This morning, we release unto the world a tsunami of content regarding the FLIR Duo, just announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. We'll begin with a tradition trade show video with the project manager, Kelsey Judd:
We follow that up with a field testing video:
And a look at how you can (literally) hack the included bench cable to integrate the Duo into any conventional, analogy 5.8 GHz FPV system:
Finally, we give you a side-by-side look at the Duo and the Vue, FLIR's original camera for drones, to help you understand the capabilities and limitations of this new camera, and its suitability for different applications:
As you have probably figured out for yourself by now, we didn't do all four of these videos last night. FLIR was gracious enough to provide us with advanced copies of the Duo, so we could prepare this content for you. Now, be sure to stay tuned for ongoing coverage from CES and the Drone Rodeo.
Probably the greatest joy of testing out the Blade Inductrix 200 was the opportunity to do some thoroughly carefree, old-school FPV flying. I'm certainly not condoning reckless flying – always stay clear of people and animals, stay below 400 feet AGL, respect your neighbor's privacy, etc – but it's hard to see how you could do much damage, either to the aircraft or anything else, while flying the Inductrix 200. (Cue the flood of e-mails and videos, proving me wrong).
The propellers are fully enclosed such that I cannot come up with a scenario where they would come in contact with anyone or anything in the environment unless it was on purpose and the aircraft weighs so little and is so small, I think the threat posed by collisions is modest. Consequently, you can fly it pretty much anywhere, and have fun doing it: test yourself, learn acrobatics, practice maneuvering through small gaps – there just isn't much to go wrong.
It's size and maneuverability would seem to make it suited for indoor flying as well as outdoor flying, although the dental drill whine it emits would probably get annoying pretty quickly in an enclosed space. However, outdoors – where we tested it – the sound diminished substantially once we flew more than a few feet away.
What better way to celebrate Boxing Day than with an unboxing video? This time, it's the Ehang Ghost Drone 2.0, VR edition. Ehang is an interesting company – having made a huge splash at CES last year with their Ehang 184 personal transport multirotor – and the Ghost is an interesting product, so I was glad to finally be able to take it out and fly it.
The Ghost is a phone-controlled drone which, as a general rule, is not a sub-genre that I especially enjoy. However, they have implemented this approach in an entirely unique (but not Yuneec) manner. Your phone is connected not to the drone – which tends to limit range and invite connection issues – but to the goggles, which relay it up to the Ghost via a conventional 2.4 GHz control signal.
Next unique feature: the drone does what you do with the phone: pitch your phone forward and the aircraft pitches forward, roll it to one side and the drone rolls in that same direction, etc. For the most part, it's a remarkably intuitive way to fly – although, as Techinstein pointed out, it gets a big weird if you're flying eyes-on and you want to turn 180 degrees and look back at yourself.
However, once you're wearing the goggles, can just turn your whole body in place and the drone follows along... Combine that with the head-tracking gimbal and you create a remarkably immersive experience for the pilot – really like nothing I've ever experienced before. It's a lot of fun!
The app talks to you constantly, providing updates about the drone's battery and other flight parameters, which is great, unless you're trying to make a video about it – in which case it can be really annoying.
One serious shortcoming was the fact that there is no obvious emergency kill switch available. In an emergency, there is no means to stop the drone, short of physically grabbing hold of it and flipping it over. That's a serious shortcoming, but one that Ehang could overcome with a software update. There is a lot to like about this little flying machine. I'll be keeping an eye on it moving forward...
Here's our look at the Connex ProSight: a digital, high-definition FPV system developed specifically for drone racing, which boasts zero latency performance. Obviously, if you're steering a drone through gates one yard across at 80 miles per hour, latency is non-negotiable.
Of course, those of us who “grew up” in the analog FPV era, zero-latency has always been our default expectation – so with LightBridge and all of the other HD video transmission systems that have come out over the past couple of years, the inherent latency has always seemed like a step backward.
