The Aeromapper 300 is the latest UAV offer from Aeromao Inc. Canada.
The Aeromapper 300 is one of the most complete UAV for general mappping applications, at the most competitve price on the market. Powerful yet very easy & friendly to use, with 1.5 hour endurance, currently more than two dozen different sensors or combination of sensors supported via swappable mounts, safe parachute landing capability, hand or catapult launch supported, long range data link and control and of course, fully automatic flight.
Despite its size it also has a small turning radius (about 30 m turning radius), making it also ideal for those low altitude–high ground resolution flights in which the flight lines are pretty close to each other.
The standard package of the Aeromapper 300 includes the Sony Nex 7 (24 MP) with a survey grade wide angle rectilinear lens. The UAV is also conceived to carry the mighty Sony Alpha a7r with 36 MP.
Customers can also choose from a large variety of payloads and sensors with swappable mounts, even combination of them (like Sony Nex 5 + tetracam ADC Micro, with simultaneous trigger). Information on the list of sensors and payloads for the Aeromapper family of UAVs is found here: http://www.aeromao.com/uav_payloads
The Aeromapper 300 also comes with a detailed User Manual well supported for first time users with no previous experience using drones, and trainings are also available in Ontario, Canada. Included in the package are all the accessories required as well as quality carrying cases.
Similarly to its smaller brother Aeromapper EV2, the Aeromapper 300 uses the concept of a highly engineered payload bay module attached to a high performance carbon fiber glider aircraft. Using this approach the company is able to offer high end UAVs at the fraction of the cost of other similar drones.
Most UAV manufacturers design and fabricate the fuselage and wings of their drones from scratch, leading to high pre and post production costs. The pod concept used by Aeromao reduces production costs immensely and provides additional advantages:
1. Modularity: since most of the electronics, payload and parachute system are contained in the payload module the fuselage can be easily exchanged for a new one, if required. This process usually takes two hours or less and can be done by the user. In other UAVs if the fuselage is not usable all the electronics and key components need to be migrated to a new fuselage, basically reassembling a new UAV (which leads to high costs and longer lead times)
2. Cost Savings: leveraging on an existing glider airframe produces immense savings, which are passed on to UAV customers. The Aeromapper 300 can match the specifications of other drones that cost $50,000 - $70,000 dollars.
3. Customization: pods can be easily customized for special applications, again, thanks to not having to modify an entire airframe. Customizations are usually affordable and fast.
4. Speed of adaptation: probably one of the most important advantages in the UAV market is the speed at which UAVs can adapt to new applications. If required, only the pod needs to be modified, not the entire fuselage.
For more information please visit http://www.aeromao.com/aeromapper_300
Comments
As someone before said: the value of a product is not the sum of the values of it's components!
The value of a product is partly determined by the market and by what this product enables you to do!
If you want to do aeromapping as a hobby and not generate a revenue, then it's OK to go the DIY route.
If your job is aeromapping, then you have to rely on a strong solution.
Mauricio (whom I do not know otherwise) provides such a solution for the target market he sees. Market is already proofing if he is right, but anyway, at least he is doing it.
As far as I know, none of the nay sayers here had the 'cochones' to found a company and go to the market against him.
Mauricio, you have my consideration for just that. Moreover, you have customer satisfaction in mind since you not only built a carrier, but added packaging, integrated that carrier into a software package and in fine are selling a turnkey solution.
Let the nay sayers be nay sayers and go your own route. You already did way more than the 1st step!
Whish everybody the success they deserve.
mP1, I think it's great to see what people are doing with open-source hardware and software. Just because it starts as DIY doesn't mean it has to remain in that realm.
You could argue (successfully) that 3DR's move to turn-key drone systems is contrary to the DIYDrones mission too. I bemoan the lack of legacy product support from the 3DR store, but apparently the world has to move in this direction to remain viable. There's always Ebay and Goodluckbuy for the die-hards amongst us.
I don't see Mauricio's product as an argument against DIY, but as a demonstration of what it can become.
@Andrew, @Stephen
Half of us are only questioning cost, because we know the raw hardware costs of items and because this is Do-It-Yourself Drones amongst other things. If this was a forum for selling drones to oil and gas companies or some other big corp then thats fine, but when most people here like to build things themselves, what else do you expect ?
They want to build the things from scratch, so for them paying 10x for something they want to do makes no sense.
@mike "I've spent so many hours building and tweaking and I apprecite it so much more and I actually love building planes. But lets say thats no the case and you just want to buy it exactly how I built mine and take it out the box and fly it,"
You have spent many hours, as I have, setting up UAVs. Any company however has to pay its employees and then recoup some of the costs of all these employees doing the development. Your labor is free.
If you did price it at $2500 what about the person on the phone taking support calls? Is $1000 per copy enough to pay his/her salary unless you want to stay awake 24/7 taking calls? Then if you are taking support calls all day how do you find time to fix the inevitable bugs and problems? If you did price it at $2500 what about if someone else wanted to sell it? Do you then sell it to them at your cost? The minimum price you could set is about $4500 so it leaves you able to sell to other people at $2500.
I think $10 000 is entirely reasonable and quite cheap for an aircraft of this quality and capability. The eBee is $40 000 and is a little foam wing - the genius is in the software and the throw and fly capabilities and they have sold a lot of the units at this price.
Some one tried to make an UAV with a Pixhawk and a F5J glider ?
Oh, I see.
You reckon that, despite being unable to deliver the goods, you have such a good handle on the cost structure you could offer a similar or better product for several times less than that which is currently available.
Yes, your arguments are very convincing...
I think you have to look at the value of what is offered. There are plenty of industries with MUCH greater margins because they provide value.
I worked in the cabinet business and the software for CNCing cabs is outrageously priced. Most packages are $20k+. They don't really do all that much, and anything they do I can do in a much cheaper design program.
But, they make things MUCH faster. They're 100% worth is because I can make that $20k in just a few remodel jobs.
In the time it would take to lay things out by hand in a cheaper program, I could instead be making a lot more money slamming in cabs.. It would be foolish to waste my time dicking around to save $20k when I could be making that on a weekly basis.
The same is true for this industry. A few decent orthomapping jobs will pay for the drone system. By the time I spend weeks/months getting my own system tuned and job ready I could have purchased several of these mapping drones from the profits off of the dozens of mapping jobs I'd have knocked out.
The precedent is there in almost every business. People buy turnkey systems because they start making money instantly and are able to pay off the investment quickly. One delay or problem that costs you a week of business and you're losing big bucks compared to what you'd be making.
I'm as cheap as they come, and I can't count the times I've lost weeks to months from ordering a wrong part or something not performing as expected. That doesn't matter much since I'm a hobbyist, but if I was making $5k/week I'd be tens of thousands in the hole for trying to save a $20-$100 bucks here and there.
In the business world you can't have dollars waiting on dimes!
Mike. Please put your money where your mouth is and offer your version on the open market for USD2.5k. Please also include operation and service manuals and factory support. Oh, and please deliver the complete package by the end of next week with demonstrated and fully functional orthomapping capability.
If you can point me to your website to review your system specification and capability, I will place my order if it meets the capability of an Aeromapper300.
@Mike (But paying nearly 10x the cost for no reason and for the same exact thing? nah that's not gonna happen!)
Of course it is not! You are not a target customer. As a hobbyist/amateur you would be crazy to drop that $$.
@Mike,
Now pretend you didn't have any knowledge of RC or any of the equipment. How many hours would it take you to research, buy, build, and test? That's who this product is catered to: prosumers.
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