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Just a satisfied customer, no affiliation. I did the combined basic/advanced course from pilottraining.ca and learned a ton. A related thing that didn’t occur

Just a satisfied customer, no affiliation. I did the combined basic/advanced course from pilottraining.ca and learned a ton. A related thing that didn’t occur to me until recently: if you keep your all-up weight under 250g, all of those regulations go out the window and drop back down to “fly responsibly”. I’ve been working on drones professionally for a year now, and am just in the process of putting together a tiny kit for fun. This idea clicked for me when a Transport Canada-certified flight examiner sent me a really cool FPV video that was clearly flying around people. You can do a lot while staying under the weight restriction.

mabbo 7y ago
> if you keep your all-up weight under 250g Are there commercially available drones that light? My Mavic Air is tiny, and it's still over 400g. The only way I can imagine making it under 200g and still able to fly is to reduce the battery to something that can only fly for a few minutes.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  basically just toys below that weight, usually without even basic hover capability.
  - bri3d 7y ago
    There is an entire class of first person flying micro drones called “CineWhoops” which combine first person real-time video and HD recording on the drone and have an AUW far under 250g. They are certainly a different flying and photography style from a DJI style photo rig, and I’d argue a much more fun one.
    - tonyarkles 7y ago
      Coming up right away, both FatShark and DJI have announced digital FPV video gear that, if I recall, transmits 1080p. So long as they keep the weight down on the camera/transmitter, that should open up a lot of new capabilities too.
  - afiori 7y ago
    This kind of functionality should be in software, does is also directly affect weight (a bigger chip or similar)?
  - tonyarkles 7y ago
    For off-the-shelf gear, you could definitely be right. I don't know that market very well. For home-built though, you can definitely put together a rig that'll do GPS-based hover and other semi-autonomous flight modes. For example: https://oscarliang.com/gps-mini-quad/ https://oscarliang.com/gps-mini-quad/
- tonyarkles 7y ago
  I don't know about commercially available, to be honest. I'm currently in my (sparse) spare time putting together the parts list for a relatively boring Whoop that will be FPV capable with extended flight time (say ~10-20 min). In the professional work I've been doing, I've been using ArduPilot (which, despite the name, isn't Arduino-based). I'm debating whether to use ArduPilot or BetaFlight for the flight controller, but if it's possible weight-wise, I am going to try to squeeze GPS onto it to get more autonomous/stable flight out of it. We'll see how it all goes. Maybe there'll be a "Show HN" post in a few weeks :)

mabbo 7y ago

> if you keep your all-up weight under 250g Are there commercially available drones that light? My Mavic Air is tiny, and it's still over 400g. The only way I can imagine making it under 200g and still able to fly is to reduce the battery to something that can only fly for a few minutes.

leetcrew 7y ago
basically just toys below that weight, usually without even basic hover capability.
- bri3d 7y ago
  There is an entire class of first person flying micro drones called “CineWhoops” which combine first person real-time video and HD recording on the drone and have an AUW far under 250g. They are certainly a different flying and photography style from a DJI style photo rig, and I’d argue a much more fun one.
  - tonyarkles 7y ago
    Coming up right away, both FatShark and DJI have announced digital FPV video gear that, if I recall, transmits 1080p. So long as they keep the weight down on the camera/transmitter, that should open up a lot of new capabilities too.
- afiori 7y ago
  This kind of functionality should be in software, does is also directly affect weight (a bigger chip or similar)?
- tonyarkles 7y ago
  For off-the-shelf gear, you could definitely be right. I don't know that market very well. For home-built though, you can definitely put together a rig that'll do GPS-based hover and other semi-autonomous flight modes. For example: https://oscarliang.com/gps-mini-quad/ https://oscarliang.com/gps-mini-quad/
tonyarkles 7y ago
I don't know about commercially available, to be honest. I'm currently in my (sparse) spare time putting together the parts list for a relatively boring Whoop that will be FPV capable with extended flight time (say ~10-20 min). In the professional work I've been doing, I've been using ArduPilot (which, despite the name, isn't Arduino-based). I'm debating whether to use ArduPilot or BetaFlight for the flight controller, but if it's possible weight-wise, I am going to try to squeeze GPS onto it to get more autonomous/stable flight out of it. We'll see how it all goes. Maybe there'll be a "Show HN" post in a few weeks :)