Xiaomi Mi Drone 4k - 393 euro including delivery

tedpan

Deleted User wrote:

That's a bit crap The no fly zone is huge, and there's a few of them, pretty much ruling out anything along the north half of the M50?

I'm not sure as I haven't encountered NFZs yet. Thought it was a 5km radius of the airport, hopefully it won't be an issue for you..

Deleted User wrote:

I might take you up on that Mornington offer if you're about over the weekend

Sure, should be around, give me a shout!

logistic

Finally got around to uploading some footage. Still getting used to the contrast and shooting angles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWidH6hWZkQ

tedpan

logistic wrote:

Finally got around to uploading some footage. Still getting used to the contrast and shooting angles.

Nice one! I tend to leave the contrast at the 0 setting. Direct sunlight does darken below the horizon. Looks like you're getting on well, happy with it?

logistic

tedpan wrote: »

logistic wrote:

Finally got around to uploading some footage. Still getting used to the contrast and shooting angles.

Nice one! I tend to leave the contrast at the 0 setting. Direct sunlight does darken below the horizon. Looks like you're getting on well, happy with it?

Absolutely. Should have ordered the second battery earlier so I can get more air time. Im off to Gran Canaria in 2 weeks so its coming on holidays with me

tedpan

logistic wrote:

Absolutely. Should have ordered the second battery earlier so I can get more air time. Im off to Gran Canaria in 2 weeks so its coming on holidays with me

Awesome! Very jealous, my wife won't let me bring mine on holidays! Haha..

Let us know if you have any questions, have fun flying!

eringobragh

I caved and ordered one - any issues with customs charges at all?

tedpan

eringobragh wrote:

I caved and ordered one - any issues with customs charges at all?

Congrats, none of us have had charges so far... I'm sure it'll be fine for you too!

Daibheid

ibrahimovic wrote: »

Seen someone flying one of these about around the Dorset st area in Dublin last night, wonder if they found about about it on here

Thats the sort of idiotic and flagrant breaking of the law not to mention common sense, that gets it ruined for everyone that flies responsibly.

In my experience, these things all fall out of the sky sooner or later. The batteries get old, they're mismanaged, a connector overheats, cold air kills the battery, , hits or gets hit by something, RTH through an obstacle...... It's not a question of if but when.

The Xiaomi weighs about 1.7kg. It's going to seriously hurt someone falling from any height or cause a car accident, etc and that's before considering the incendiary potential of nearly half a kilo of Lithium-ion Battery.

ibrahimovic

Daibheid wrote: »

Thats the sort of idiotic and flagrant breaking of the law not to mention common sense, that gets it ruined for everyone that flies responsibly.

In my experience, these things all fall out of the sky sooner or later. The batteries get old, they're mismanaged, a connector overheats, cold air kills the battery, , hits or gets hit by something, RTH through an obstacle...... It's not a question of if but when.

The Xiaomi weighs about 1.7kg. It's going to seriously hurt someone falling from any height or cause a car accident, etc and that's before considering the incendiary potential of nearly half a kilo of Lithium-ion Battery.

Yeah it did feel a bit disconcerting having it fly above my head. Makes a lot of noise so tons of people stopped to look at it.

papu

ibrahimovic wrote: »

Yeah it did feel a bit disconcerting having it fly above my head. Makes a lot of noise so tons of people stopped to look at it.

Sadly it'll take some kind of accident / incident which gets media coverage to highlight the problem. The laws are there for a reason. IMO licenses should be required to own /operate the larger ones

eringobragh

Whats the craic with charging the LiPo batteries - heard they are quite unstable from drone chat around the office over the past few years.

Any of ye use LiPo bags?

Must wrap it up and stick it under the christmas tree and video her reaction when I open it

tedpan

eringobragh wrote:

Whats the craic with charging the LiPo batteries - heard they are quite unstable from drone chat around the office over the past few years.

No, that's with the cheaper batteries and drones. It's basically a laptop battery, LiPo batteries are brilliant if manufactured correctly. The charger is very similar to a laptop power supply which has an integrated voltage regulator.

She's going to be a happy bunny!

eringobragh

tedpan wrote: »

She's going to be a happy bunny!

