Amazing R/C models

awesome!!

Yesterday I went to a Hobby shop after a seminar. I got a booklet on the 350QX gopro compatible quadcopter. I will purchase this in the spring and cannot wait to start training. The beginner mode and the gps return to home features are incredible.

3 years ago a fellow Geo owner shot this video. He now has a different set up that works a lot better but you get the idea.

2seaoat wrote:Yesterday I went to a Hobby shop after a seminar.  I got a booklet on the 350QX gopro compatible quadcopter.  I will purchase this in the spring and cannot wait to start training.   The beginner mode and the gps return to home features are incredible.

what is the air time for this one? can it stay up for a while?

ZVUGKTUBM wrote:Those big R/C models are super expensive. Sometimes they crash like this Model B-52 did.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUEhNKBi4DY

Pretty darn close

Where does an RC model leave off and a drone begin?

I wonder what their wives hobbies are unless they enjoy building the same thing.  These guys must spend 1,000 hours working on those things for every hour in the air.

Well...whatever floats your boat...or whatever.  If they've got $50K plus to put into those things, more power to them.

$479 from Amazon



http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Hobby-Quadcopters-Drones/dp/1490968970/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387024270&sr=8-1&keywords=3d+robotics+quadcopter

http://www.helifreak.com/showthread.php?t=577785

I think the fly time is about 15 minutes. I am investigating that they have gaming goggles that experienced pilots have a camera which allows them to fly the copter or plane as if they were sitting in the cockpit. There is no need to have line of sight. A person can literally fly the copter sitting on the ground with the goggles on and recognize the ground below and features as if you were flying from the cockpit. I am reading more but the copter I posted is ready to fly, has the three levels of flight, and if it starts to FU, it will use the GPS to return home. By the spring I will have read up and talked to enough people to make an informed purchase, but I am amazed at what is coming down the pike with these helicopters and the cameras.

Bob wrote:$479 from Amazon



http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Hobby-Quadcopters-Drones/dp/1490968970/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387024270&sr=8-1&keywords=3d+robotics+quadcopter

Impressive, especially for less than $500.00

Do you know if it will sense that it is reaching the end of its battery life and take control so it can return to home base before losing power?

Do you know if it will sense that it is reaching the end of its battery life and take control so it can return to home base before losing power?




I will try to find that out, but I would think that would be easy and probably exists as standard equipment on most of these radio control modules. It would simply be printed on the board a battery monitor and the receiver would pick up the information and display it on the controller. I am going to ask this on one of the forums.

I did read where one person lost line of sight and his copter crashed in a marsh with a go pro. He lost about a 1000 dollar investment. I bought four years ago a gps emergency tracker for going in the wild. If you were lost or had a health emergency the company would contact the local emergency folks and tell them right where you were. I dropped the service two years ago when my ability to go into wild areas was diminished. Pretty cool because if you put the tracker on your investment and it went down in the woods you could get within three feet of the location.

My guess is with newer models they will have a gps locate feature if the return home fails. I also think they will have folks doing add on battery packs. A daisy chain battery which kept a copter in the air for a half hour would be incredible

Markle wrote:

Do you know if it will sense that it is reaching the end of its battery life and take control so it can return to home base before losing power?

yes.  scroll down to "low voltage protection"...

http://www.dji.com/feature/phantom-features/#a6

The phantom 2 vision is much more expensive than the 350 qx, but it has some unbelievable features. Here is the listing in Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=phantom+2+vision&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=34600618368&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1695508923342277427&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_2n1hnb456g_e

It has a half hour new and improved battery. It has a range extender. It has a mount for your Iphone or Android. With the phone you watch the video on your iphone or Android, and you have a battery monitor. It allows you to control the camera angles from your phone. I did learn that the FAA limit on altitude is 400 feet, but we just saw in one video one going 1900 feet. I think I am going to have to get this right away because I will bet they will be putting altitude limitations on the boards by government order in the near future. I do not really want to spend a 1000 bucks and have the video camera hard wired to the copter. The go pro and 350 qx still seems to be the best deal, but I have a Note II smart Android phone with large screen which would allow me to fly by visual and not line of sight.....pretty damn impressive. The return home feature is a must in the environment I will be flying.

