Dji Phantom UAVs

[Stupeo]

RegMolehusband said:

Daft question - have you taken the protective sticky film off the front of the filter? Otherwise it should take good photos "out of the box".

Yep...although that did take me a while to notice too

[GetCarter]

leggly said:

Look to the Inspire thread on FB. It is very useful.

I don't do FB - can you give a one sentence sum up? Ta.

[leggly]

GetCarter said:

leggly said:

Look to the Inspire thread on FB. It is very useful.

I don't do FB - can you give a one sentence sum up? Ta.

Probably not DJI are having firmware problems on every update it seems. Their support is appaling and they're not in any rush to improve it. I suffered a ten week turnaround on gimbal. Hopefully as you have the flight log you can force their hand and get a replacement. Good luck.

[leggly]

Pvapour said:

leggly said:

Look to the Inspire thread on FB. It is very useful.

anyone have a link?

dont mind crashing it myself and paying the price but this ste tbh

somneone mentioned the Phantom 'was' way ahead of the game when it came out and still compares well but what are the alternative makes and models?.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/DJIInspire1Owners/

[RegMolehusband]

If you own a Phantom this is good too for technical advice and photo/videos https://www.facebook.com/groups/dji.owners/?fref=n...

[theboyfold]

GetCarter said:

Yep, and it was showing 65% full when it fell - yet the message before it shut down was 'Critical Low Voltage'

I wouldn't recommend anyone buy one of these unless they sort it out.

Steve, did you do an IMU calibration before the crash? Also, it seems that battery calibration is important. There seems to be a lot of steps to go through when you update these things

[Mr Trophy]

That Facebook link is very interesting alot of people saying the reason it's falling from the sky - Battery not calibrated ...

EFA - EVERYTIME I put the drone in the air, I make sure I calibrate it.

[GetCarter]

theboyfold said:

Steve, did you do an IMU calibration before the crash? Also, it seems that battery calibration is important. There seems to be a lot of steps to go through when you update these things

Did an IMU about an hour before.

[theboyfold]

GetCarter said:

Did an IMU about an hour before.

And the battery? (I'm not looking for faults, just trying to find some semblance of a pattern in why these things crash before I maybe waste £800!)

[GetCarter]

theboyfold said:

GetCarter said:

Did an IMU about an hour before.

And the battery? (I'm not looking for faults, just trying to find some semblance of a pattern in why these things crash before I maybe waste £800!)

Didn't calibrate battery, but it was only 4 weeks old (a second battery) and had been fully charged and fully discharged.

When it took off it was only at 65% (Which I believe may have been part of the problem)... God knows why, If I run a laptop with 65% of power I expect it to work for more than 10 seconds!

[theboyfold]

GetCarter said:

Didn't calibrate battery, but it was only 4 weeks old (a second battery) and had been fully charged and fully discharged.

When it took off it was only at 65% (Which I believe may have been part of the problem)... God knows why, If I run a laptop with 65% of power I expect it to work for more than 10 seconds!

That seems to be a trend (and a bizarre one) that unless it's 100% you are risking it crashing. So what happens if you go for a flight, you have to land and the battery is at 75%, can you take off again or not?

[RegMolehusband]

I've flown probably 50 times now with less than 70% battery with no issues. Mind you, I'm not going to upgrade the firmware until I'm sure new bugs have been ironed out. It flies and films perfectly at the moment.

[andrewrob]

GetCarter said:

Mr Trophy said:

GetCarter said:

Yet DJI are saying I intentionally (or mistakenly) shut the craft down, so am responsible. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out.

For the avoidance of doubt - how can you shut it down if you're flying it in the air?

It's what you do when you land. You move the two joysticks into a certain position (down left, down right) and keep them there for 3 seconds. (not something you'd ever do when it's in the air). It shuts the motors off.

Never flow a phantom but have flown bigger stuff with their controllers in and they will also shut down if the throttle is below 10% for more than a few seconds. It does happen on some transmitters where the stick malfunctions and even though you've got it at 60% throttle the transmitter sees it as something different, its happened to a few people with Turnigy 9XRs when they came out. Not sure if its ever been an issue with Phantom controllers or not.

Did you get to see the log or are they just telling you what it said?

[Magic919]

There's a video linked to earlier and the Phantom will not shut down in flight on zero throttle alone.

[Pvapour]

if anyone spots some good deals on the P3 standard could you post them up here as I'm after one over the next couple of weeks.

best seen so far is £468 which is so close to the used price of P2V+ at £400 its a no brainer really.

[Stupeo]

So, my first video from the P3P (first ever drone too!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtPF62e4_Q0

Pretty happy to say its the default settings. I appreciate the flying could've been more fluid.

[V8A*ndy]

Stupeo said:

So, my first video from the P3P (first ever drone too!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtPF62e4_Q0

Pretty happy to say its the default settings. I appreciate the flying could've been more fluid.

Good stuff....

Don't worry too much about fluid flying. You just need a few good shots and then you can edit them into a more fluid piece of action.

I'm sticking with the P2 and GoPro. Too many issues with the newer models and I think my pic quality is improving now that I've started to learn LUTs and grading.

Nonsense vid to keep it car related https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep-krTYa6CA

[V8A*ndy]

Heads up about batteries.... (although this certainly is not Steve's issue).

Don't store them @ 100% full charge for more than a couple of days. Aprox 40-50% works best for my P2 batteries.

The P3 batteries are different and I have no real world experience of them, however if I leave my batteries fully charged for some time and pop them in and go for a flight, after a couple of minutes the voltage would drop suddenly even though they show full charge before flight.

Best to charge them before flight from the stored rate of charge. I've had no problems since doing this.

I've had the P2 two years now and apart from the sudden voltage drop attributed to what I've just said, I've had no problems or crashes.

I still always get a bit nervous when flying though.

[andrewrob]

V8A*ndy said:

Heads up about batteries.... (although this certainly is not Steve's issue).

Don't store them @ 100% full charge for more than a couple of days. Aprox 40-50% works best for my P2 batteries.

The P3 batteries are different and I have no real world experience of them, however if I leave my batteries fully charged for some time and pop them in and go for a flight, after a couple of minutes the voltage would drop suddenly even though they show full charge before flight.

Best to charge them before flight from the stored rate of charge. I've had no problems since doing this.

I've had the P2 two years now and apart from the sudden voltage drop attributed to what I've just said, I've had no problems or crashes.

I still always get a bit nervous when flying though.

Lipos should be storage charged if not used for a bit. Its the same for all of them not just Phantom batteries

Check this out for storage temps too

[Pvapour]

leggly said:

Pvapour said:

leggly said:

Look to the Inspire thread on FB. It is very useful.

anyone have a link?

dont mind crashing it myself and paying the price but this ste tbh

somneone mentioned the Phantom 'was' way ahead of the game when it came out and still compares well but what are the alternative makes and models?.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/DJIInspire1Owners/

thanks

there are problems but as people pointed out, when you read up on the competitors they all have similar or greater issues but are less established as manufacturers.

my overall picture is that Phantom is still ahead of the game so have bought a standard P3 for £468, not looking to fly more than 1km away and footage viewed on YT will more than do the job for my project, should be here in a week fingers x.