Well the big news of this week, this month and possibly this year is that Colin Guinn is back in the multicopter business and this time with 3D Robotics, his employment was confirmed this afternoon.
Colin Guinn was the global face of DJI on YouTube, known for his tutorials on using the Phantom, he specifically credited his team for DJI’s 27,000 Facebook likes and 30,000 YouTube subscribers and millions of views in the injunction against DJI that was filed on 22nd of January 2014.
The fact 3D Robotics is a US company and Guinn has experience building up a multicopter brand in America makes for an interesting combination.
The multicopter masses had a love hate relationship with Colin Guinn, his tutorials on the Phantom were universally well received but there was frustration that problems such as fly-aways were never really addressed except on one video by Mitch Bergsma, which DJI recently tried to have taken down but appeared to relent after a social media outcry, even this video presented fly-aways as a preventable user error which isn’t a fair analysis.
If Colin Guinn enters the social media limelight for 3D Robotics, it would be welcomed if this time around there’s a more open and honest appraisal of the benefits along with the risks of using multicopters.
Colin Guinn clearly is successful at marketing but new users of multicopters such as those from professional photography backgrounds expect excellent customer service such as that offered by Canon, so marketing spin alone isn’t enough. 3D Robotics has to date offered, especially to IRIS users, very good customer service, that is a focus it cannot afford to lose.
3D Robotics is playing catch up, whilst its newest quadcopter the IRIS has a loyal following and has a lot of power features, it clearly wasn’t designed for video photography and the offering of the Tarot gimbal really isn’t inspiring. With Colin Guinn on board, could his passion for creating video with multicopters help 3D Robotics redefine its product offerings?
Comments
Aaron: nicely put. Once the Drone Code Foundation is up and running, the wikis will run under that. One tricky thing is that the consequences of errors in the wiki can be crashes or worse, so it can't be open to anyone to edit (there must be a review process with experts, much like code). That means a very robust organization and procedures, which is difficult for volunteers to manage effectively over the many hundreds of pages and hundreds of thousands of words in the wiki.
My hope is that the Foundation can set this up and staff it to achieve what we in the community all want. In the meatime, the 3DR documentation is all professionally written and edited by our team and can be found here.
Hi Colin, you're welcome!
But remember, at the moment "Marco Robustini was the global face of 3DRobotics on YouTube"... :P
Dave, I'm not sure if you've been aware, but that was the original idea of the .ardupilot.com wikis. There's been a lot of contention which reached a head when Gary McCray, who had been the head wiki author, decided he'd had enough of what he saw as 3DR's heavy-handed management of the wiki. See for example http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/i-really-need-help-solving-a-pr... . He's left and gone and made www.dronesarefun.com, and says he hopes to make it community editable at some point. The corporate / community connection is always tricky and 3DR is figuring it out in fits and starts. In my opinion, we need a community wiki that is totally independent of 3DR and not beholden to the interests of their investors. I remember when the wiki was on googlecode. It had a "comments" section on each page, and it was fairly easy to ask and be granted edit access (that's probably still true). The comments sections quickly became a useless mess. I wrote a page there about how to get Eclipse set up for APM editing which got out of date and then I never found the time to update it. In sum, it's not a cut and dry situation. Community / corporate interaction seems to work fairly well on the codebase because of pull requests. I guess we need pull requests for the docs too. Maybe the docs should all go under git.
As Rob_Lefebvre points out, the A2 firmware issue is just one of many issues to hit DJI, many which were blamed on customers to begin with, a few off the top of my head are the Naza-M geofence not working, that clearly went out without any testing, the battery bug, where Phantoms were landing even over water where they had genuine DJI batteries, even when DJI knew about the battery bug a number of their support people still told customers to continue flying before it was patched. Then there's the magnetic declination bug, that so upset users they started "Project Drunken Sparrow" http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2175384
I'd love to see DJI try and pass an ISO audit.