So, along comes the ProSight, promising that we can have it all: image quality and real-time transmission to the ground station. We invested a considerable amount of time in testing the ProSight's latency – or lack there of – in this video, so I hope you find it useful.
Just in time for the holidays, our review of an item sure to be on the list of every good little girl and boy who likes flying drones FPV, or passes the time during long-distance air travel by watching movies, or is just radically anti-social and looks for any excuse not to make eye contact with people – or maybe all three: it's the Glyph video headset from Avegant.
Of course, tipping the scales at north of $400 from our friends at B&H Photo, your would-be recipient had better have been extremely good all year long if they want to find one of these under the tree. So, is it worth it?
This is one polished piece of kit that delivers excruciatingly sharp video. You haven't flown FPV in HD until you've done it with a Glyph. The problem with doing a video review of a video display system is that there is really no way of showing you what it looks like, but take my word for it: it's clear as a pane of Tiffany crystal tended daily by a professional window washer.
Regarding the form factor, it has one feature I like a lot and one distinct drawback. First of all, what I like: you can look out at the real world by glancing above or below the goggles themselves. Yes, this is less immersive than something like a pair of Fat Shark goggles which completely encloses your eyes, but as a guy who grew up using FPV for practical applications, I like being able to keep an eye on my aircraft and what's happening around me.
Next, the problem: those, big, cushy ear cups sure are comfortable and they do a pretty good job at dampening exterior sounds – which is just fine for a personal cinema display. However, for a FPV flying tool, when you need to be able to hear what your visual observer is saying to you, that could be a problem.
Obviously, we had a bit of fun with that issue in this video. In truth, it's not that big a problem – but I regard any impediment to flight safety as a potentially serious issue.
Before you lift off, work with your spotter to make sure your verbal communication is clear and reliable and in the style of professional pilots everywhere, repeat back every input you are given to make sure you heard it right.
Since companies began to manufacture complete, ready-to-fly drones, there has always been a division in the market. On one side of this divide, we have robust, capable aircraft with feature-rich autopilots and starting price tags between $800 and $1,200, manufactured by companies like DJI, Yuneec and Autel Robotics.
On the other side, we have aircraft that I will – lovingly, of course – refer to as toys, with primitive cameras, rudimentary flight control systems and prices ranging between $100 and $250, from companies with names like “Lucky Dragon” and “Soaring Eagle.”
To me, the Breeze is interesting because it's the first time a major manufacturer has built a drone with a sophisticated flight control system with a full suite of sensors and tried to make it accessible to consumers who might otherwise be drawn to the “toy” end of the spectrum.
Admittedly, $399 is basically double the cost of less-sophisticated platforms, but it's still far, far less than competitors like the Mavic (when DJI finally gets around to shipping it – after the holidays).
Is the Breeze as capable as the $1,000 drones? Of course not, but it will open the sky to another cadre of new drone pilots – who will get a good introduction to what the hardware is capable of doing – before graduating to more expensive systems.
As you can see for yourself, MicroMultiCopter (MMC) is doing some legitimately interesting development at its factory in Shenzhen, China: hydrogen fuel cells as a power source for drones, interchangeable (and innovative!) payload modules, all based on large multirotor platforms that are designed to do real work.
To my surprise, they invited me to spend 14 hours in an aluminum tube – otherwise known as an Airbus A330 – to come see it for myself and to share it with all of you. To dispense with any pretense of being a “neutral observer,” I'll let you know straight away: I like what they are doing, and I'm excited about the opportunity to bring it here to the United States and test it.
I'll be posting several more videos from my trip to China in the coming days, and you can read about my trip in an upcoming issue of Drone360. Stay tuned!
By now you know we're supporting Rich Hanson in his bid to become the next president of the Academy of Model Aeronautics. After watching this video, hopefully you have come to an even better understanding of why: he's got the background and the skills to be a very effective leader of the organization – most especially with the rapid development of recreational drones, FPV racing and related technologies that are rapidly coming to dominate the field of RC flying.
