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Ask Slashdot: Best Drone For $100-$150?
andyring writes With Christmas fast approaching, and me being notoriously hard to buy for, I thought a camera drone would be great to suggest for Christmas. But the options are dizzying, and it's nearly impossible to find something and know it'll be decent. What are Slashdotters suggestions/recommendations/experiences with a basic camera drone in the $100-150 range? Looks like all of them do video but I'm more interested in high-res stills although that may be a moot point.
the alternative to asking the cute neighbor for permission to take pictures of her laying out in the sun.
Let Obama's drones do the rest.
I had no idea the NSA was so cash-strapped.
You'll be getting crap for $100-150. Sorry, but you will. Now that being said, I have found a Syma x5C from Banggood for $63.51 CAD and has a 2MB camera. http://www.banggood.com/Syma-X... and it's not bad for a beginner but it's going to get broken and then you'll be pissed off.
But you should really save your pennies and buy a Cheerson CX20 but it's $368.40 CAD. http://www.banggood.com/Cheers... Here's an entire thread on it from people who know their stuff on RCGroups: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums...
Do your research on this on YouTube and the Internet in general. Read the reviews. This is a pretty serious drone for little cost. You can get gimbals and use GoPro cameras (or SJ4000 type cameras too). Anyhow, good drones aren't to be found for under $300. Save your money...you'll thank me later.
whatever is $500 today, will be $150 tomorrow. time is your friend.
Best way to disable a camera drone?
If I see a drone outside my second story window, I'd like to take it out.
Water gun?
Frequency jam?
Simple pellet gun?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I thought you were only willing to spend $100.
Get this: http://www.amazon.com/Hubsan-H...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Don't be tempted to spend a bit more and get a Parrot AR Drone, I bought the AR Drone 2, and the GPS module and I've been waiting for the Android Directors mode software for nearly a year and a half now.
The date kept getting pushed back and eventually they stopped estimating a deliver date, now it just says "Coming Soon", like it has for most of this year.
The regular Free Flight software is hit and miss too, it works, sort of, but needs a restart often when the drone goes out of range. With such a small range (50m), you need a directors mode. (Directors mode is where you program it to go from A to B to C and photograph stuff without being in range).
What pisses me off most is that it was promised for Feb, and I bought the Drone and GPS module on that promise and more than a year later they're not even estimating the date they will eventually deliver the software.
I second that, its a cheap one.
A nice little drone for play, have one, flew it around a condo block, took some video, its fun but it can't take high winds, and its difficult to fly indoors.
Don't let anyone sell you it as expensive, I paid about $50 for mine which included the camera.
I want a drone armed with a machine gun or other weapon to take down other people's drones.
I always dreamt of shooting down RC planes at events while hiding a little further. It nows seems almost possible.
Sorry, they are busy trying on their 3D-printed butt plugs.
Forget those powered drones, the real fun is a camera tied to a kite.
Do you have a Web Site or an "IRC channel" in which I make more inquiries about your organization?
I wish people would stop calling RC toys "drones"!!!!
For around $150 you can ebay yourself a drone. Frame ~$25, motors $30, controller $25, RC stuff $40, ESCs $20, battery $15, and maybe $20 more in bits and bobs to hold it together.
This will get you a very powerful drone that can easily carry a camera. After this a primary expense will be more and bigger batteries as you will probably want to fly more than 7 minutes.
I got whatever is #1 on amazon for about $60 a few weeks ago and have been spending time learning to fly it before I invest in something awesome. Worth considering as they are harder to fly than one would think.
Maybe you should get a spelling checker for Christmas.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
http://www.makershed.com/collections/drone-kits
Most quadcopters are made of ultralight materials. In terms of superstructure, large ones are often dense styrofoam, small ones use thin rigid plastic struts. 3D printer materials wouldn't cut it. As for the blades, the resolution of a printer wouldn't be fine enough and the blades would end up churning air rathe than cutting it.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
You'll be able to practice up the skills you'll need to take really nice photos and you won't be so upset if you bust it learning.
When you're ready for some good stills, pick up a few hundred dollar drone. The Syma X1 is everything you need to learn though. Very durable as well. Loved mine so much after 2 months of daily use that I bought my son one for himself.
