Drone repairs The DIY route to a fully accomplished Drone pilot...

I have to say that flying a drone can swing from the heights of Ecstasy through to the depth of Hell... What do I mean? well having fun with your drone can be very exciting as you try and pull off a maneuver or go over water and watch the playback and see the best footage you've ever seen sofar... But the down side is the fact you can push the drone too far by trying to go at a long distance with little to no battery power...
Or if you was distracted by someone asking you how much does it cost how far can you go?... The usual questions...
Or even trying to impress your mates by seeing how low you can fly off the floor and can you fly through the tree branch or something....
The end results maybe something of a disaster, as you pick up the pieces of your recently crashed drone... The flip side to this that you are too afraid to fly over water and beyond a few meters making your flying, too tame and in my opinion, and a bit boring...
No one likes a broken drone and there is some sympathy from other people when you post your crashed footage...

But I think everyone likes to rubberneck a accident site and with drones its no exception... You'll even get comments asking how, why did it crash...
It usually comes down to pilot error, some sort of drone fault or external forces like high KP index or radio interference...
Not mater what the cause it is you still need to fix the dam thing... and that can be a headache in itself...
I have to mention that FPV pilots seem to have greater knowledge of their equipment and fixing their drones is part of their everyday routine... When I am awestruck on their stunts and how they go though race gates and complex flight paths... I can imagine they are on a knife edge of pushing the drone to its limits to get the most out of their drone...

The average drone consumer cant be arsed with the intricate circuits and plugs and wires of the drone... So they happily buy the Refresh and gladly put up with the hassle of waiting for weeks on end to see if they fixed a dodgy connection or unknown fault... Probably early on in the manufacturing DJI pushed out the mavic pro a little too fast... A few people complained how their drone had focus issues or have a motor gimble overload error message... A lot of people complained about this and how the support or repair service sucks compared to other drone manufactures...


But having friends with other drones beside DJI, you get the same type of complains no matter what make or model... I was one of the early adopters and probably got one of the first few mavic pros when they were on reserved... I didn't think much of it at the time and was lucky that I didn't have a problem of with the drone...
It was light years ahead of my older inspire and to be honest a little bit better in terms of range and the ability to move at speed with out much gimble wobble...
I flew the Mavic much harder then any other drone and because of that I got the best footage from it... The downside of that is I few it until I crashed it...
So When you you finally crash you kind of ask yourself how much damage is it ?, and how can you fix it...? The thing is the mavic has proven to be a great drone to fly but is it a good drone to repair?...

Well, its been over a year since the Mavic has been out and sofar there's been a lot of people crying out for spare parts... Thankfully you search for spare parts for Mavic on google to see a lot of places to obtain what you need... The Mavic Pro itself is fairly modular and when you open it up you will see the drone splits into a few boards and if you dig into a teardown video... you will notice the camera section, the main board, the GPS sensor, the ESC array or the speed control board for the drones motors, all have different jobs but can be easily replaced if you know where to shop...

My particular fault was the camera, the ribbon had broken off and I have to replace it along with a Vibration plate that reduces jello vibration in the video feed... The cost of which was about £10 for a new ribbon and £16 for a new vibration plate assembly... I could of shopped around to get a better deal but I went with a reliable eBay store rather then a dealer that was cheap and has a low reputation stats... The package came fairly quickly only missing one weekend  of flying but to be honest the weather wasn't that great... I eventually fixed the broken ribbon and replaced the vibration plate within the hour and had it flying quickly... Besides a gimble calibration and later a forward collision sensor calibration, the drone flew brilliantly...
I do recommend the self repair route of fixing your drone as I gained lots of knowledge on the inner workings of the drone and its was always fun to piece together the broken parts... Its modular design and its tiny construction, you'll appreciate the drone much more... And fixing the drone it self has its rewards... Granted you'll become a little humble as you take off and fly again but now you've fixed it. it wont be much trouble to repair the drone again should you find that you've crashed it again...

But ultimately to be accomplished in your flying, I think you have to wear many hats or use many skills to get the best footage... Knowing that, I think that the sadness of losing a drone can be reduced by having the skills of doing self repairs and just rolling with the punches as you learn from your mistakes... After all FPV pilots can perform astonishing feats of aerial maneuverability, because they can sacrifice the drone to get the shot or get the best race lap times... I just think if I could be half as bold like that but still maintain the eye and steadiness of a aerial videographer, I could lose the fear of flying in tight spaces or night flying or anything that still scares me...

