Oh Dear! Inspire Pro (X5) vs P4P

dgreen729 · Dec 3, 2016

Hi guys,

My Inspire Pro took it upon itself to ignore my commands completely and get itself tangled in a tree only to then fall 30 feet down to the concrete despite my best efforts to run towards it and catch it. The landing gear came down then it went into RTH state, started heading towards a tree and didn't recognise any input from me at all so all I could do was watch and hope for the best. It's in a bit of a state. THANKFULLY the camera survived though I'm pretty certain one of the arms(?) on it is slightly misshapen and it's taken a knock so doesn't look as pretty anymore but a test on my OSMO has shown the lens, sensor and gimbal are all working fine. Well, as far as I can tell. Unfortunately I wasn't recording at the time so I have nothing to upload to give you all a laugh.

The Inspire itself. Well the arms survived though one of the plastic parts connecting to the main body is cracked, but the main issue is that the body is around 20% off straight; looks like a metal connector has snapped inside but without a tech drawing and having lost my Torx set (new one on order) I can't really work it out too well. I've contacted DJI and sent them the flight log but I'm pretty certain they won't cover this; any information on precedent for them accepting fault would be useful! (didn't have DJI care unfortunately) And I'm completely unsure of the cost of repair as there doesn't seem to be a great deal of information online. I'm guessing at around £700.

I have a few thoughts:

Sell the damaged Inspire and the X5 and buy a Phantom 4 Pro (image quality looks fantastic, has anybody used both and can give me their thoughts? But it's definitely nowhere near as professional looking as the Inspire which could hinder work)
Just accept it, get it repaired and sell my Osmo (which doesn't see much use) to cover part of the cost
Sell it and buy an Inspire 1 with X3 and take a hit on quality
Try to swap my broken inspire and my Osmo and accessories for a working Inspire v1/v2 then buy the x5 adapter

I'm just looking for any input really. Numbers, thoughts or some general sympathy would be nice!

I guess the moral of this is never fly anywhere near anything, even if you know exactly what you're doing.

If anybody fancies swapping a broken inspire for a working one I've got just the thing!

Cheers.

DavidK · Dec 3, 2016

dgreen729 said:
Hi guys,

My Inspire Pro took it upon itself to ignore my commands completely and get itself tangled in a tree only to then fall 30 feet down to the concrete despite my best efforts to run towards it and catch it. The landing gear came down then it went into RTH state, started heading towards a tree and didn't recognise any input from me at all so all I could do was watch and hope for the best. It's in a bit of a state. THANKFULLY the camera survived though I'm pretty certain one of the arms(?) on it is slightly misshapen and it's taken a knock so doesn't look as pretty anymore but a test on my OSMO has shown the lens, sensor and gimbal are all working fine. Well, as far as I can tell. Unfortunately I wasn't recording at the time so I have nothing to upload to give you all a laugh.

The Inspire itself. Well the arms survived though one of the plastic parts connecting to the main body is cracked, but the main issue is that the body is around 20% off straight; looks like a metal connector has snapped inside but without a tech drawing and having lost my Torx set (new one on order) I can't really work it out too well. I've contacted DJI and sent them the flight log but I'm pretty certain they won't cover this; any information on precedent for them accepting fault would be useful! (didn't have DJI care unfortunately) And I'm completely unsure of the cost of repair as there doesn't seem to be a great deal of information online. I'm guessing at around £700.

I have a few thoughts:

Sell the damaged Inspire and the X5 and buy a Phantom 4 Pro (image quality looks fantastic, has anybody used both and can give me their thoughts? But it's definitely nowhere near as professional looking as the Inspire which could hinder work)

Just accept it, get it repaired and sell my Osmo (which doesn't see much use) to cover part of the cost

Sell it and buy an Inspire 1 with X3 and take a hit on quality

Try to swap my broken inspire and my Osmo and accessories for a working Inspire v1/v2 then buy the x5 adapter

I'm just looking for any input really. Numbers, thoughts or some general sympathy would be nice!