The wltoys v323 is the only one in that range that can carry a payload (up to 400 grams) but doesn't have a gimbal. www.amazon.com/Wltoys-V323-2-4GHz-Quadcopter-Headless/dp/B00JZ08K7G
The crazyflie is definitely the best flying thing a nerd can get for under $200. Version 2.0 is almost being released, so you can get the first version for under $150. link to manufacturer
Any Congressman or televangelist.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Try flying some small helium party-style balloons on kevlar fishing line tethers, creating a forest of near-invisible strings.
Copter drones don't fly well with the blades wrapped in string.
(Indeed, I hear full-sized helicopers don't work all that well with a few hundred turns of 75-pound test line wrapped around that pitch control mechanism at the hub, either.)
This might not work against those with the bumpers all around. But the ones with the blades unguarded would have quite a time getting through.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
plenty on the popular retail sites & stores.
Shun the unbeliever! Shuuun! Shuuuun!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
> Best way to disable a camera drone?
If the distance is short, maybe an improvised whip would work.
High power water hose sounds like the best suggestion so far, but it's not something I'd have at hand.
I'd be very interested to know more about the legality of damaging drones. Laws against the flying of drones are kinda ineffective since by the time the cops got there, the drone will be gone and the operator might never have been visible.
Help build the anti-software-patent wiki
We did our own Drone for less than $200. You should google for oddcopter and see for yourself.
Get one of those ladybug RC Toys from Radio Shack. Anything "real" will set you back at least $1K. Unless you want to fly a cheesy DJI Phantom clone. Or even worse.. a DJI Phantom.
I've yet to see any quadcopter made of foam, dense or otherwise. Those thin "plastic" struts on the small ones are carbon fiber reinforced plastic.
So not only is no one 3D printing a quadcopter, we've not even covered the motors, the battery, and the electronics.
But we're totally colonizing the galaxy because someone made a knob on the ISS.
I love my Hubsan quadcopter. It's the FPV model, but I've seen great video from the cheaper camera-only model. Very good flyer (if you can call that flying). I fly it more than my DJI Phantom because it's so small.
I originally got the Walker W100 S for my son (who ended up wanting a helicopter instead). It's right around $100-110 depending on where you look with a Devo4 remote. You can fly it from either your Android or iOS device for a first person view, or use the remote and link your Android or iOS device to it only to record the video feed. The feed is "good enough" and the range works. In my experience the video will cut out before the control of the quadcopter will, and I've had to fairly high before. The downside is it's smaller and white, so when you get it up there it can get hard to see/tell which way is facing forward.
I have a a short video I took of the one flight just testing how high it could go and still film etc, but for some reason I can't find it right now. I got mine from XHeli (which I think has some sales going on right now) but I think it's around the same price on Amazon if you have prime. Just make sure to get some super glue as where the "prop arms" come off the main body are a bit weak and can/will crack with rough landings.. but you can super glue that part back on. The rest of the "prop arm" parts can be swapped out (the body can too but it's a big more $ and work over say a $12 motor + rotor replacement).
If you pick up something with reasonable video resolution that can do I-Frame only then you can use multiple images to do a super-resolution still. The premise is easy... Multiple images will not cover the exact same pixel positions (unless the drone is affixed to a stationary point). You can use this fact to merge multiple images into a single one with much higher resolution than any of the single images. The more images that you can overlay, the higher the resolution you can squeeze out.
The trick is to have good alignment and warping algorithms to do the overlays. I've done this for an employer in my previous life with impressive results.
It will be hard to find a camera drone for $150, but here are some options. I recommend getting something without a camera first to learn how to fly the drone. They aren't as simple as you think. $50 - Pico QX, great little stable quadcopter. No camera. $90 - Nano QX RTF, comes with a cheap controller, but you can bind this quad to a real RC transmitter. No camera. $190 - 180 QX HD RTF, more of a gymnasium quad than a living room quad. Comes with an on board camera.
You can write with a lump of coal, but it doesn't come with a spelling checker...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
First stop calling them Drones they are not drones they are RC aircraft with very limited range. A drone can go miles away and be controlled miles away. Why are you people so determined to reclassify RC heles or airplanes? I have a 100.00 chopper ya cant even fly it outside.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Bought a U818a on Amazon for $60 two weeks ago. Easy to fly. Indestructible - so far. Decent camera. Good starting point for both flying and pricepoint. Already dropped another $75 for extra batteries and charger.
