Walkera Rodeo 150 Flight Footage
Tag: Quadcopter
Walkera Rodeo 150 Review
Anothert RTF/BNF quadcopter from china? Yawn. But wait, this little guy mixes up the game. Check out how this ready-to-fly FPV racing copter fared in our review.
DYS X160 Micro FPV Racer
FPV Racing is getting bigger and bigger, and in addition to 250-size RTF and ARF products, we are beginning to see highly integrated and lightweight 160-size ones as well, like this DYS X160 Micro FPV Racer from Banggood.
It features an integrated CC3D flight controller, 10A ESCs, a 200mW 5.8GHz video transmitter, CMOS Camera with 127 degree lens and a circular polarized antenna. You supply your own RC receiver as well as a 3S 1300mAh LiPo. Not too bad for $170, though a fully loaded 250-size racer can be had for $150.
Walkera H6 actually named “Voyager 3”, only a prototype
German IT magazine heise.de reports from CES Las Vegas that the previously teased Walkera H6 was nowhere to be seen at Walkera’s booth – and was shown to them only on their request (German, Google translate).
Photo by heise.de / nij, used with permission
According to Walkera, a communication problem with their american distributor led to the premature announcement, which was planned for end of January this year at the Toy Fare Nuernberg in Germany. Sadly, pricing and features are still secret until then, even though production is slated to begin “soon”.
Walkera H6 debut at CES, runs APM/Dronecode
Need more proof that APM and the Linux Foundation-backed Dronecode alliance is really taking off? Walkera is about to debut the H6, a fancy-looking high-end quadcopter with retractable landing gear. The design is reminiscent of the new DJI Inspire, though the construction uses a simpler landing gear mechanism instead.
No info on price or availability yet, though we expect this to be announced within the next day.
Stick around for more pictures after the break.
FPVStyle Unicorn 1 combo features interesting video goggles
Warning: The retailer mentioned in this article appears to not be fulfilling orders. See our news on this for more details.
So, www.fpvstyle.com is selling a kit for USD 499.- containing a mini FPV quadcopter and video goggles. The specs on the quad sound pretty alright, even though we don’t know the flight controller it does have GPS and uses SimonK firmware on the ESCs and a claimed flight time of 15 minutes on 2200mAh 3S batteries.
So far so mildly interesting. Until you see that they’ve finally caught on to the day and age of the Oculus Rift, and done away with the now-obsolete FPV goggles we’re used to. It’s a giant pair of goggles with a wide field of view! Check out the closeups after the break!
Parrot Bepop is a GPS-enhanced RTF camera quadcopter
French company Parrot recently announced their latest product, the Bepop Drone. It’s a lightweight quadcopter with a digitally stabilized camera, eschewing mechanical gimbals in order to save weight.
The 14 megapixel camera isn’t the only attraction though, for it boasts a dual-core embedded linux flight controller with 8GB of RAM, Wifi range of up to 300 meters or, with a range extender package, going as far as 2km. Their “SkyController” is basically a tablet dock with sticks, not exactly a brand new idea but definitely executed in an interesting fashion.
Price is said to be above the Parrot.AR, but below the Phantom 2. Watch the official product video after the break, and check out the official website.
DJI Phantom 2 with H3-2D Gimbal Review
The Phantom 2 is available as a complete package complete with 2-axis brushless gimbal. The price for this combo started out at over $1000.- but has recently come down to a more manageable $680. Magazine reviews are glowing, but few of them have any comparisons to make. Is the Phantom 2 combo offer worth the price of admission, or should you look elsewhere? Find out in our review!
Hubsan X4 Pro – even more footage
Apparently the Hubsan X4 is slated for a big reveal at the Bejing Expo soon. And in preparation they’ve posted another video which does look quite awesome indeed. And compared to the Phantom 2 (which we are currently reviewing btw) the X4 appears to be in another class entirely. Hubsan seems to have spent their time perfecting the stabilization to a level we’ve only seen with the Blade 350QX – at least when it comes to RTF quads.
Will the X4 be amazing, or will it be plagued by design flaws like the Phantom 2’s magnetizable compass sensor cover? Hopefully we will find out soon! If this footage is anything to go by, we’re going to have a really hot summer.
Oculus FPV is yet another stereoscopic FPV project for RC models
We love our Oculus SDK1, so much that in addition to a DK2 preorder, we also backed the RiftUP! project. So it’s all the better to see more and more RC applications to pop up.
The Oculus FPV is a project by the Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology, mounting two cameras on a 2-axis servo mechanism (no brushless gimbal there sadly) and using two separate video downlinks for left and right eye. Sadly they went the cheap route, simply using a tiny program running on a full Windows PC to calculate the image distortion required to make things look good on the oculus. We’d say this is the easiest way to achieve this effect without designing custom hardware like the Transporter3D.
Commendably, the full writeup of the project as well as all sourcecode can be found on Github.
Align M480 Multicopter
Align, still remember that name? They’re back in force, showing off their new M480 Multicopter system. Featuring retractable legs, a quad or hexcopter setup and running on 6S 5200mAh for up to 20 minutes of flight time, we don’t know the price tag on this one yet, but it sure ain’t going to be cheap. Or maybe Align will surprise us and the competition, and finally drive down the inflated price points of some of the RTF systems out there. Yes DJI, we’re looking at you.
Hubsan H109S X4 Pro “throw” teaser
Hubsan posted a new short teaser video showing the upcoming H109S X4 Pro RTF Quadcopter being thrown into the air. While this is standard fare for 350QX owners, and even a homemade $120 Quadcopter can do the same thing, it’s good to see Hubsan spend time on testing and tweaking their upcoming Phantom-competitor.
Hobbyking announces Quanum Nova RTF Quadcopter, a rebranded CX-20
HK recently announced that they’re going to sell a rebranded version of the Cheerson CX-20 soon, calling it the “Quanum Nova”:
The CX-20 is a GPS-capable quadcopter comparable to the DJI Phantom. We haven’t had a chance to review one yet, but from various flight footage on youtube this model seems to be very stable and have a good GPS position hold function. The RTF copter features a replaceable RC receiver so you can connect your favorite RC control system and use your existing transmitter instead. Interestingly, the cool-looking external GPS antenna seems to be for show only, as images by customers show that the actual antenna is right inside the quadcopter’s main body.
The original CX-20 is on sale for $330 on Banggood, so it remains to be seen how much HK will charge for this one.
Blade 350QX Review
Finally, we got to play with the 350QX from Horizon Hobby. There’s been plenty of reviews of this little guy, but aside from the usual “flies great” statements in hobby magazines, we wanted to find out how this RTF quadcopter compares against the ilk of a Phantom, Crius, or even a KK2.x. Curious? Read on after the break.
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