As many of you might already be familiar with, Walkera has recently been using a variation of the Ardupilot platform in their recent multicopters. But I think that the latest release, the Scout X4 seems to be using all the cool features of arducopter such as follow me, and waypoint navigation! I am still to confirm if they are using arducopter firmware but from the looks of it I am pretty sure they are. Not sure about the price either but since it includes the Devo F12 (retails for about $600 it will be over $1K, which is not too bad considering it will probably include a brushless gimbal and iLook+ with wireless video too.
Another cool feature is the fact that the ground control station will support both android and IOS devices via a Bluetooth datalink ground station, so it uses Bluetooth to communicate with your phone/tablet and it seems it will run at 2.4Ghz to communicate to the quadcopter so not sure about the range of the telemetry link and I am hoping this is not via wifi.
Features:
• Remote control: DEVO F12E FPV Transmitter 2.4Ghz and Video at 5.8Ghz
• Support both Apple IOS and Android based devices
• Waypoint mission planning / Designated flight
• Follow Me Mode / Record Track Back To Home
• Hybrid, can be changed from 4 for to 8 motors
• 2.4G bluetooth datalink ground station (BT-2401A/B FCC / BT-2402A/B CE)
• Flight time: Up to 25 minutes
• Flight range: up to 1500 meter
• Receiver: DEVO-RX707(CE) / RX709(FCC)
• Real time flight data (telemetry) monitoring
• Auto return to home (RTH)
• Motors: Brushless WK-WS-34-002
• ESC: WST-16AH(R/G);
• Battery: 6cell 22.2V 5400mAh Li-Po
• iPad holder with backup power
• Size: 335x335x275 mm.
• Rotor Blades Length: 233mm
• Weight with battery: 1770g
• Flying Weight: <2270g
• Larger Payload with the ability to carry a wider selection of cameras to be announced
Comments
I hope that the quality of the new Scout 4 is much better than the Walkera QR x350 pro at this price. In view of the postive remarks in this forum I bought the QR x350 pro. By delivery the GPS was defect. A replacement GPS brought not much better results. The placement of the GPS under a black frame part with a metallic brand name seems very questionalble. It becomes very hot under sunny clear sky conditions. In the MP one can observe that there are sometimes 6..7 sats received and suddenly 0 sat. The loiter becomes with this very unstable! I built in an original APM 2.6 with the ublox GPS LEA 6H from the 3DR store. With no gimbal and cam the results are excellent for loiter etc. But in this configuration the qr x350 pro flies only a few minutes. Many people are replacing motors and esc's due to this. Therfore up to now since July I could not film any video. I think there are many quality and quality management problems with this product . Some other forums show the same indications of the huge amount of problems with this product on the market.
nice hold
Chris, I'm a bit sceptical that code is their current final release: just 4 commits, no update for 2 months, 1 contributor...
I guess they've created that repo to be quiet with licence but actually nobody will be able to check their frankness
@Chris: I was wondering about the tablet GCS as well. It looks awfully similar to things I coded on DroidPlanner.
Arthur, Walkera does release their ArduCopter derivative code. It's here
Judging from the tablet UI, I bet it's ardupilot compatible hardware.
I wonder if they will ever share their derivative code, and respect the GPL licenses.
Looks good. And you can make it into an X8? I wonder which controller it has (8 bit or 32?) and if it can be flashed or not.