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Anyone else going Solo?

D

durrr

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I've been eying up the 3DR Solo right when it was announced.

Pixhawk 2 flight controller, Dual Linux Computers, Incredible Features, Open Source, The ability to add on Accessories, Gimbals, and Upgradeability. You can swap out the motor pods within seconds... And from what I've seen its built very well.

The Hero4 Black Edition with a 5.4mm mod will be great on the Solo. Lucky for me I already own 3 Hero4 Black Editions.
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And don't get me wrong I love my Inspire 1...
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But I'm not 100% confident flying it. I wanna feel good when flying my investment...Not worried half the time it'll fail and crash in the ocean. God forbid if something happened... I'd be screwed by DJI's Customer Service.

Does anyone else feel the same way?
 
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durrr said:
But I'm not 100% confident flying it. Sure, it's made me money but I wanna feel good when flying my investment...Not worried half the time it'll fail and crash in the ocean. God forbid if something happened... I'd be screwed by DJI's Customer Service.

Does anyone else feel the same way?
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I totally feel what your saying, having had two flyaways and dealing with DJI I am just trying to make as much money with the inspire before it has a permanent failure and I lose it for months on end stuck in DJI's non customer service scheme!
 
I've been eyeing the solo as well...mainly just to try something different, I don't have much pixhawk or apm experience under my belt just yet. Anyway keep in mind that while the 5.4mm is a solid lens, it is very zoomed compared to the inspire lens so the "aerial depth" isn't as good sometimes and since the gimbal wasn't designed for that use, you may notice vibrations, I did this mod on my 680 hex and used a zenmuse, had a lot of vibration problems to work out before it started looking halfway decent.
 
skylabimaging said:
I've been eyeing the solo as well...mainly just to try something different, I don't have much pixhawk or apm experience under my belt just yet. Anyway keep in mind that while the 5.4mm is a solid lens, it is very zoomed compared to the inspire lens so the "aerial depth" isn't as good sometimes and since the gimbal wasn't designed for that use, you may notice vibrations, I did this mod on my 680 hex and used a zenmuse, had a lot of vibration problems to work out before it started looking halfway decent.
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GoPro has to start pushing out removable lenses at this point. With the Blackmagic Micro coming out and shoots Raw Cinema DNG and Prores that is a serious competitor especially aimed at professionals. I love GoPro but I don't like 4k compressed 8 bit footage.
 
durrr said:
GoPro has to start pushing out removable lenses at this point. With the Blackmagic Micro coming out and shoots Raw Cinema DNG and Prores that is a serious competitor especially aimed at professionals. I love GoPro but I don't like 4k compressed 8 bit footage.
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No it's not. The bmm is a totally different camera for a different purpose and a different end user. The gopro was originally constructed for action sports users and still is because they outweigh aerial guys probably 100 to 1. Most people don't even know the first thing about working raw footy in post, or the amount of space it takes up, let alone if they have the hardware to run it properly, they will find themselves transcoding all the time.

If you don't like 4k compressed 8 bit footage than buy the bmm rather than wasting your money on a solo. You're gonna find your challenges with the bmm though as well. It's got a serious crop at 2.88..which means a 7-14mm lumix lens or the new olympus on the horizon is going to be your best friend, this will add another 1000 to your initial cost. You could go with a 20mm prime and save some coin but you'll be in the air with a 57mm lens, which would be less than ideal. The lumix will put you where you should be, about 20mm-35mm. You'll need a bigger gimbal, and you know you'll want to be in the air for at least 15min, 20min would be nice though, am I right? This will require a larger aircraft, bigger batteries, a more robust charging station, is your computer up to the task of storing and processing raw video files? if not that will be an additional cost, which will keep stacking upon itself. Otherwise you can use the lesser quality prores system to process which is more friendly but I imagine people want to take advantage of the cinema dng raw. Yes the bmm is priced very well but the user of this camera is a bit different than a hobbyist with a gopro.
 
skylabimaging said:
No it's not. The bmm is a totally different camera for a different purpose and a different end user. The gopro was originally constructed for action sports users and still is because they outweigh aerial guys probably 100 to 1. Most people don't even know the first thing about working raw footy in post, or the amount of space it takes up, let alone if they have the hardware to run it properly, they will find themselves transcoding all the time..
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Yea, I agree GoPro is aimed at the consumer and action sports. But what BMC is doing is making that same exact style camera with the option to mount different lenses and shoots RAW and ProRes. I'm more excited to shoot ProRes.

GoPro and the Sony CopyCam both have a wide angle lens that has a distorted fisheye look you can only change by modding.

3DR did a interview and said it is very possibly flying a BMC Micro with a gimbal. It's because the motor pods are easy to swap out and upgrade. So bigger motor pods = more lift more weight. Of course that'll lead to bigger batteries but this is all going to be possible with the Solo. I'll find the video where they talked about this at NAB.

I just wanna be able to fly and do shoots where I feel confident. And not have to worry "Man if this thing crashes or the battery goes from 100 to 3% and lands in the ocean I'm screwed because of DJI Support.
 
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durrr said:
Yea, I agree GoPro is aimed at the consumer, action sports, etc. But what BMC is doing is making that style camera with the option to mount different lenses and shoots RAW and ProRes I'm more excited to shoot ProRes. GoPro and the Sony CopyCam both have a wide angle lens that has a distorted fisheye look you can only change by modding it.

