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Inspire 2 modding - your thoughts?

Hey everyone!

What would be your thoughts on upgrading Inspire 2? :) Inspire 3 is not too far away, but my feeling is Inspire 2 is still very capable platform and with some little "tweaks" we can make it even better..

"Lifting restrictions" is something I do to pretty much every drone I own. And while "more speed" is sometimes the result, my thing is more lifting height and NFZ limitations. That said...

Your Inspire 2 seems to be moving pretty good there. 60-70 mph??? I don't own an Inspire 2, so don't know what its limitations are. I'm curious to know if "increased speed" was the modification you made?

D
 
Happy new year!!

In a nutshell, we've created "adapter plates" to be able to fly our Inspire 2 with regular ("cinelifter") LiPo batteries. Main reason - get rid of that "propulsion limited to protect batteries" error, secondary - **** these regular LiPos are cheap :) We did a bit of a testing with CNHL 3700mah batteries which cost 25 (twenty five) euro per battery and while obviously we had shorter flight time ... Paying 100eur for 2 sets of batteries with a bit smaller flight time is no-brainer for me personally :) Especially keeping in mind that these hold very well and you can do full-throttle flying till the end ..

We had pretty rough shoot yesterday - taking off from moving ferry in the middle of Baltic sea and while ferry at 44kmh does not feel THAT much what made it much worse was -10C and open sea - freezing cold... I always had a bit of a problem doing these types of flights on moving boats because of "Propulsion limited" risk on TB50 (it's a regular passenger ferry, they would never stop and wait for drone to catch up), so I figured I will do real life test with cinelifter LiPos. Did 4 sets of batteries, after that fingers were so frozen I barely could move them anymore, clumsy landing it was
😃
But I feel as convinced as ever the path we're exploring is very beneficial.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CnFbampqRdM/

We will be releasing more data and video with explanation soon
 
Nice flying. I can imagine landing on a moving platform is pretty difficult. Nicely done. Glad to see the battery hack is working out, too.

D
 
Actually, it's very easy on a boat that big with helipad – different story with smaller and moving boats ...
Copy that. I always thought it would be easier to land on a moving boat in ATTI mode. Were you using GPS lock when you landed?

D
 
GPS lock means any flight mode except ATTI mode.

D
Ah, I see. No, I think I was landing in Atti. With GPS lock it kind of is sketchy, as GPS tells drone that it's moving while actually it just landed on a moving boat ... I had serious issues landing early Mavic's on hot air balloon, as these did not have Atti activated and therefore were trying to "hold position" on a moving balloon :) Pretty sketchy lol
 
Ah, I see. No, I think I was landing in Atti.
Yep...I kind of figured that that would be the best way to do it.



With GPS lock it kind of is sketchy, as GPS tells drone that it's moving while actually it just landed on a moving boat ...
Yep...my thoughts exactly.



I had serious issues landing early Mavic's on hot air balloon, as these did not have Atti activated and therefore were trying to "hold position" on a moving balloon :) Pretty sketchy lol
I can imagine. I hacked my Mavic Pro so "S Mode" (Sport) is ATTI Mode now. I use ATTI mode all the time. I never use Sport Mode.

D
 
Are there any cool mods available? When I looked at the software mods I saw nothing for my drone that interested me other than the flip mod, and I could never risk my drone like that
 
Here's something we learned recently - seems there is a spare port that provides unregulated power output, which can be used to power your externally installed (and much better quality!) FPV cam

 
Back in my Phantom 1 days I had rigged my P1 to run on any size battery I wished. I was very pleasantly surprised to find I could upgrade from 3S to 4S. From there it was a simple matter of how big could I go before I started seeing diminishing returns. If memory serves, the OEM battery was small; 1500mAh 3s, which netted miserable flight times because my P1 was outfitted with a GoPro camera and a gimbal - between 3 and 4 minutes if memory serves. Now that I was able to outfit my own battery of any size I wanted, I just started going up. Again, if memory serves, I believe 3500mAh was the sweet spot, netting about 12 minutes of flight time. I think I tried all the way up to 5,000mAh and was able to gain no more than 13 minutes, but with significantly diminished handling. If I had a graph, you would see a very sharp increase in weight with a very slight increase of flight time.

My point is that "more isn't always better." I don't know about the Inspire 2, but I can say with a lot of confidence that the Inspire 1 definitely feels "fatter" and more "barge-like" as you start adding weight to it. Dollars to doughnuts the engineers have already taken this into consideration, and the dual pack is already at the top of the efficiency bell curve for flight time vs. handling.

It would be interesting to see how much weight you've added for how much additional flight time, measured in percentage. And then get your take on the handling characteristics. With only 1 battery, you have changed the center of gravity, which is definitely going to have an effect on handling. No matter how large a battery I added to my P1, it was always perfectly balanced right in the center. I was able the slide the battery fore and aft to achieve perfect balance.

D
 
Back in my Phantom 1 days I had rigged my P1 to run on any size battery I wished. I was very pleasantly surprised to find I could upgrade from 3S to 4S. From there it was a simple matter of how big could I go before I started seeing diminishing returns. If memory serves, the OEM battery was small; 1500mAh 3s, which netted miserable flight times because my P1 was outfitted with a GoPro camera and a gimbal - between 3 and 4 minutes if memory serves. Now that I was able to outfit my own battery of any size I wanted, I just started going up. Again, if memory serves, I believe 3500mAh was the sweet spot, netting about 12 minutes of flight time. I think I tried all the way up to 5,000mAh and was able to gain no more than 13 minutes, but with significantly diminished handling. If I had a graph, you would see a very sharp increase in weight with a very slight increase of flight time.

My point is that "more isn't always better." I don't know about the Inspire 2, but I can say with a lot of confidence that the Inspire 1 definitely feels "fatter" and more "barge-like" as you start adding weight to it. Dollars to doughnuts the engineers have already taken this into consideration, and the dual pack is already at the top of the efficiency bell curve for flight time vs. handling.

It would be interesting to see how much weight you've added for how much additional flight time, measured in percentage. And then get your take on the handling characteristics. With only 1 battery, you have changed the center of gravity, which is definitely going to have an effect on handling. No matter how large a battery I added to my P1, it was always perfectly balanced right in the center. I was able the slide the battery fore and aft to achieve perfect balance.

D

That's impressive amount of assumptions for a person who "does not know about Inspire 2" ;) But you're right, I should have added some bullet-points - apologies!

- I sort of thought it's obvious, but yeah, it's running on 2x caddy and 2x LiPo - so everything is okay with CG (but good point. On this photo you can see there's second LiPo peeking from behind the body :)
1697472400841.png - there never for a single moment was a purpose of getting more flight time
- inspire 2 is massively overpowered, so it was question of how to unleash that power - original batteries have too low discharge rate

Here's example how it was flying back 10 months ago when we just started:

 
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