Not yet an owner - advice please for survey work

[mikeL]

Hello, I am at the start of putting a surveying buisness together and I have just bought a Yuneec typhoon H which for the money I am very happy with. I need a second aircraft and I am deciding between another Typhoon H or the Inspire v2 with the Z3 camera.

The Typhoon H is cheaper has six rotors and customer service is excellent but the camera seems poor in comparison to the x3, the screen is hard to see and the app is very basic.

The Inspire already has better camera option x3 z3 x5 etc and app seems great. The cost is higher and it only has four rotors (can i fit a parachute) and but the reported customer service seems shocking and is really the main thing holding me off.

Lastly where in the UK is a good place to buy, heliguy or direct from dji?

I would really appreciate any advice.

 

[DesertWindAero]

For my money, you just can't beat the Inspire, especially because of the choices for 3rd party apps such as Autopilot and Litchi. Yes, customer service seems to be hit or miss and that's one of the drawbacks...not enough, in my opinion to go with another brand.

 

[mikeL]

If you have an issue does it go back to the shop or back to dji?

I am in the uk if that makes any difference?

 

[InspireBart]

I have a Typhoon H, but when I decided I wanted to try commercial work, I opted for an Inspire 1 as its been around awhile making it pretty well sorted. The H is still new and has its share of "teething" problems. The camera is definitely better on the Inspire compared to the H. And even as you state the DJI GO app is good, very intuitive and easy to use figure out.

I was going to use my H for commercial purposes but after a couple months of ownership, I have some concerns;

The H doesn't feel as solid or sturdy as the Inspire. The H feels a bit fragile. There are some posts supporting this on the Yuneec forums; a few reports of landing gear breaking on landing, arms that are starting to show play and slop after only ~100 flights of folding and unfolding arms; Hard landings that have separated the camera.

Then there are the software/firmware problems. I'm on my second H as my first had compass board issues. It would J-hook, drift, lose altitude and would not hover. It would also "toilet bowl" (Pendulum Affect). Other users complained of the same issue. Then there is the camera focus or lack of focus issue where people are having to crack the camera open and manually focus the lens or buy a replacement. The last firmware update has left some users with "modes" that no longer work, and shorter operating range.

My biggest "nit" is the UI. Pretty much the same as my Q500 which is over a year old. The UI does not talk to you for the simple stuff like the DJI GO app does. You rely on beeps from the STI-16 that makes you take your eyes off your bird, look down and try to figure out what its telling you. Most of the time its not obvious. Then there is the battery "meter". Thats all it is. Tells you the voltage. You have to completely manage flight time remaining. By the time you get the first low battery warning its too late. Its time to land now. Heaven forbid you are over a large body of water and can't make it back to shore. I like percentages of battery remaining and earlier warning like the DJI GO app does.

Don't get me wrong, there are things I like about the H and plan on keeping it as my "personal" bird. I like the camera controls, I like how I can do a 360 pan by setting the camera speed and not worry that I'm manually panning too fast. I like that speed can be adjusted with turtle and rabbit mode. While i don't have any experience with the Inspire in wind, I find the H to be very stable in moderate winds..

IMO, if you're getting a bird to do commercial work get one that was designed to do.

 

[bluelight.support]

Im just getting going with survey work and the Inspire 1 Pro is currently doing very well - changed the lens to the 12mm Olympus one, and use that in with Map pilot for surveys. The geotagging is good enough to put into Agisoft, Pix4d and Drone2Map. The only thing to note is for some reasons DJI tags all EXIF info as below sea level, so i just use an app to batch process the images to above sea level then i can get 5m accuracy in the analysis.

The expensive part is getting cm grade accuracy and we use 5-10 ground control points, with Trimble Geo 6000 with Terrasync CM then post process the GNSS data in Pathfinder Office to get GCP to within 1-2cm, then process them in with the images and cross reference the GCP to data. You end up with survey grade cm maps which work very well. I am currently working on accuracy of 1cm/px at 100ft on imagery.