WTF is going on with my inspire pro...? Planned obsolescence...

I'm gonna have to apologist for this post as most of it will be me tell you the main reasons why I hardly use my inspire drone compared with my Mavic... ( so its likely to be a rant)
To begin lets state the Inspire drone has been around for some time, I think 3 years before I brought mine... When first seeing this thing, it was exciting, it was shiny, and it has interchangeable lenses which I thought was great... The drone I guess was expensive and probably half the budget of a small car... So naturally I treated this thing with kid gloves...
But being new I didn't really like taking landscape photography...

  took to kite surfing videos at high altitude... I guess the machine performed admirably in the first year... But then came the updates and Osmo Pro updates and then a new DJI go4 app and more updates until we have a system today...

One major problem last year was a tendency for the camera view to get very glitchy... I change the region on my ipad mini 4 from UK to Hong kong so that I could customize the frequencies and fix the camera view glitches... All seems well but taking the Inspire out recently to test it with my Crystal sky and testing with my ipad... I find the system isn't as reliable as my Mavic system...

The Crystal-sky is supposed to be the goto monitor of my DJI drone... But lets face it there's a fundamental flaw in the Android operation system... I first thought its was a processor problem... And in part it was true...
But on further investigation I noticed things pile on the android very quickly... Much like a windows computer without a firewall... when entering the internet... the Computer gets bogged down with little programs not specific to the main function of the computer...
In other words the crystal-sky operating sysem only works well with DJI go 4 app... but not with back ground programs like the gallery and the video or possibly 3rd party apps...

It did have a update recently to the crystal-sky OS version 02.06.03.00 which got rid of the USB  recognition pop up menu... and if it disconnects (because of a dodgy wire) it can easily reconnect if you pull out the USB and put it in again...
I found recently when I went to the settings of the CS settings... Tap on apps and looked at the RAM usage, I generally see unknown programs the tablet would run without knowing what it was doing...


Granted I did try to attempt to install litchi and a few other apps on the crystal-sky but found it was struggling to show a decent camera view with out pixelating... long story short extra apps BAD... crystal-sky with only original DJI software and a trimmed down Ram usage, seems ok... or GOOD

But be also aware that this android tablet doesn't like High radio interference... I tried a live broadcast with the CS and it was terrible... And then when I fixed the tablet by cutting down the apps and other programs... It functioned fine... Not great but reduce pixelation...( The dji mavic video error correction uses extra process power to cope with RF interference, it can message CPU overload or cut off and crash if overloaded)

And only recently when flying the mavic with a CS I noticed that whenever someone walks on by the Camera view will pixel-ate again due to their phone with a wifi hotspot or their phone in general... This happen when a large group of people walked by a nearby footpath ( the drone was about 800 ft away...

With these problems alone for the Crystal-sky... it felt worst with the inspire drone and a CS monitor... DJI go3 app somehow feels sluggish on a IOS device but when you are trying to solve screen lag on a inspire 1 system along with the flaws of the CS as well, it seems overwhelming...
Thankfully I have a ipad mini 4 to help see which tablet is more reliable... And the original idea of using a CS to take over my inspire sysem now seems unlikely... I have o choice but to use it as screen for the camera operator to help frame the picture...

In comparison the Inspire with the Mavic, I have felt the lag from the small drone to be very small about less then half a second... But the inspire 1 has anything from half second to a full second lag... Many people have stopped updating knowing full well that DJI have throttle down the Speed and now with the FW 01.11.01.50 (undated  from 10th July 2017)
The range seem reduced as well as the screen shows signs of frequent pixelation ... A recent trip to the beach on further examination has me clocking the inspire at 1000ft before the screen was presenting lag and a intermittent screen view... Thinking this might be a screen contact problem I have cleaned the connection of the gimble with isopropyl... ready to test again... ( the black screen of death was camera view fault on the inspire when the contacts get dirty due to assembling the camera and aircraft outside)

In the end DJI have announced they will be no longer supporting the inspire 1 drone... And have moved onto the inspire 2 drone... You can buy their old stock of inspire 1's at discounted prices but considering that there's no after sales support and the system seems laggy compared to the Mavic...  I think I can safely say that it might be called "planned obsolescence"... Or the same way Apple has made their phones work for a few years but eventually it gets too slow and useless you eventually throw it away anyway...

