From another group (populated mainly by photographers interested in aerial photography), here's a link to B & H Photo, selling a GoPro and Phantom in one package.
B & H is one of the largest resellers of photo and video equipment in the US, so it's quite a milestone to see them list a quadcopter there. And encouraging that they identify it as a quadcopter and not a drone?
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Maybe a 16 Char LCD screen with an error code will work much better than confusing colored LED light sequences
And just to drive home the point about the DJI LED silliness, here's a fun discussion I just ran across on a Phantom thread:
Josh, I actually think the frame is pretty good. You can't really fix it but... well that might be part of the point. ;)
But really, it's a monocoque, which is A+ for stiffness/weight. It's like the polar opposite of the F450/S800 frame which is about as bad of a design as you could possibly make. The only way it would be better is if the top and bottom were glued together, but then obviously serviceability is completely gone.
I would be really curious to know if somebody could even manage to damage the frame. It would take quite a hit!
That's a little harsh calling me elitist. I'm not elitist, I'm a realist. The more plug and play you make it, the more crashes you'll have. There will be NO getting away from that. You could perfect the auto-pilot, and people will still be crashing into trees, people, etc. Just take any hobby-grade RC car, and hand the controller to a newbie, how long does it last? And that doesn't even have any automation.
The LED thing is not right at all. Arducopter does not require a decoder ring to figure out what is going on. This is insane:
You can't possibly expect people to figure that out, *while flying*. Heck, how far can you even *see* those lights? Can you name a single other consumer product that comes with a decoder sheet for blinking lights for complicated status determination?
In the panic of a flyaway, you can't figure out what the cause is.
Arducopter is totally different. You have one set of lights, whatever you like, for armed/disarmed and battery status. It's simply. If it's blinking slow, you're disarmed. If it's solid, you're armed, with a good battery. If it's blinking fast, it's armed with a low battery. Pretty simple.
You don't need IMU status, because it simply doesn't get screwed up in flight. Warm up? Not needed. At least not that I've seen. GPS satellites? Not needed, from what I've seen. The Ublox is pretty awesome. I barely even look at the status on it anymore, and some of my machines don't even have an external LED for this. But if you want an external led, blinking means not locked. Solid means locked and good to go. Once it locks, I've never seen it unlock, or get a bad fix.
I still don't understand why they're selling that cheap hard to replace or fix plastic frame.
More non geek users = more issues, for sure. On average each Phantom sold here drives 5-6 emails to explain things out... even if the video are perfect for doing that.
What I see is the other way around than your elitist approach. More users = more issues So DEV guys and this entire community needs to step up and produce better and easier to use products. Nothing says make it better than 10 000 fly away... :) Until the problems are wide spread there is always people that will try to not fix the bugs that requires a lot of investigation and that "should not happen if properly setup"... hehe I know what I'm talking about, I am an IT guys working on IT projects for the past 15 years!
Your last comment about
Requiring users to judge status based solely on looking at blinking coloured lights is insane
makes me smile... what do you rely on with the APM? a solid red for armed and a blinking bleu for gps fix... oh wait it's solid on the APM and blinking on the uBlox GPS... right.. got it.... heheh not very more effective... there is no warning that the IMU needs to warm up... no satellite count, no visible mode light... you need to install and configure the ioBoard to make some LED patterns that are as confusing as DJI.
The only solution is an LCD on the model or better as a small stand alone ground station. And the latest Ardu Ground Station 1.3 will deliver that for less than $100 (of course you still need your telemetry modules)...
So again I beg to differ, DJI makes it better with their LED state indicator on the rear of the Phantom than we do on the STOCK APMs.
@Petrus, I am selling the 450 frames... but we adapted the plates for the APM size.... :)
So get these shell going and we will see if they sell!
Dany, the way I see it, the easier you make it to use, the more newbies you get who will not RTFM, and will therefore not experience a reduction in flyaways. Maybe even make it worse. Anecdotally, from what I see on forums, I believe this to be true. The DJI Phantom suffers from more flyaways than anything else. Maybe it's just because there are more of them sold. But, whatever.
This is very much the exact same thing as ABS brakes. ABS brakes should have greatly reduced the number of rear end collisions. Instead, the number increased. Why? Because people got complacent, and started tailgating even more.
Requiring users to judge status based solely on looking at blinking coloured lights is insane. Don't they have bluetooth connection to a smart phone or anything?
HeliStorm,
Next thing we see from DJI will probably a F450 skin, lets give it a month to be conservative
Dany, that is true, the Phantom has quite a sexy look too it because of the moulded shroud, something which can easily be replicated on a F450 with a vacuum formed plastic shroud at minimal cost. You can then custom paint the thing to personalize it. You sell the F - Four Fifties and I will manufacture the shrouds!!
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