3DR did a interview and said it is very possibly flying a BMC Micro with a gimbal. It's because the motor pods are very simple to swap out and upgrade. So bigger motors = more lift. Of course that'll lead to bigger batteries but this is all going to be possible with the Solo. I'll find the video where they talked about this at NAB.
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I wouldn't fly anything except a gopro and my inspire camera without redundancy.
 
Yes, pre-ordered 3 weeks ago and anxiously awaiting for the end of this month. I have always said a product is half the product and half the post sales service/support. I have not had a great experience with DJI post sale and I am not sure about 3DR. But if they can live up to what they claim their customer service is it will be great.
 
durrr said:
But I'm not 100% confident flying it. I wanna feel good when flying my investment...Not worried half the time it'll fail and crash in the ocean. God forbid if something happened... I'd be screwed by DJI's Customer Service.

Does anyone else feel the same way?
Click to expand...

**** is going to happen, already been reports of the P3 crashing, one yesterday went down in the Charles River in Boston. Anything can happen, you just hope its not your bird. I too have a pre-order in for the Solo
 
durrr said:
Yea, I agree GoPro is aimed at the consumer and action sports. But what BMC is doing is making that same exact style camera with the option to mount different lenses and shoots RAW and ProRes. I'm more excited to shoot ProRes.

GoPro and the Sony CopyCam both have a wide angle lens that has a distorted fisheye look you can only change by modding.

3DR did a interview and said it is very possibly flying a BMC Micro with a gimbal. It's because the motor pods are easy to swap out and upgrade. So bigger motor pods = more lift more weight. Of course that'll lead to bigger batteries but this is all going to be possible with the Solo. I'll find the video where they talked about this at NAB.

I just wanna be able to fly and do shoots where I feel confident. And not have to worry "Man if this thing crashes or the battery goes from 100 to 3% and lands in the ocean I'm screwed because of DJI Support.
Click to expand...

You're going to need a gimbal to mount to the solo.. sure maybe the solo could carry it, but bigger motors (kv) mean larger props which means the battery will burn quicker how much bigger can the solo go? It's like saying a phantom could carry it but for how long? 3min? 5min? The solo looks like it's using a proprietary battery system much like DJI.

Everybody is entitled to their opinion about the Inspire but I for one don't let other peoples flight problems concern me mainly because I don't know them, I don't know how well they care for their batteries or their aircraft. My Inspire has instilled a lot of trust with me, I trust it more than my hex platform running on a wkm, and wkm was/is about as reliable as you can get, short of a non gps based flight controllers, like multiwii or even hoverfly, but those are different. Even given the lack of redundancy.
 
durrr said:
Does anyone else feel the same way?
Click to expand...

Yes but in the opposite way. Not enough technical details posted about the solo, so little that my confidence about it being as good as they would like people to believe is approximately zero.

More expensive than a P3, and we have no idea of what we're getting into either in terms of performance, capability nor reliability.
 
There are still too many problems with the solo. The flight controller (firmware) is not finished yet. Look on youtube to all the mishaps with the solo. If i was you wait for at least 6 months to order the SOLO. So that mutch of the firmware problems should be solved by then i hope !

/\/\ax2206
 
Hey Everyone,

Not to derail the 3DR Solo discussion, but a sleeper drone I haven't seen mentioned as yet is the new Yuneec Tornado. I'm not a professional so the X3 camera suites me fine, but every issue I've seen raised about either the X5 capabilities or the lack of redundancy a quadcopter has the Tornado (a hexacopter) addresses. Don't get me wrong I love my Inspire 1 and of course not many have had a real opportunity to fly the Tornado, but on paper this seems to be a real contender. It can be fitted with either the Panasonic GH4 gimbal (or their own in-house GH4ish solutioned camera) and of course it having six blades plus the solid customer satisfaction reputation Yuneec has in the industry, am I the only one thinking this may be some real competition to the Inspire 1 Pro?
 
i had the chance to fly the solo a few days ago, and compared to the inspire it just wont cut it, its too slow, even changing the setting to the most aggressive you can be.

i feel it lacks the power to do most of the things i do with an inspire. and i hardly doubt it will be solid on strong winds.
 
i had the solo the day it came out and i had nothing but problems from the very beginning it would lose connectivity with the transmitter at 200ft and it went out of control twice on me for no apparent reason one being when i was landing it just did a complete flip on to its top for no good reason another time while i was landing i fought me to take off again and veered violently left into a bush so off it went back to best buy !!
now my inspire on the other hand i have not one problem at all i just finished a indi movie shoot this weekend and did 27 takes of various ariel shots and it preformed like a champ
i have been flying /building multi-rotors for 3 years and i am very fluent on what makes them tick
the solo felt very plasticey (a new word i just invented :D) almost like a toy
my inspire feels like a tool and very sturdy. of course this is just my honest opinion but thought i would just share some of my experiences with the 2
thank you for reading :cool:
 
LOL. Everyone is always bashing DJI, either the CS or the Flyaways. You know probably a high percentage of flyaways are inexperienced flyers who lose their bird when mama (GPS) is lost. I have seen lousy CS from a lot of vendors and manufacturers, but it usually revolves around the economy we are in where profits are slim and giving stock options are gone, my dad use to get war bonds from DuPont for hours he worked. How many Phantoms and Inspires have been sold and are flying everyday? Millions? How many Solos are flying everyday? Sure there will be a higher percentage of problems because of the volume that is out there. Hope its not mine...:)
 

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