I have been getting qoutes for a drone to add to our inspection business. So far I have quotes from Aibotix, Ascending Technologies, Aeryon and Altus. We currently use a Draganflyer X4. These professional drones have a massive price tag attached to them and I am wondering how they can be so expensive compared to a cinematoghraphy drone thats carrying a red epic camera around a movie set. What makes them so expensive? Whats in there that can add up to 65K. If you ask the manufacturers you get the same answer. There industrial grade, there not mass produced in china, there safer more reliable. yada yada what separates a 65k dollar drone from a drone that can be built with the best motors and best ESC's on a solid platform. Is it the flight controller? Is the flight controller in a falcon x8 or an Altus what separates these drones from the rest? I was wondering if someone could shed some light on this for me.
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I'd love to know the ins and outs of which ESC's you'd recommend, it's so difficult to penetrate the marketing to get to the facts and forums are awash with superstition
solder the pads and upload BLHeli,most of well known ESC are ok...for example Turnigy Plush 40A with BLheli....also you can't miss with Hobbywing xrotor series,it's not such a big science to find proper ESC after u do short readings around the net....
Oh please don't talk about Turnigy and BLHeli when talking about professional machines.
Even thou Plush 40A a great ESC i can agree with you....but would be very nice if we can adjust settings on all ESC....
Btw, and just to keep things in perspective here, HighVoltage ...
While this guy is more than double $65k, you *may* have a hard time replicating quality on your own ;)
http://shotover.com/products/u1
Don't know about its "reliability". Actually interesting they use Pixhawk or A2 FC as option, after originally going with very proprietary Picollo FC.
But as far as quality, seems reasonable to guess these guys know what they are doing ...
http://shotover.com/videos/all/the_art_of_aerial_cinematography
http://shotover.com/videos/all/shotover_engineering
Ya they know what there doing, what a beautiful machine. Thanks for sharing. Looks like the moneys in the gimbal. What happens if there is a motor failure? The same thing that happened to my 10k dollar draganflyer she shoots to the ground like a rocket and breaks into several pieces.
I doubt there's anything in that Shotover that is super special. Those motors are just KDE motors (which are very good, but available to anybody for not *that* much money). Bet they use regular ESC's, etc. too. Most of the money is in the crazy frame, which serves no practical purpose other than to look expensive.
Now the gimbal is probably pretty nice.
You just took words from my mouth...totally agree
Actually the S1000 is the last copter to think about when thinking industrial quality and reliability, and a really bad example. For starters the A2 flight controller sent way too many $50k+ Red Dragons and other high end cinema gear to the deck when it was released and for a long time after that, many insurers and movie production houses learned their lesson the hard way and won't come close to it.
It's not necessarily bad for the price now, but not even close quality and reliability wise to something like Freefly Alta, only need to ask high end aerial cinematographers who do this for a living and for whom prosumer just doesn't cut it.
John give me your opinion on what would make a solid unit. Freefly Alta? Gryphon? what flight controller should i put in the frame? Its not hard to research motors and ESC's. How about some advice on what flight controller to put in a solid frame. The FreeFly Alta is 11,995 how does this baby rank as a solid reliable unit?
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