"We don't need it" apparently we shall see :pac:

tedpan

eringobragh wrote:

"We don't need it" apparently we shall see

Oohhh.. lol

eringobragh

-what SD card are you using? Long term user of memoryc - I hear sandisks these days aren't great in the likes of dashcams so doubt they'd weather well with 4K rewrites. I tend to steer away from PNY as I had one fail on me before

Assume 64GB is good enough - they've really come down in price

https://www.memoryc.ie/flash-memory-cards/microsd.html#Capacity[]=64GB&orderby=price&page=0

tedpan

eringobragh wrote:

Assume 64GB is good enough - they've really come down in price

Yeah, 64GB is the max stated from the manufacturer although I think a firmware release has allowed the quad to take a 128GB card.

I have transcend and adata cards, none of which have failed. The high endurance card would be nice but a little pricey. I would recommend buying the fastest card you can afford.

So i had my first flight. Probably shouldn't have had the camera attached, but such is life.


Anyway, i need anew camera and some spare propellers. Can anyone tell me if this would be an easy fix? or where to get a replacement? (I presume gearbest? i'll check there in a sec.. hopefully won't be mega money).









My auto-land didn't work.. or at least, not how i expected it to. Perhaps it's just my new-ness to it.

The Bebop drone has a thing where, once it touches anything, it automatically cuts out, as a safety feature. I presumed the same would be true for this, but nope.. just keeps on going. The propellers were shattered and the drone just bounced off things. It fell upside down, and i grabbed it by the 'landing gear' handle and it still kept on firing away on all cylinders. Not sure how i got it to stop in the end to be honest.

All drones really should have that cut out feature. The Mi Drone would mangle a person/animal if it hit them.

gimpotronitus

[Deleted User] wrote: »

So i had my first flight. Probably shouldn't have had the camera attached, but such is life.


Anyway, i need anew camera and some spare propellers. Can anyone tell me if this would be an easy fix? or where to get a replacement? (I presume gearbest? i'll check there in a sec.. hopefully won't be mega money).









My auto-land didn't work.. or at least, not how i expected it to. Perhaps it's just my new-ness to it.

The Bebop drone has a thing where, once it touches anything, it automatically cuts out, as a safety feature. I presumed the same would be true for this, but nope.. just keeps on going. The propellers were shattered and the drone just bounced off things. It fell upside down, and i grabbed it by the 'landing gear' handle and it still kept on firing away on all cylinders. Not sure how i got it to stop in the end to be honest.

All drones really should have that cut out feature. The Mi Drone would mangle a person/animal if it hit them.

Sorry to hear that man. What happened?

tedpan

Deleted User wrote:

So i had my first flight. Probably shouldn't have had the camera attached, but such is life.

Disastrous news..

No, you were right to fly with the camera, it works as a complete unit.

Deleted User wrote:

Anyway, i need anew camera and some spare propellers. Can anyone tell me if this would be an easy fix? or where to get a replacement? (I presume gearbest? i'll check there in a sec.. hopefully won't be mega money).

Unfortunately its mega money, 2/3 of the drone. You're best buying the whole thing again, removing the camera/gimbal and selling the the drone and everything else individually. You'll get the majority of the money back.

What happened, were you in an enclosed area? I think most new users are expecting the drone to move with the wind, the safest thing is to let go of the sticks and it will lock onto GPS.

I've never used the land/take off feature, I just take off like any drone.

Turning the propellers off is the same way as turning on, both sticks down and to the centre. When the drone lands it has an auto shut off feature, but it hadn't landed in your case. I've never had an accident, so not sure what happens. I think there is a shut off option in the app.

It's just terrible, really disappointing on the first flight.

gimpotronitus

gimpotronitus wrote: »

Sorry to hear that man. What happened?

I was out in the garden, and i tried to take off. Kept getting lots of error messages and it wouldnt take off. 'Low GPS', 'compass interfered with' or some such.


Decided to call it a day when all of a sudden it said it was okay to take off. So I tried the 'pigeon toe' thing on the controls (where you hold the joysticks down diagonally to each other, to start the drone) and i let go.

The drone powered up but didnt take off. So I tried it again and the drone took off. Unfortunately it also pulled back towards me (I was standing behind it) so I pushed it forward. It began to hover and all was well.

So I was happy enough with that to be honest. Was prepared to call it a day. Had no interest in flying, just wanted to get it off the ground and make sure it was working. So i pressed the 'auto land' button and nothing happened. Tapped it, held it, nothing. So I got confused and figured i maybe had to do the pigeon toe thing again, so i tried that and the drone went flying (as it does) into a wall.

At that point i said feck it, I'll let it crash land, because the Bebop drone cuts out when it hits something. Not this drone, though, this is like the terminator. So I panicked, as the drone bounced off the wall, the propellers starting breaking and flying off, so I tried to move the drone away but, having never used it before, I ended up swinging it towards another wall.

