DJI revisited

tevek · Feb 9, 2020

I’d just come home from flying one of the quads, had a great time and amazingly brought it home in one piece. The wife nodded over to to my Phantom boosted 4 and asked whether it was still relevant, I’d cleaned the cars, cleaned the paddock and raked the leaves and charged the package up. Had to sort out the Litchi app and I was away. Flew a 3500m mission and it came back like a homing pigeon, cleaned her and put her back on the shelf.
Thing is that they all bring happiness to us, regardless of their breed and I was able to empty the rubbish bins, put my chooks back in the pens and watch the cricket by the time the drone had returned.
Good heh?

Jtrjr · Feb 9, 2020

Tevek,

Having an excessive inventory of the DJI stuff (P2v+, 2-P3Pro's, Mavic Pro, Spark) gathering dust in the "Drone Room", I did the same thing this past weekend. Charged up the Spark and blew a few packs out at a friends house. Love Litchi but used the NLD app this time out. They do seem to store well. Keep the batteries up, take 'em out of the case and just fly 'em. I don't fly them much anymore, too much "drone paranioa" these days.

Jerry

rtkDarling · Feb 9, 2020

I was flying my mavic again recently in Puerto Rico and I can't get over how much faster and easier it is to setup and fly. It travels MUCH better too compared to my JumperT16, the charger, raft of batteries and tools I need for FPV. I can relax when I fly the mavic, over water or whatever; no sweat. Flying the FPV rig over the ocean still makes me shake like a leaf in the wind. As much as it kills me, I still can't match the simplicity & reliability after 2 years of experimentation and building.

Jtrjr · Feb 9, 2020

Yeah, I feel you! Obviously, the FPV stuff is more of an adrenaline rush. I can't stand the fact that DJI opens the door to all of our personal data to so many Chinese companies and has so much control over the way we fly. That's why I try not to use DJI Go or Litchi. I'm really loving this FPV stuff again but there's a lot of work to it. Hey, what are you using to edit your 2.7-4k stuff?

Jerry

rtkDarling · Feb 9, 2020

I use DaVinci resolve for everything. I edit in 2.7, but I'm going to start uprezzing to get better performance out of youtube. They give a better pipeline to footage in 4k

Jtrjr · Feb 9, 2020

Thank, RTK. I guess I'll have to get into DaVinci again, I tried it some time ago but it seemed so complicated for the down and dirty stuff I post.

tevek · Feb 9, 2020

Jtrjr said:
Tevek,

Having an excessive inventory of the DJI stuff (P2v+, 2-P3Pro's, Mavic Pro, Spark) gathering dust in the "Drone Room", I did the same thing this past weekend. Charged up the Spark and blew a few packs out at a friends house. Love Litchi but used the NLD app this time out. They do seem to store well. Keep the batteries up, take 'em out of the case and just fly 'em. I don't fly them much anymore, too much "drone paranioa" these days.

Jerry

Yeah, I’ve got a ‘reasonable’ collection of ‘things that fly’ but normally only take the same one or two quads out and I can almost feel the eyes of those that are left behind glaring at me when I walk out of the room... Fortunately I live in a very small town, everyone knows about me and my collection and apart from some initial concerns about privacy, no one cares. The other upside is that when I stuck one of my 5” quads up a gum tree, I borrowed the fire truck and used the water cannon to bring it down. Try that sort of shenanigans in the big smoke!

tevek · Feb 9, 2020

rtkDarling said:
I was flying my mavic again recently in Puerto Rico and I can't get over how much faster and easier it is to setup and fly. It travels MUCH better too compared to my JumperT16, the charger, raft of batteries and tools I need for FPV. I can relax when I fly the mavic, over water or whatever; no sweat. Flying the FPV rig over the ocean still makes me shake like a leaf in the wind. As much as it kills me, I still can't match the simplicity & reliability after 2 years of experimentation and building.

Same here with the fear of flying my FPV gear anywhere near water. The mission I flew yesterday with Litchi was around the lake where I live and I knew it would make it back, signal or not. Having experienced so many drop outs with my analogue gear, I wouldn’t trust myself to go anywhere near water. Maybe the digital HD quad I recently bought would be more trustworthy but then again considering it cost me one of kidneys to put together, I still wouldn’t risk it.

tevek · Feb 10, 2020

Jtrjr said:
Yeah, I feel you! Obviously, the FPV stuff is more of an adrenaline rush. I can't stand the fact that DJI opens the door to all of our personal data to so many Chinese companies and has so much control over the way we fly. That's why I try not to use DJI Go or Litchi. I'm really loving this FPV stuff again but there's a lot of work to it. Hey, what are you using to edit your 2.7-4k stuff?

Jerry

I’m hearing you regarding the data challenges with the DJI app info being collated by third parties. I stopped syncing my data ages ago and if ever someone was to view my footage, they would be struggling to see other humanoids in my footage and they would notice that I had either a beer or a glass of red sitting on the bench next to my take off point. What invariably drove me away from the product and into racing drones were the obnoxious no fly zones popping up where there were aerodromes in my area that hadn’t been used for fifty years.
I use Adobe Premier for my editing and whilst I’m rubbish at these sorts of things, the end result is reasonable and I can smash a six pack whilst putting it together.

JNew137 · Feb 10, 2020

rtkDarling said:
I use DaVinci resolve for everything. I edit in 2.7, but I'm going to start uprezzing to get better performance out of youtube. They give a better pipeline to footage in 4k

Just saw this and had to ask. Are you running 4k 60 or 2.7 120 when you film? I've got a Gopro 8 and ive tried reelsteady but not too big on the crop. Plan on doing a bunch of speed ramping in post with premiere. I just checked out your youtube and it looks amazing! Nice work brother!