

Frank Wang's Quest to Put DJI Robots into the Sky - tacon
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2015/05/05/dji-drones-frank-wang-china-billionaire/

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nakedrobot2
The biggest takeaway for me is that the Culture of your company always
reflects the personality and attitude of the founder.

Not to sound too grumpy, but.... well, since owning two DJI Phantoms and
experiencing their service and how they interact with customers, I always got
the idea that the people who run DJI must be a bunch of arrogant dickheads who
are willing to throw their customers (and dealers!) under the bus, for the
sake of GROWTH. In growth, they have succeeded. But they've alienated an
incredible number of people along the way.

The biggest and most egregious thing DJI has done is to never admit the
existence of a bug in their software which causes their Phantoms to fly away.
This would, of course, force them to take care of customers who experience
this, and would reduce their margins.

3D Robotics, with their new Solo, has a guarantee that if you have a flyaway
and it's not your fault, they will replace the drone. I am really happy to see
that 3D Robotics is taking the opposite stance to customer service from DJI.

Hey DJI - customer service is the new marketing! Cheers!

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justjimmy
What a perfectly timed piece for me to read. I _just_ finished watching
Colin's presentation of the 3DR Solo on YouTube seconds earlier.

I only just started getting into this drone hobby - mainly for the purpose of
aerial photography. Right now I'm practicing about 45 minutes a day (total
flight time) with a $50 drone, flying around in doors to get used to piloting
a drone by sight. Rest of my time is spent reading and researching on 'hobby
drones'.

For those looking to get into it, here are my tips so far:

1\. Start off with a $50 drone, something like Hubsan X4. You will crash a
lot. 2\. For the drones with filming capabilities, it's usually 1k-2k range.
Camera are either built in or uses GoPro. 3\. DJI Phantoms are the most
popular ones with the Phantom 3 out this month. DJI is notorious for poor
customer support from what I've read so far, so most people go to the forums.
Just YouTube Phantom 3 footage and you'll see some awesome videos. 4\. 3DR I
also just discovered. Solo will be their first product. I'm waiting for its
release so I can check out some aerial footage. 5\. Another drone to consider
is Yuneec Q500 Typhoon. I haven't done much research on it.

I'm waiting for Solo to release then gonna decide either that or the Phantom
3!

For those interested in the 3DR Solo:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L8lZUMzhwo&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L8lZUMzhwo&feature=youtu.be)

Unboxing Phantom 3:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzSILvb9R1k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzSILvb9R1k)

~~~
georgemcbay
Yet another option is to DIY. It is fairly easy to buy a flight controller, 4
ESCs, 4 motors, a radio transmitter and a LiPo battery, wire everything up and
have a basic quad either on a $15-ish dollar frame you buy and assemble or
something of your own creation (I design & 3D print my own frames.. makes it
easy to replace parts if I crash and destroy them) and it is not much harder
to add GPS to get something that's legitimately a "drone".

As someone who once owned a DJI Phantom 2 that had an unexpected flyaway
(despite being fully GPS calibrated prior to every flight), I'd recommend
steering away from them. Their customer service is total shit, their software
is garbage (and has a long history of doing ridiculous things like deciding
the battery -- which is DRMed -- inside your Phantom is fake mid-flight and
crashing the device),etc

(IMO) there's a lot of piece of mind in having an open source flight
controller (which doesn't eliminate the possibility of things such as this
happening, but does mean you can analyze the software and see for yourself
where the defects are if you do happen to see one occur).

I've been really happy with OpenPilot CC3D, APM and pixhawk flight
controllers. Not really sure I'd buy another "off the shelf" quad in the near
future, but if I did it would almost certainly be the 3DR Solo based on my
very positive experience with their components used in my own quads.

Totally agree with the advice to start out with something like the Hubsan X4
and highly suggest learning how to fly quads 'manually' (without the GPS
translation and altitude maintaining features that the high-end ones do out of
the box) even if you don't plan to fly that way normally... as a backup plan,
just in case.

~~~
soylentcola
Yeah, I've been practicing with a little $50 Syma quad I ordered on Amazon.
Very basic and I had to extend the antenna on the radio transmitter because
the integrated one was only a few cm long. Still, I want to get good enough
with the thing and develop the instincts/muscle memory to control a quad
manually and without any sort of GPS or path planning.

I figure by the time I source all of the parts to start building the little
250mm I'm planning, I'll be less likely to crash it or lose it. Might mess
with something bigger and more autonomous later on but for now I'm starting
small and then DIY-ing a little bigger.

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ausjke
I bought a Syma X5C ($50 or so) and its AXIS for the motor is plastic and
could not hold one of those 'spinning-fan', I had not put super glue to make
it 'fixed-for-good' yet. So far it never worked.