Again, it hit this wall (now with only 3 propellers) and refused to stop, but the impact of hitting this wall caused it to bounce off it and flip over upside down. So it was effectively propelling itself, upside down, into the ground. Cue lots of plastic flying everywhere as the other propellers started to break.

I grabbed it by the landing gear/leg, and it stopped for some reason randomly then. At this point two propellers are completely gone, and one is broken at the top.



I like drones, and all that, and I'd be confident using them in day to day life oir technology in general, but it's genuinely dangerous that it didn't cut out on impact. If you accidentally took off in a house (say xmas morning or something) you'd very seriously hurt people. As I was in the garden i was wearing socks, and when it flew towards me I lifted my foot/leg to block it from hitting me, and it cut the foot of me. I've 3 small slices on my foot from it. If that got you in the face you'd be in serious trouble. :eek:

tedpan

tedpan wrote: »

Turning the propellers off is the same way as turning on, both sticks down and to the centre.

That's what I was attempting, but maybe I was just doing it wrong, perhaps. It was moving towards me when I tried that, so I dunno. Inexperience, i suppose.


I'll try get to a wide open space. I've to photograph a house for sale tomorrow, so i was hoping I'd be able to use it for that.

tedpan wrote: »

No, you were right to fly with the camera, it works as a complete unit.

I think you can fly it with and without the camera? For a beginner run, i realistically should have probably not had it attached. Just incase this happened. Mind you, hindsight and all that :rolleyes::(

Lanshane

So sorry to hear of your accident on your first flight. Hopefully you'll get some cash for the spares. As said the camera is the costly bit but at least nobody was seriously hurt. It just goes to show that these things should be taken seriously and all precautions taken. Now I'm even more nervous when mine arrives.... whenever that will be!!

Ah in fairness, I'd say I probably could have avoided it completely if i had a little more space. I suppose the best lesson is make sure you're not practicing in a confined area.


A chap that repairs Apple stuff on facebook messaged me saying he could probably fix it, if it's just the cable that's broke. Makes it sound like a simple job, so hopefully that'll be the case.

Once I get that connected then I can see if the camera itself is still up and running properly. I've ordered another complete drone in the meantime anyway.

tedpan

Yeah, it's quite a large machine, you just got very unlucky.

Once you get used to it you'll realise it basically flies itself and you won't crash again. I just feel terrible that it's happened on the first go.

Anyone worried, feel free to give me a shout if you need setting it up or demo flight etc.

logistic

You can shutdown the motors by

Safety tips:When motors can’t properly turn off, press and hold power button and auto take-off/land button simultaneously for 5 seconds to shut motors.

I would become familiar with the details in the manual before taking for first flight and also run through the beginner guide in the app.

http://www.xiaomi4k.com/xiaomi-mi-drone-4k-user-manual/

JabbaTheHut

Aww, man, so sorry to hear what happened.

You're experience sounds similar to mine once. I found that if I was taking off in longish grass, or an uneven surface, it's reluctant to let you fly, with " cannot take off " coming up.
On my 3rd or 4th flight, I had this happen, so I put a strong shopping bag on the grass, and it then took off. But when it came to land, there wasn't a lot of flat ground, so I just flew it low, and caught it. As a result, it went crazy trying to compensate for me holding it. Had to get the brother to hold down the left stick, and it shut the props off. Since then, I made a rule of making sure there a good place to land, even before I take off.

Anyway, hopefully the Apple guy can sort you out. The price of replacement props, is a fraction of the cost of a new gimbal.

Oh, I find the auto take off and land buttons to be finiky. Could take a few attempts for it to work.

Would I be correct in saying this has no internal memory? and you need a micro SD (that slides into the camera itself?)

tedpan

Deleted User wrote:

Would I be correct in saying this has no internal memory? and you need a micro SD (that slides into the camera itself?)

Yep, you need to have the micro SD inserted to update the firmware etc before flying.

RonTon

Been following thread for awhile and have learned so much��������pulled the trigger and ordered one few days ago ,also got a sdcard from Boots this morning from the bargins thread ...
Can’t wait for it to arrive

Oh is it a micro sd card I need?��

ibrahimovic

RonTon wrote: »

Been following thread for awhile and have learned so much��������pulled the trigger and ordered one few days ago ,also got a sdcard from Boots this morning from the bargins thread ...
Can’t wait for it to arrive

Oh is it a micro sd card I need?��

yes you need a micro one