I guess the moral of this is never fly anywhere near anything, even if you know exactly what you're doing.

If anybody fancies swapping a broken inspire for a working one I've got just the thing!

Cheers.

Where do you live ?

dgreen729 · Dec 3, 2016

Hi David, I'm in Nottinghamshire, UK. Cheers for reading through my near-essay, it was typed out in a state of distress haha.

Lesmess · Dec 3, 2016

What was your return to home height set at?

Sent from my iPhone using InspirePilots

Ftolino · Dec 3, 2016

You can adjust the legs straight again. Under sticker on small carbon fiber arm out on motor boom

Beverly Hills Aerials · Dec 5, 2016

did you say trying to catch it ... NEVER try and catch it if its coming down from a crash...... could left you in hospital... trust me.... its better to have a broken drone then stitches.

dgreen729 · Dec 5, 2016

Lesmess said:
What was your return to home height set at?

RTH height was set at 30m. It raised up into the tree rather than flew into it from the side. I was flying it low level under a canopy; probably not the most intelligent thing to do but I've done it plenty of times before for nice shots and never had an issue.

Ftolino said:
You can adjust the legs straight again. Under sticker on small carbon fiber arm out on motor boom

I've added a couple of photos so you can see what I mean (added the imgur links too since I don't think the images posted properly). The metal locator pin has sheared.

Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet
Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

Beverly Hills Aerials said:
did you say trying to catch it ... NEVER try and catch it if its coming down from a crash...... could left you in hospital... trust me.... its better to have a broken drone then stitches.

All the props had snapped off by that point so it should have been slightly less dangerous than normal! But you're right, in hindsight that wasn't a great idea. Luckily I'm not a sprinter so didn't manage

Lesmess · Dec 5, 2016

When flying with limited line of sight to satellites I switch to ATTI mode. Although I don't think it would have made any difference with your loss as the return to home would still initiate on loss of communication with the remote I think. Sorry about your loss worth pushing DJI for comment.

Sent from my iPhone using InspirePilots

Talon Six · Dec 5, 2016

To answer the OP's original question, you can purchase an Inspire 1 Pro (aircraft only) from DJI for USD $1399: Inspire 1 Pro Replacement Aircraft

The being said, I have to admit that my P4P will arrive day after tomorrow. My intent for it is to use as a backup / confined space aircraft. As you indicated, the still image quality won't be as nice as an X5, but all indications are that it will be impressive nonetheless. I am interested in comparing the video quality between it and my straight X5 (not RAW).

Most of my work is stills, so I didn't need a video AP rig like the I2/X5S combo. Your needs may dictate otherwise.

emtea · Dec 5, 2016

Why not send it back to DJI to fix? I recently had to send one back and the repair cost was a lot cheaper than I expected. I too was thinking about if I should buy new inspire and sell the broken one. Turnaround time for me was 3 weeks from when I dropped the drone off at the DJI store and when I received it back at home. I snapped an arm in two and broke the T connector, destroyed the X5 mount (though my X3 survived somehow), and cracked the lower airframe. The bird was a bit tweaked as well. Total cost of repair including shipping was <US$100.

I know a lot of people have had terrible experiences with DJI's customer service but I personally had the best experience. They were responsive to my inquiries during the process, they took pictures of all the damage and sent it to me and they were extremely transparent on the pricing of each part they were going to replace, the amount of labor and cost involved, and they did it pretty quickly (though I note that I live in Asia close to DJI's Shenzhen headquarters where my Inspire was sent back to). It took them less than a week to inspect, quote, fix and test my Inspire after they received it.

You can look up the price of the individual parts on DJI's website under the Support pages, the prices listed there are much lower than buying the individual pieces yourself from the DJI store. I am not sure if the cost of parts and labor varies by region, but the labor cost was somewhere around US$30 an hour, and they charged me one hour of labor only.