Saturated Drone videos on social media... Am I bored yet...???

Who has seen a bunch of videos on you tube and learnt nothing about drones???...
Its a strange life, show business and  I thought I got out of it when I quit my college band to do something worthwhile... The thing is any form of entertainment is a form of show business... Whether you are on stage behind a microphone or drawing a cartoon or something... Its all there for someones amusement...

Most of the time its social media platforms that make most of us watch... Or if you still watch TV, it maybe that... But entertainment is becoming shorter or have bite sized segments to entertain us... except films) As most of my shows are 40 minuets and mostly

streamed, the concept of Tv is dying ever since the video recorder and TIVO was invented...
The internet has provided me with enough entertainment to go on without TV and from there on in you get into a pattern of watching anything that is interesting to you... Skipping the need to wait for a television schedule because its inconvenient to you and your schedule...
In case for me, watching Drone videos provides a reference of a world that I want to be apart off... One thing you can be sure of is the educational drone videos...

There's several types of drone videos... One of the popular ones are the bloggers channels... These are popular people who usually post daily and talk about any stuff they are currently interested in... In this case its the drone, usually going on about the press event of a new drone or a preview of the new up and coming drone... I tend to take this with a pinch of salt, as its a early version of this drone and likely to be some bugs or the video description of this drone is... Also you'll get someone predicting what the next drone will be like... There has been some long winded videos going on about the current features of your drone and what will be the extension of that in the next generation...

While its nice to see the up and coming new features with every new generation... Its all getting to be a bit similar... Granted the new DJI drone has a better camera and everyone is filming everything in their neighborhood...But the drone forums I think are getting saturated with too many drone videos or show reels of someones photography /videography business...


You tube has become a business platform and with that, the new membership means that no one earns money from drone videos unless you have 1000 subscribers and over 4000 watched hours at the end of every 12 months... ( also you must have a permission for aerial work or the American equivalent if you want to monetize your videos)
All of this is still early days but the drone consumer market is said to be growing...
With most people at the start of the steep learning curve where upon most crashes occur... and the most vocal people, will exactly tell you their hatred for this drone or complaints about that drone... Discouraging you from ever buying such a thing in the first place...

The industry seems to be in its infancy, as manufacturing and production of these flying things often come with glitches of one thing or another... The result is a series of "how to fix" videos and tutorial videos on making the best with your drone... or even a review of the top ten drones...

Remember most people are causally interested in drones, but if you add a top ten you'll start to draw in a crowd as we are people that are attracted to lists and top ten items... YouTube strategies have numbered lists and other compelling titles to be click bait magnets to the unsuspecting viewer... Along with High ranking suggested videos... You will find that video makers who use this kind of strategy seem to be goal orientated people who carve up a lot of the views and leave nothing for anyone else...

The most annoying thing for me, are the drone videos with a comedy element or forced comedy element... I can leave the humor but am forced to watch a awkward sketch in a middle of a drone review... Much of these are people who watch Top gear, and then try to copy it by doing stunts or a review with a race at the end... Ive only touched the surface of the drone videos out there as I can only see so much before I give up and try doing a you-tube search on a different subject instead... In the end it comes down to your own personnel taste... I prefer the straight talking no nonsense review or presentation with dry humor or if there's little of that, someone who doesn't talk for a long time on a subject...  A Long winded round about, up and down the garden video, when a 2 minuet video on the bullet points would of been enough...

I am starting to look at the boring Analytics of my videos and see the  watch count... Its a subtle way of telling me that my content is mostly boring and I should cut and edit the videos to a couple of minuets... A practice that most people don't do... but then again most people don't write a script for their videos a "to the point presentation" But popularity doesn't come overnight and if you are watching or making videos you'll have the pleasure of liking or disliking content... This type of feedback loop tends to discourage you as a video maker or make you more determined... In the end I find myself killing a few minuets with you-tube as there is some genuine glimpses of interesting footage... But as for becoming a regular you-tube personality... I think I’ll leave it for someone else...But am I bored yet of the videos out there...??? Videos are getting to be too similar... But overall personality wins throughout social media... And to win in this arena of self published internet stars is a difficult game... The money is rubbish the work hours is terrible and in the end its a very slow climb to the top...

Choose your subject... The life and practice of a drone action cameraman...

