|
My intention was to build my own quad or tricopter, but don't have time these days. Instead I bought a Xiaomi Mi Drone 4k for like $275 on sale. It's considered to be somewhere between the capabilities of a a Phantom 3 and Phantom 4.
I've taken it out 4 miles so far, and didn't quite make it back, but the autoland saved it. Almost lost it a couple days ago when I was using visual navigation to pilot the drone back, but realized very late that the white object headed my way was an airplane, and not my drone, and that my drone was trying to autoland due to low battery in the middle of a road. Always trust your instrumentation.
I was also given a Phantom 1 with FPV gear, which is fun, but I'm not comfortable flying it FPV since the older gear tends to cut out fairly easily. You need line of sight for a good video feed.
I wish this drone tech would trickle down to helicopters. There's no reason a helicopter can't have position hold, GPS navigation, and all the other goodies of modern drones. A heli should in theory have longer runtimes than quads due to the larger, more efficient rotor.
|