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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regarding safety, what is better for safety, redundancy or better quality of components. For example, would you go for a hex/oct for redundancy or a quad with better MTBF components.
Would you prefer a hex/oct that has more moving parts for failure and payload issues or a simplier quad that has higher up time record.
Please don't say you want an oct with better MTBF component for taking an AP of a house, If you do, don't complain you have to pay 65K for a simple 500 quad.
High Voltage, High Voltage, I can build a Pixhawk, octocopter with redundancy, great and reliable motors, high payload, for less than 10k. Carbon Fiber; the advantage of Pixhawk is that you can customize it, proof it, and if anything goes worong, diagnose the problems.
We build our own copters, we make sure they work great before we ship it. it has flown a lot, and there have been no problems. I can build one for you, and the price is not even close to what you would pay for the ones you mentioned.
My suggestion is to also include a parachute in anything you buy. Good luck!
What sort of camera selection would I have?
no wonder you paid 65k for a drone. you haven't done your homework educating yourself. Your line of questions are fuzzy. When you don't give spefific requirements, the drone designer has to add additional budget for the uncertainties and use components overkilled for the job. To give you an example, a company I worked for require regular inspection of facilty. One day, an intern brought a drone and he flew his drone and did it as experiment. We looked at the result and felt we could use it. So we went out and did an experimental proof of concept. We submitted our result and asked the board to incorporate the procedure in our maintenance handbook. The board came back with a list of "recommendation" for a "certified" UAV (mostly from lawyers regarding regulations and safety). A design team was formed to create the "certified" drone. While the design was underway, the board had a third part engineering firm to evaluate the proposal, they came back with "questions", to make a long story short, we had made so many design changes, we blew an eight figure budget for the project in 12 months and still no UAV.
My point is, give your vendor an exact requirement, or prepare to pay 65k for a 2000 quad.
@ Yun take. I haven't paid 65k for a drone that's what this entire conversation is about. The discussion of why industrial drones have a 65k dollar price tag. I am in the process of educating myself and doing my homework, that is also what this whole conversation is about. To educate myself, do some homework and ask people who have more knowledge on the subject than I do. And to avoid spending 65k on a UAV.
May I suggest you acquire a 399 Iris, fly it and tear it apart, study it , and learn how to program the fc, You may burn few thousand dollars in the process, but the experience you gain will save you many few $65k down the road.
I did that myself with Cheerson cx20. that was few years ago.
A good large copter will have am scalable platform, depends on your needs. Rob Lefebvre also is willing to build a copter for you. I have used DJI's wookong and Pixhawk, and Pixhawk is superior, because it allows you to customize. If you need help, please let me know.
When you say with redundancy what are you referring to? Do you mean motor redundancy because its an octocopter or is there some more redundancy built in.
Looks like copters with plastic arms and plastic landing gear. Even if these arms and landing gear are an order of magnitude stiffer that the $10 flimsy ones available at Hobby King, calling those drones "the best multirotor by far", or stating no one else is even close, would seem to be, err ... one heck of a stretch.
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