No Doubt when you are starting most people would like to fly around the most glamorous places... Its alright for if you are going on a drone friendly place to film your smug family pictures for 2 weeks on holiday... But the majority of the time most people do their back garden or indoors because they can't wait for tomorrow...
What ever your mind set and where ever you fly, its important for you to have a decent practice area and think about what you are going to film...
Some people come from a landscape point of view and would try to record the world from a local park... and venture out to areas out of the town and cities to get the best views... With this in mind you are going to have to think about the light the weather and the time of year... As this all changes during the seasons and through out the day... Dull overcast days or high winds may be your enemy...

As a pilot first, I like to think that I am choosing action shots simply because it improves my skills on trying to move around the subject and be a cameraman second to the outcome... I think with a camera you can reach a point where you know how to get a particular style or look (via you-tube photo or video tutorials setting camera shutter ISO aperture etc etc)...
 And have varying levels of success especially if you study other artists and try to copy their styles...

But a pilot you would have to try and teach your self... how you move and react to other objects...

I think there are two types of pilots both in their own right are good... But as I am still finding my way around the drone world you may agree with me or not...
The work I do is mostly follow action flying... So that would require a process that half "line of sight" and half "first person" pilot...
While there are other pilots who come from a model airplane or helicopter back ground...  They tend to fly mostly "line of sight" as their earlier experience of radio control aircraft never had mini cameras or transmitters... The same for the other pilots who fly mostly FPV... they practice mostly through a racing course along with loops and obstacles to add more difficulty...
The FPV pilots practice hours on end to get the basics right and maneuver  their aircraft around  lightening speeds... For me I practice a lot on moving subjects... The precision comes when you can negotiate tight turns around the subject you follow... Since most of my learning curve is undocumented, it was more or less trial and error to figure out what works and what doesn't...

The main thing is to calibrate my controls... From the start I knew my control sticks and gimble tilt was overshooting their intentions as I first tried to tame the movements... The rudder would turn too much and the throttle wasn't responding as quickly as I'd liked... As with anything I experimented on the expos for the rudder and eventually on the pitch, the throttle, the rudder and the roll... Eventually I found that the pitch and roll dont need any exponential control but a linear response along with the throttle... This allows quick action of the drone and not the delayed sluggishness of a VW car brake...

I only kept the rudder with a exponential control profile as only the tiniest control is needed for a orbital shot... But even with the rudder at the lowest Expo it still had tendencies to overshoot in its turns...
Early in on my drone flying, the manual point of interest was a difficult maneuver to perform... As the relation of the rudder and the roll ( left right controls of the right stick) controls are matched to determine the orbit speed even the shape of the orbital path... Using the orbit is a simple tool in my flight box of useful maneuvers... And a simple lift with a gimble tilt makes a unbeatable combination of dynamic moves on a moving subject...


For me the basic drone moves in a unforgiving saltwater arena at high winds has a pleasing look and seems to be liked by my viewers... The rewards itself is making a camera shot that follows the action and shows the viewer how a kite-surfer jumps and whats involved in the control and execution of the "Air Time"...

There are a few disadvantages I must admit with my hobby, mostly getting up at early times to capture those morning tides or the off season weather and onshore winds can be freezing and you'll end up questioning your sanity... But other then that its fine and no different then any landscape photographer (in my humble opinion...)
In retrospect, those desperate times I gotten up to go somewhere to enjoy my hobby I found I am walking to some place or making the effort to catch a high tide in the hope to see water action... Has given me a new release of energy and I suppose a healthier lifestyle comparing a previous life with out drones... So there is that...



Other action subjects can include paragliding... wake-boarding , horseback riding, boating and motor racing... etc etc...
But generally the subject matter can vary for most locations... and how frequent the event is happening... I find my local beach to be a haven of amateur and professional sports people with varying interests... Mostly kite surfing and waterfront activities, it has made me flourish and gain much experience...

I think most people who practice their moves need to find a similar area to constantly practice and get better... Otherwise a saturated market of similar videos will flood social media and people will become more de-sensitised to drone videos... Already you-tube has become a endless source of good and bad videos and while its nice to have a choice... There are a lot of crap out there to look out for... All have which have been sorted out by a unfair search engine that favors the large subscribed amateur drone flyers with no formal knowledge of the subject matter, other then a few hours experience...
In the end I believe that if you practice enough and become a expert in your own right on a particular subject or area... You'll out shine the people who'll tend to go at it on a amateur gonzo approach... and reach some kine of success in your drone career... The main thing is to try to improve with each passing video you make and edit out the camera jerks... And with a bit of time, you'll see your flying skills shine through... Hopefully they'll be less movement mistakes and more Footage to see...