The most amazing thing of all about them to me (and there's so much techno-geek coolness about them it hurts),  is seeing youtubes where they're flying those quadcopters in up to 30 mph winds.
If you've ever bought one of those cheap under $100 remote control helicopters and I've bought two you know that if the wind is blowing more than .0000001 mph you can't fly em outside or they crash in about 3 seconds.  lol

I agree, and the cool thing is their ready to fly and beginner settings with gps which stablizes the copter. I remember as a kid getting all pumped up. Building my plane.....getting the motor running and we had guy wires we used to fly, and get them all set up and then having the damn motor freeze up because we have flooded it. These electric motors and half hour batteries with beginners settings allow people with low skill sets to get immediate thrills. I have a business purpose for getting one, and the filming actually will pay for the copter this spring. I feel like a little kid again taking a model I have built out for the first flight. The use of the android cell phone is fricking genius as it utilizes existing technology to give an incredible platform. I can definitely see where these things will be used for bad things. I got to get one before the government figures out how dangerous these things could be.

I am telling you right now you will see one of these things interfere with a major sporting event in the next year......bet on it. I have seen for the last decade a camera they have mounted on wires above the field in the middle to get great play action film, but with these quads they could at the superbowl have five or six filming every conceivable angle.......guaranteed though some tech nerd is planning to interfere. I could see at the masters being outside the confines and watching the masters from your quad.

As they get cheaper and mass produced there WILL be problems. That is a mortal lock.

They obviously got the attention of Bezos. But as smart as he obviously is, I think he's WAY too early an adopter for this.
It doesn't matter though. If I had $27 billion I'd be trying to do crazy shit like that too. Even if I lose $26 billion of it I'm still a billionaire. lol

I know where this is going.......full air combat....not a video game, but groups in a field with short range guns which can take out your opponent in full flight combat. It is only a matter of time that the leap will be made to use them to kill targeted people. If you have the ability to move a camera via your cell phone, you can bet people are rigging specially made guns with noise supressors. Go outside John Doe's kitchen window sitting in your car a block away.....site.....adjust.....fire........return home. I have heard they are developing mini drones, but heck with this technology a person could take out anybody they wanted to........and what defense would people have.....build a fortress.....well sooner or later you need to leave your fortress and with GPS...they could literally have practiced a kill shot a hundred times and a person walking a normal routine from parking lot to wherever is going to be gone........no witness as the copter is at 400 feet using laser siting.

Reminded me of flying kites. My elementary school really got into kite combat. We would meet in the playground after school and on weekends and battle. Great fun for little kids. Some kids had fancy box kites... I usually cobbled together parts.

Reminded me of flying kites. My elementary school really got into kite combat. We would meet in the playground after school and on weekends and battle. Great fun for little kids. Some kids had fancy box kites... I usually cobbled together parts.


We did the same, and could stay entertained all afternoon without structured athletics or parental guidance. It was a wonderful time of children's imagination and building social skills. However, we were pretty sick....we would mount our Kites at the peak with single edge razor blades and try to cut the main kite line, or put them on the tails......dangerous as hell coming down, but we also had dirt clod wars where we would pick sides dig trenches and have full fledged wars throwing dirt clods at each other. We would also shoot our bb guns at other people's kites.......regular JDs. Today a kid would be charged with a felony for shooting a bb gun at a kite.

2seaoat wrote:Reminded me of flying kites. My elementary school really got into kite combat. We would meet in the playground after school and on weekends and battle. Great fun for little kids. Some kids had fancy box kites... I usually cobbled together parts.


We did the same, and could stay entertained all afternoon without structured athletics or parental guidance. It was a wonderful time of children's imagination and building social skills. However, we were pretty sick....we would mount our Kites at the peak with single edge razor blades and try to cut the main kite line, or put them on the tails......dangerous as hell coming down, but we also had dirt clod wars where we would pick sides dig trenches and have full fledged wars throwing dirt clods at each other. We would also shoot our bb guns at other people's kites.......regular JDs. Today a kid would be charged with a felony for shooting a bb gun at a kite.

Lol... Nearly the same. Red clay field... tons of rocks. Some even glassed their lines. We often evolved into ground war.

PkrBum wrote:

2seaoat wrote:Reminded me of flying kites. My elementary school really got into kite combat. We would meet in the playground after school and on weekends and battle. Great fun for little kids. Some kids had fancy box kites... I usually cobbled together parts.


We did the same, and could stay entertained all afternoon without structured athletics or parental guidance. It was a wonderful time of children's imagination and building social skills. However, we were pretty sick....we would mount our Kites at the peak with single edge razor blades and try to cut the main kite line, or put them on the tails......dangerous as hell coming down, but we also had dirt clod wars where we would pick sides dig trenches and have full fledged wars throwing dirt clods at each other. We would also shoot our bb guns at other people's kites.......regular JDs. Today a kid would be charged with a felony for shooting a bb gun at a kite.

Lol... Nearly the same. Red clay field... tons of rocks. Some even glassed their lines. We often evolved into ground war.

I don't think I've thght about this for atleast forty years... funny thing.