Despite what is said in sibling post to this one, there are numerous 3D printed quadcopter projects out there. They have individual plans out there with parts lists as well as parts on Thingverse that you may print out.
Google 3D printed quadcopter
It's not a "drone" with all the sinister connotations. It's a radio-controlled flying toy that you are really after.
The cheapest, best, off-the-shelf one you can buy right now is the DJI series and it's about $1200. And that's more of a mapping and photography tool than a toy.
You can, however, build an RC toy for about the price you mention, and it would be a lot more fun. Forget the camera for now (though you can add a camera later easily enough). Some wood scraps, motors, speed controls, props, battery, radio with receiver, and a HobbyKing KK multirotor controller and you're in business. A tri-copter would be quite fun to build and fly (requires a servo to tilt the one rotor). I think you would get far more long-term fun from a project like that.
http://www.instructables.com/i...
A prebuilt unit that costs $150 will be fun for a day or to for you, and then I suspect it will be crashed and lie broken in a drawer.
People seem to think that RC aircraft are things they can just toss into the air and enjoy for hours. But it will take some serious work and training to learn how to fly them. If you take a bit seriously I guarantee you'll have a lot of fun.
I fly fixed wing and think that's funner than multi-rotor, but to each his own. I do plan to buy a DJI soon, though, although even in Canada the regs for using them in a pseudo-commercial way (say mapping) are murky.
It's good to know why some drones are more expensive than others. (I'm going to use "drone" instead of "quadcopter" or "multicopter" since it's easier to type.)
Your basic drone will have a 3D gyro & accelerometer that will keep it flying upright. That's about it. As far as the altitude, it's up to you to constantly vary the throttle setting to keep it somewhere near the height you want. It will also drift in the wind, and you'll have to vary the directional controls to counter this. It may also rotate when pushed by the wind.
A magnetic compass can help the drone keep a constant heading. This is important, since most drones are piloted relative to the direction they are heading. (Fancier ones have additional piloting options whereby you don't need to know which way they are pointed.)
Fancier drones (like Parrot AR) have additional sensors to maintain altitude. Either a pressure sensor (barometer) and/or ultrasonic sensors aimed at the ground will allow it to accomplish this. However, the drone will still drift in the wind.
The next level up adds either GPS or an optical flow sensor (low-resolution camera pointed straight down). With one or both of these, a drone can maintain its absolute position, give or take a couple feet.
Then, of course, there's the camera. The most basic thing is a camera that records to an onboard SD card. Then there are cameras that transmit NTSC/PAL video signals over the air to a receiver (which might be combined with a screen into the controller). Or there are cameras that transmit video via wifi to your mobile device. The latter tend to have more latency (delay), making it harder to pilot (when you're flying fast).
You'll want the camera to have a relatively wide FOV (field of view). Otherwise, it's hard to know what's around the craft that you might run into.
Then there are gimbals. These keep the video stabilised. Of course, now we're in the several hundred dollar range, so perhaps that's where to stop.
The best cheap camera drone currently is the HUBSAN X4 H107C-HD Quadcopter with 2MP Video Camera. For only $65, you get a quadcopter that shoots 720p video and can fly for 7 minutes per charge both indoors and out. It's a great way to learn how to fly a quadcopter and you won't get upset if you destroy it learning how to fly. You can even order it from B&H Photo http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/...
The word "drone" has fallen into the category of common usage. People know what you're talking about when you say drone but you get a puzzled look when you say quad-copter. The problem is the military has dibs on the word drone and it's not a pretty one. And with all the FAA brew-ha-ha I think they'll ultimately have to classify them by weight. A very lightweight drone is a toy.
Okay, so please enlighten those of us who don't understand the difference on how these RC "toys" are not drones?
RC toy:
- Requires line of sight control.
- May have a camera+recorder, but you cannot see the camera output in real time.
- May require low level control of pitch/roll/yaw
- You control it by looking at the toy in the sky.
Drone:
- Can fly out of line of sight.
- Transmits video in real time.
- Can accept high level commands, such as position and heading, and handles pitch/roll/yaw itself.
- You control it by looking at the video.
I think your categorization is somewhat useful, but more and more "toys" are including the capabilities you put under "drone".
They're cheap, but not THAT cheap.
What if your drone just sprayed silly string onto the other drone's propellers from above?