I know that, in the past, there has been tension between the AMA and the drone enthusiast community and, indeed, some AMA fields still remain resistant to these new forms of flying. However, because I speak to them quite regularly, I can offer my complete assurance that staff that leads the AMA is fully supportive of this community and is anxious to deploy services to support it.
All that they need is an elected leader who will vigorously support that initiative – and we have such a man in Rich Hanson. Please, mark your ballot for him and get it in the mail no later than November 8: the same day as the US presidential election. I wonder if that's just a coincidence...
Finally, you may notice in this video that Rich appears to be sitting in a tropical-themed hotel room. That's because he's actually in Hawaii right now, serving as the Contest Director for the Drone Worlds – just as he did for the first US National Drone Racing Championship last year in Sacramento.
It's always a pleasure to work with our friends in public safety: most especially the men and women of Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue, who serve the community where I live. That's right – when I finally succeed in setting my home ablaze in a LiPo fire, these are the folks who are going to show up and douse the flames.
And, of course, it's always fun to participate in a “burn-to-learn,” when real flames consume an actual structure as part of a training exercise. It's absolutely inevitable that we're going to come away with some spectacular imagery.
In this case, the photo of Raven silhouetted against the wall of fire that I used to create the thumbnail for this video was taken by Chris Hamilton with TVF&R's public information unit, who was gracious enough to share this image with us.
It's such a dramatic image that I've used it several times, including an article about this event in Model Aviation, PowerPoint slides for various talks I've given related to public safety and thermal imaging – and even to this day it graces the desktop of my own computer.
So, my thanks to Chris and everyone else at the department, and also to our friends at FLIR, who provided us with the hardware to conduct this demonstration. The camera you see in this video is a Tau2 640, which is the core the company uses in its drone-specific Vue series of cameras – so a good example of the Vue's capabilities, albeit we had to rig up an external DVR because the Tau2 doesn't incorporate ability to record internally.
Why such primitive hardware? Because, this event took place before the Vue had yet been conceived of at FLIR. That's right – you just watched another one of the “lost episodes” of the Roswell Flight Test Crew – this one dating back more than two years, to the summer of 2014.
It should surprise no one on planet Earth or anywhere else with ready access to the Internet that we are strongly endorsing Rich Hanson to serve as the next president of the Academy of Model Aeronautics. I personally came to know Rich five years ago, when the Roswell Flight Test Crew was still a new endeavor.
Some wrong-headed legislation got started here in Oregon which would have criminalized owning a drone, and made actually flying one a felony. I had joined the AMA shortly after beginning my RC flying career as a novice drone enthusiast, and had vaguely recalled reading somewhere that they had a Government and Regulatory Affairs program.
Looking for help, I called up the AMA and asked to speak with someone working in that department. Well, it's a pretty small department, so I soon found myself on the phone with Rich. He explained that, given the status of the bill in the legislature and the rising threat from similar bills all over the United States, the AMA wouldn't be able to get directly involved until or unless it moved considerably closer to passage.
That could have been disappointing, if he had not at the same time laid out some practical steps that we could take ourselves, along with other drone and model aviation enthusiasts here in Oregon. The rest is, as they say, history: we turned back the bill and something far more reasonable and realistic was ultimately passed, and we emerged from the experience as a respected voice here in our home state regarding the issue of drones.
Rich didn't give us a fish – he taught us to fish and encouraged us to keep after it until we'd landed one, and we did. That's real leadership: not trying to do everything yourself, but empowering others to accomplish the task themselves. Thank you for that, Rich, and everything else you have done: inviting us to join the AMA's SUAS Advisory Group, serving as a judge for our Drone Prize event in 2014, speaking alongside us at conferences and events all over the country – and always encouraging us to be our best.
I briefly outlined Rich's qualifications in the video above, and you'll be hearing more about them from us in coming days – but for the moment let me simply say this: he is the most qualified individual seeking the presidency of the AMA this year, period. Please, join us in supporting him and make sure you mail in your completed ballot to the AMA by November 8.
