Prices of Agri UAV platforms - Price justified? - Discussions

While looking at various plaforms springing up there are things like the precision hawk..sensefly and then others which include some which use Pixhawk and Mission planner. The prices for almost all of them are anywhere between 10-25k on average ...is such an expense justified especially with the platforms that are based on Pixhawk and missionplanner...as far as precision hawk and sensefly go i can understand some of the expense coming from developing and maintaining their flight software etc...but is such a high price justified?....just trying to wrap my heard around this...if the purpose is to take aerial imagery with a particular camera does the platform carrying that camera justify such a high price....a Z2 properly tuned carrying the same camera/sensors would be able to acheive the same in a fraction of the price in terms of a platform.

Replies

Cala September 1, 2016 at 3:02pm

Good Luck and.....

...be carefull, it's a vicious LOL
Agriavionics September 1, 2016 at 2:53pm

Thanks for the information!!...I will be buying it and continue with the DIY route.. learning is half the fun!
Cala September 1, 2016 at 2:38pm

Cala said:

I try to resume as well as I can: 3DR is more dedicate to Solo quadcopter only now and not supporting anymore ardupilot project so developers made another org: http://ardupilot.org/ardupilot/index.html and they develop the Pixhawk 2 just now going to market for first time, you can follow here : https://www.facebook.com/groups/pixhawk2/?fref=ts and you can find here resellers: http://www.proficnc.com/ , I hope 3dr is going to resale too; now developing is supported with PX2 sales, some merchandaising and donate button only. If you enjoy this project and you have some flying knowledge, build your own airplane is your way ;) , If you have to fly tomorrow for work but you still enjoy this, buy a pixhawk based plattform and learn with it.

And here you have their support forum: http://discuss.ardupilot.org/

Sorry my bad english, perhaps someone else can explain better.
Cala September 1, 2016 at 2:36pm

I try to resume as well as I can: 3DR is more dedicate to Solo quadcopter only now and not supporting anymore ardupilot project so developers made another org: http://ardupilot.org/ardupilot/index.html and they develop the Pixhawk 2 just now going to market for first time, you can follow here : https://www.facebook.com/groups/pixhawk2/?fref=ts and you can find here resellers: http://www.proficnc.com/ , I hope 3dr is going to resale too; now developing is supported with PX2 sales, some merchandaising and donate button only. If you enjoy this project and you have some flying knowledge, build your own airplane is your way ;) , If you have to fly tomorrow for work but you still enjoy this, buy a pixhawk based plattform and learn with it.

Sorry my bad english, perhaps someone else can explain better.

Regulations: — ArduPilot documentation
Agriavionics September 1, 2016 at 1:05pm

Thabks for the Information...since I just rejoined the group after a while I didnt know about the pixhawk2 !....I just checked the website and it seems to be on backorder...any idea if when they will be delivered..also does it have any documentation for stupid etc at the moment...also noticed how 3DR is changing their strategy...I would gladly press the donate button for this effort.
Cala September 1, 2016 at 12:19pm

I was at a drone exhibition a month ago, there was a sensefly there and price was 46000 uss, two weeks ago I recived a mail offering the sensefly 23.000 uss :O from the same reseller, worse of that, when they show a powerpoint, as controller they show an old APM :o .Is the sense fly powered by an old APM???, I ask to watch inside but you only can see battery and camera boxes.

The answer is, perhaps, sometimes yes, sometimes no, if you don't are shure what are you paying for, go for a cheaper platform like Event 38 or many others that you can find here, Mission planner is open source and you only have to use the Donate button as you want; the newer pixhawk 2 cost less than 200 uss and firmware is opensource too with a Donate button to support developers.