New Drone, Old drone... Do I buy the current new existing Drones or wait for a unknown next generation drone...?

You know that saying "New is always better"?... It can be true for most things, but can it be said for drones???...
I am at the cross roads whether to join the mavic air club and buy the drone that can do the tiny planet movies or buy an inspire 2 to give me the automatic features of intelligent flight modes within the inspire 2 platform...
I did read the that the new features are a lot better then the old drone but I also read the down side of these drones... Hearing the wonky red rotor on the inspire 2 and low battery flight times of the mavic air...
No doubt you might have friends who have a drone, giving you a opinion on what you should look out for and buy...
I've been procrastinating for a long time, But its now almost around the time that DJI are going to roll out a new drone... ( if you listen to rumors)

Most of these rumors are just click bait, drawing you into view their crappy sketches of what
someone thinks is a drone...
And yet its fun to imagine if DJI has improved the drone by listening to what people are asking for...
The old inspire was (is) a good drone but DJI did respond to customers requests and added a second camera for the pilot, allowing for true 2 man operation... As well as other things mostly a faster speed and intelligent flight modes...

The way I see it, intelligent flight modes and extra sensors to avoid crashing into things, seem to grab peoples attention... A fool proof drone is near enough becoming a reality as visual collision avoidance are starting to appear on the latest DJI drones...
First in the front for obvious reasons as the majority of flights is in the forward position... But in the case of the Phantom drone, the 4th version of the drone series... The phantom now has sensors on the front and back as well as two infra red sensors on the side... This may well improve the drones usability as pilots with limited skills are going to push their luck trying to fly in areas that are too difficult to fly in...
No Doubt I believe the next generation of drone will try to have collision avoidance sensors around the drone front and back as well as side to side and top and bottom of the craft...

In the case of the inspire 2 the two battery configuration gives a better form of security because of the unlikely time of battery failure, the drone will have a back up to keep it aloft... Although flying my inspire 1 countless of times, has never failed to perform...
This safety feature hasn't turned my resolve but instead the new line up of cameras made especially for the inspire has certainly caught my attention...

My recent love affair with higher frame rates has me wondering about the Phantom 4 pro and the Inspire 2, both drones are capable of delivering 4K at 60 FPS... But since I had my X5 camera the use of inter-changeable lenses seems like it shouldn't be a option at all. Given a choice with a camera with a fixed lens system, or a interchangeable micro 4/thirds system that seems perfect for drones... I would choose the 4/thirds system all the time...
The inspire 2 with the X5S camera would be just as good as my current inspire pro set-up if not better... Because of the option to record raw uncompressed video is likely to remove the annoying Red Tint on sunny days... As my current X5 camera has no apparent cure for the color shift caused by lack of infra red filters in the old camera...

And finally the new new X7 camera with its 35mm sensor and fancy carbon fiber light weight Prime lenses boarding on Higher quality RED epic camera territory, has me foaming at the mouth...

The current playlist or tame landscape video using the old cinematic 24 or 30 FPS is ok for the videographer who like their action a little bit slow and lame...
But currently on you-tube there isn't really any inspire 2 high action shots that has really impressed me... Also competing action-shots with a racing 250 drone armed with a 4k stabilized action camera are more of my type of action footage... The dream is to use a X7 camera on a surfing video with a resolution of 4K at 60FPS and try to get in as tight as I can safely go using a inspire or similar for the perfect marriage of precision flying and great action...
My current situation is to film with the Mavic pro in 1080P @ 60FPS, which does a really good job... But as always with me, I like to evolve and produce videos that improve with every passing session so that it doesn't become  stale...

In the end what it comes down to it this year is, do I order a existing drone or wait for the new yet unknown drone around the corner?...
Ok at this point already someone will have a clever answer saying there's always a new and improved drone around the corner... In that case Then I have to invoke my own Apple buying protocols... in which for the past few years I reluctantly buy the iphone but only the odd numbers , for example the iphone, the iphone 3, the iphone 5 and the iphone 7+...
This way I skip buying annually and hopefully catch the drone on the next round... or until I get bored of drones and cancel my subscription of "old dude with expensive drone yearly"
In the end, I am thinking I should wait and hopefully have the Video format I've always wanted with the extra features and maybe  be the envy of my flying friends for a brief few minuets...