Australia & New Zealand's favourite electronics retailer and specialist supplier to the electronic engineering community, Jaycar Electronics, just uploaded a few videos showing the latest addition to their extensive product range - The Skymaster Professional Quadcopter.
Jaycar Electronics have been slowly growing their RC category over recent years with toy boats, Gas and EP buggies, planes and just about every type of micro copter imaginable. In the lead up to last Christmas they introduced the Mega Quadcopter and initially couldn't keep them on the shelves. This year they are offering something much more serious.
Looking at the product shots (which appear to show the gimbal installed backwards), Jaycar's Skymaster bares an uncanny resemblance to Walkera's popular QR X350, putting it on par with the likes of CXHobby's Cheerson CX20 Auto Pathfinder, Hobby King's Quanum Nova and DJI's immensely popular Phantom 2.
Faux telescopic legs and oversized landing pads give the Skymaster a rather toy like retro sci-fi look, while a large LED indicator provides visual confirmation of pre-arm and GPS status. Two colour prop nuts suggest self tightening CW and CCW prop mounts are provided, offering convenience and reliability over lesser alternatives. A standard camera mount is available which is suitable for a range of action cameras and a 2-axis brushless gimbal (which appears to be the Tarot 2D V2) is also offered for Hero 3 users who seek out-of-the-box stabilised aerials.
The product copy reveals little about the flight controller, but it is a pretty sure bet to be something like the APM 2.52 V2.0, Devo-M or simular. Firmware is no doubt a custom variation on Arducopter 3.1.5
It doesn't look like a telemetry radio is included, limiting functionality somewhat while making it a simpler, easier and cheaper proposition for new flyers. With a little luck bluetooth or UHF link might well be possible. Jaycar fans will make short work of an easy hack so to unlock all the added convenience and advanced functionality Mission Planner and DroidPlanner can provide. What options exist in regards to firmware compatibility and upgradability remains to be seen, but it would be great if the Skymaster could be tweaked to offer all the polish and power afforded by the recent 3.2 release of Arducopter , a solid UHF radio link and Droidplanner 2 (and, by extension, the added functionality of tools like DroneShare).
Priced at an RRP of $699 for the bare RTF system, the Skywalker is not exactly priced aggressively. Nevertheless, Jaycar will not struggle to find a demand among their legions of tech-hungry gadget-friendly fans. In fact, I reckon the Skymaster is going to absolutely fly off the shelves in the lead up to and beyond the holiday period - introducing thousands of new users to the wonderful world of drones over the weeks and months ahead.
Comments
My apologies for the title chosen for this blog. It is now clear that the Skymaster is not derived from Ardupilot and that my assumption was incorrect.
Newtoon - Thanks for your contribution.
I have been looking into the Zero UAV system (YS-S4) and it doesn't look that bad at all! The features list show it to be a pretty powerful little unit, apparently capable of many of the features to which we are accustomed. The manual can be downloaded here.
Wifi module required to unlock extra functionality can be found here. There is also a GCS and an android app (screen grabs below). While not exactly Mission Planner and Droidplanner as I had hoped, it still looks pretty promising.
Com' on. I do not understand. This is a V303 from WL Toys body which already include a Zero Tech expensive (alone) board. All I had to do is to buy a 80 dollars Hobbyking Mobius gimbal and a 35 dollars WIFI module for planning missions, get telemetry etc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61uy85Mvmzg . This is half the price !
Amazing.
All you need these days to make a full-functioning drone is a couple $10,000 for some plastic molds for the body, and then source some standard motors and electronics from China. Install Arducopter. Boom, done.
No doubt we will find out soon enough.
I started as a casual at the old Parramatta store and went on to work full time managing the showroom at the (then) Head Office at Leeds St, Rhodes. Next was a relatively short stint in the mail order department in a role that combined servicing orders recieved via fax, mail and the (then) brand new internet-based shopfront - Techstore. I finally settled into a role that crossed over between the purchasing and marketing before departing around 2001 to join the publishing company down the street (Jaycar/Electus had moved to bigger digs at Silverwater by that stage).
Awesome! Be sure to post some pics if you see anything of note.
Ha! Is Jaycar still a great place to work?
I too served time as a Jaycar storeman way back in the late 90's, learning so much from so many in my relatively short time with the company.