One point made which was valid, Colin Guinn flying an S800 over a crowd at a trade show wasn't big or clever, hopefully 3DR will ensure Colin shows more common sense.
One thing here, it would be nice not to have the UAV Hive story ripped off word for word.
http://www.uavhive.com/2014/06/25/colin-guinn-joins-3d-robotics/
@Chris
My original post in here already has a few things to keep somebody busy. Unfortunately i believe the best thing to do is spend a month and get every single page up to date following at the least some of my suggestions. Every page should have a version. There should be a proper directive and standards set on how the documentation is managed and kept.
Other issue:
- There should be a system so archives are kept, so users of old firmware can read doco for that version etc.
I know my words are easy to make and getting it right is a big effort. But im just one person, im not a company with the resources like 3DR. This requires full time support, its not a one time thing.
If you can afford to start a new office for a CEO you can afford a proper documentation team. More users would benefit from proper quality documentation than one celebrity. Is this a fair statement, i doubt many will disagree, its a question of resources on the job.
Most of the core components are non 3DR, Pixhawk, software(unfair you do pay for their time), documentation( as you stated its community). So why am i buying from 3DR might as well buy from the Chinese.
@Brian
If we can find them then why mention them (dji flyaways) at all ? Its not very constructive to say stuff like that and it looks childish.
@Swift
For one i dont have the level of knowledge to write up info that is reliable and accurate. I can give general help, but in terms of numbers for pids and so on, im not the best source. I know that appears to be lazy, but this info really needs to come from the team that actively did the software, as they know the truth.
Ive bought a few copters and supplies from 3DR and not cloners. I didnt buy from them because they dont offer support and dont make things progress forward for the better of all. Support doesnt just mean a phone call, which half the time tells me to look up the guide on the net. It means proper documentation.
Ive emailed support when i started and when you dont know whats going on half the time, you dont know what questions to ask. Documentation is the reverse and gives you info to learn. YOu cant learn by asking questions over email.
@Swift
For one i dont have the level of knowledge to write up info that is reliable and accurate. I can give general help, but in terms of numbers for pids and so on, im not the best source. I know that appears to be lazy, but this info really needs to come from the team that actively did the software, as they know the truth.
Ive bought a few copters and supplies from 3DR and not cloners. I didnt buy from them because they dont offer support and dont make things progress forward for the better of all. Support doesnt just mean a phone call, which half the time tells me to look up the guide on the net. It means proper documentation.
Ive emailed support when i started and when you dont know whats going on half the time, you dont know what questions to ask. Documentation is the reverse and gives you info to learn. YOu cant learn by asking questions over email.
@ChrisAnderson
Currently i believe its fair to say the let the community contribute path doesnt work. 3DR is not my company but it does have a lot invested in APM and pixhawk. Everything i saw is of course speculation but im sure it would be more cost effective and lead to better good will if 3DR paid for it.
How many emails come from newbies or unsure buyers who are lost or confused because of the incomplete doc?
- Many users are going to be asking the same question via email or phone. Every time your support staff answer the same question more than once is a cost.
- Answering the same questions over and over again is a waste. Im not saying you can completely cut out human interaction, but a significant portion of that can be cut.
- Cooked general answers that say goto that link, just piss people off, because we all know they as i have demonstrated dont help when the doc is incomplete.
- Support isnt just a person to call, its documentation to read. Calling or email costs customers and 3DR time. They should be able to find many of their questions online.
Get the documentation up to date and professional also gives goodwill for future customers.
- They dont hear frustration about being confused from friends.
- Just reading a good guide and documentation brings a good feeling to readers and that leads to customers. If people see crap thats obviously old, it makes them stop and think of alternatives.
I mean 3DR is a big company you have dozens of engineers, but you cant afford to get the documentation up to date and professional ?
The difference between professional outfits and hobbists is not only the product but the support. Documentation is part of the product, its not an afterthought.
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
of 4 Next