We are getting a new start with Sensefly that promises us a new relationship with our Ebee, hopefully one that get us a lot of good aerial photography with this drone. I will post more once I got more details and flying hours.
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hola amigos, vuelo un ebee hace un tiempo, se me daño el sensor del tubo pitot, lo desarme y intervine la tarjeta principal, cambie el sensor que es muy parecido al de pix hawk, el sensor trabaja pero inicia sus lecturas en 27 m/seg, no he podido darle el cero, y el servicio en sensi fly me parece demasiado costoso, alguien tiene un consejo o le ha pasado esto en los ebees?? Gracias por su ayuda.
UAV HAWK Colombia.
For anyone using eBees, I've just started a user group online with the idea of sharing tips+tricks and discussing issues specific to this platform. Hopefully it can build up into a useful resource.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ebee-users-group
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Welcome to the eBee Users Group.
We have set this up as a shared resource for all eBee users around the world to get together and communicate, share tips and tricks, stories from the field and to help each other with any issues as a little extra support in addition to the official channels. We might get a shared feature request list going through here too at some point.
Feel free to invite anyone and everyone you know who is flying these units. The more people we have the better a resource it will become.
Please keep it light, respectful and helpful. It would be great if you could make an introduction upon joining, so we can all see who arrives and where they're from.
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Really helpful review - thanks. I got quotes for one of these recently as the out-of-the-box idea is more appropriate for our company than the DIY approach - when you factor in staff time it may not be quite so overpriced as it seems. Apparently they have now also launched an RTK GPS-equipped version which should enable accurate DTMs to be created without the need for any ground control points. If that really works as well as advertised then it's massively exciting. Unfortunately the RTK version is twice the price of the normal one, £25k for a 700 gram foam plane!
My question is: for us DIY people, what would be the closest foam wing that we could get and build up ourselves into an equivalent system. I really like idea of having the capability of the eBee in such a small wing. Is there anything else of this size that could carry a compact camera, the APM, GPS, etc...?
I was asking myself the same question some time ago and after a series of failures presently we are getting good results with an hexa and canon S110. Now we're working to fit a SONY A6000 with gimbal on the same platform to increase DTM precision.
With wings we had two major issues, landing and blurred photos.
@Keith that's not a strange way of flying for the camera trigger. It was pioneered by Dean from AttoPilot way back in 2009 ;-) It works very well on Attopilot so I guess they have to work a little more on it. It surely matters not if the overlap is quite right if less of the images are blurred by the prop.
There are loads of foam wings that can be used to create a similar platform. If you learn how to fly landing is never an issue with a wing. If there is room to launch it there is room to land it.
If it comes to it you can always fly into your survey area from a few fields away. Its in the flight planning stage.
We build and use our UAV's based on a skywalker X5 which is close to the size you are looking for, it carries the Pixhawk and GPS / telemetry, Futaba Rc and an equivalent camera and its capable of all the APM / mission planner functions.
It works great and its very strong to take some flying site punishment. It will auto land and it takes images at any distance you want.
BUT, it is not the easiest of aircraft to launch! especially if the wind is below 5m/s We usually use a catapult that we also build and sell to our customers, the X5 and the Catapult work well together. the combined price is below 6K see at http://www.air-vision-air.com/products-for-you
The eBee has a very easy launch method and lands back at the designated spot each time, with a nice audio countdown from the GCS program. I would say that parts faultless.
The issue with the eBee is the sensor size and lens, it’s a pocket camera; Canon IXUS125HS set at 4608x3456 and the strange way it flies between each trigger. You have to see one fly to really believe, it powers the motor at full tilt and climbs up to 10m above the camera trigger AGL, it the cuts the motor and glides down to the correct height AGL and triggers the camera, the wing behaves like a gimbal and when all is flat (NADIR) it triggers the camera!!!!!
Have a look at the attached screen grabs below to see the poor trigger spacing, this method does not guarantee an image every x meters and parallel imaging (in my opinion).
Yes they seem to be really affected by the wind. It looks like if you're heading into and away from the wind then the spacing can be really pronounced. Out of interest are you processing eBee data in Agisoft Photoscan? I thought it was only possible to use postflight terra?
Thank you for your review. How are the manual controls for the eBee. Are they full manual or does it have something similar to "Fly by wire" or "Pilot Assist"? Does it have a standard r/c controller or does it just use the tablet?
Hi Flying Buddha,
It has full manual controls. Although the manufacturer does not like you to use it, you can completely flying it manual as soon as you turn on the control. The Ebee recognize this and give you full manual control of flying (you cannot control the camera as with other drones).
Caution: make sure you are a good RC pilot before flying the Ebee manual. It is very, very, responsive and the ailerons/elevators area is big so a small movement make it turn fast...very fast
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