing up trailers on my own.

I have a lot of tight and winding driveways with poor visibility.

I want to be able to inspect trees and TIPs.

Recreational use beyond that is fun, too.

Around $500 or less is ideal.

I'm happy under $200.

Would consider more than $500.

Thanks.
 
I'm searching for a way to use old android phones linked with either bluetooth, or an ad hoc network to do some of what you want. Kinda got dumped on, so I put it aside for the time being. I want a backup cam, and one or two nearby remote cams to monitor rope pulls. Might be harder to do than I expect, but it seems like a waste having capable computers taking up space in a drawer.
 
I got a Mavic DJ pro or something from my dads house when he passed away. I have only flown it a couple of times as I need to register it as if it can go into commercial heights and distances.
Pretty cool when I have had it out but we have to limit it to 150m and keep to line of sight. In theory it can go 2km high IIRC and 5Km away.
 
I think im going to buy one this year for these crazy 1000 yard view corridors we've been working on. Was leaning Towards the mavic pro. Is the operation pretty intuitive or big learning curve?
 
I think im going to buy one this year for these crazy 1000 yard view corridors we've been working on. Was leaning Towards the mavic pro. Is the operation pretty intuitive or big learning curve?

I found it pretty easy to operate.

Excellent quality video and the gimble keeps the camera super steady. It also has wind compensation somehow. So you see the wind blowing the thing around yet the video and picture is rock solid.

It also has loads of cool feature like a follow mode. We turned it on and focused on me and then I legged it around a field with the drone following. It also has sports mode with IIRC does just over 70km/h.

Great fun but until I register it I haven't been flying it as in this day an age an unidentified flying object in Norway might be mistaken for a Russian plane and get shot down.

The day after we tried it, my mate set it to 500m and try to fly it to my house about 4 km away from the farm we were on. Bearing in mind the limit is 150m height.

I came home later that day and there was a police helicopter hovering over my house.

I was a bit worried but then found out later it was a search and rescue flight as someone was missing, last seen in the Fjord.
 
May or may not be as practical depending on who you ask, but I would also consider mounting multiple backup cameras to cover all the angles, then you can have a display that can switch between views. It could run off a similar FPV system as drones.
 
all drones are tiny boxes stuffed with electronics. you can water proof them but that will require taking the whole thing apart and sealing the boards and all the goodies inside. if you where going to do that you might as well build your own at that point. you should check out rcgroups.com its another forum and you can find anything to do with drones. to me the drone has such a negative connotation, people dont respond as negatively to multicopter or if you have one with 4 motors a quadcopter. if you might want to build one, ardupilot, is what i have used in the past and is a great information center. the only issue with DJI multicopters is that they are a Chinese company, and to get any of there products to work you have to register them through dji to activate them. all there multirotors have gps in the units and when you upload your footage the multirotor automatically uploads everything you have done, where it has been, all the video to DJI. the us government has band all DJI products used due to national security threat.




 
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I was impressed today at the measuring of altitude. Great for tight felling, crane reach, etc.
Curious about accuracy.




Today, I was roughly estimating from 80' out with clinometer, that the tree was 100'.

Quadcopter measured 118'.
My usual crane op has 101 of main boom. 30' of jib, IIRC. Dead and crusty top, already lost one leader at 105'.
 
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