Wait til first time you actually get to fly.

To really put it into perspective try 60deg uptilt on the sim drone.

Also it is the sauce behind things like how MattyStuntz and FlorentRoque managed to do their mind bending inverted loops.

Really starts to bake your noodle when physics does not change but perspective does.

on sale as the goggle 3 is coming.

very likely. goggles "two" fucking DJI.

Goggles 3 you say?

ETA: Is that the "Goggles SE"?

Perhaps I should wait.

Caught wind of some conversation about this on a Facebook group last night.

Buy the current model now with the price drop because the next ones probably wont perform much better, for most hobby grade users.

DJI also seems to like to imbed shit into their goggles.

With that remoteID bullshit coming around the corner I would not be surprised if the goggles are key to connecting to phone via blue tooth or some shit.

I am OG analog for life.  Fucking hate DJI after they tried to get in bed with FAA when they thought their shit would be the standard.

I word on the street is the chip used in the current goggles 2 and goggles integra wont be remade, and the newest crop of drones uses a new chip, so the not very old goggles are getting replaced with a new model using the new chip. what that means no one really knows. chip shortages are real and they fucking suck. analog OSD were basically non existent for over a year during rona. we got some remanufactured elevator door motor control boards in this week. went to install them and using the exact same parameters as the old board with the same part number and the doors vibrated badly. took some tuning to get them working again. apparently they substituted some chips and they dont work the same now.

Yep, I've seen the V2's for $350 for a while. That seems to be the floor until something new comes out.

Nice.

Backordered on Helidirect now.

based out of Los Angeles between pyro and newbee drone I can have almost anything I need next day.

Everyone says the face piece is trash on the 2 and requires extra foam to get comfortable. That sucks. Good to hear the image quality is excellent though.

I've seen some info on them. Do they work with the O3 unit?

ETA: Video sample of the Avatar



Some weird pixilation in the video that pops up in random spots.

@TotalUnRecall

I wanted to build/solder something, so I bought THIS:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/354649747428

But it came fully assembled. When I backed up the config out in BetaFlight, it is running 3.2.2.

Would you have some time for an email?

So my drone's profile and firmware were flashed with Betaflight 3.2.2.  If I upgrade to 4.3.3 (? Might have the number messed up), it PROBABLY is NOT a 1 for 1 drop-in-the-settings-and-go situation.

Still reading, studying, and figuring out BF.  I'll do this until I can explain exactly what I'm trying to do, and the problems I'm seeing.

It has been a fight every step of the way.  I was doing it in windows.  Needed drivers. Then, need to "trick" it so it will go in to bootloader.  Then, the beeper was going non-stop, so I wasted 13 minutes looking that up. (I think it lost connection to the controller, so it was screaming because it thought it was lost in a field....)

THEN, I said F IT, and loaded BF 4.3.3 in Linux. THEN, I decided to try to load 3.2.2 from source code.

Now, I'm sitting here wondering WHAT firmware I should load in 4.3.3. What it SAYS is on it from the config?  The stock firmware for that board?

Not to mention I am deathly afraid of mucking up the settings.


ADDITIONAL CLARIFICATION:

I just fired the drone up, and hovered it for a minute in the living room. Damn thing is spirited!  

I want to see what the controller switches are set to do. I can't see the 3.2.2 settings from the drone when connecting it to my laptop running BetaFlight 4.3.3.  (It tells me the firmware is too old.)  I can run DUMP ALL in the CLI, and see the 3.2.2 config, but have no idea what 94.7% of the stuff is.  I can see the firmware name that is loaded in 3.2.2 from the DUMP, so I COULD flash the new firmware, but then every video says, "Do NOT load an old config in to new firmware!"  I then cannot set the controller switches to what they were.  And even if I COULD, I don't know what half the stuff is!

If I flash the firmware, I do not know if I can go back to 3.2.2 or not, as I cannot figure out how to load BF 3.2.2. (That was when BetaFlight used some chrome link to do the install.)  I need a college degree to use Git, and load code, AND, need to brush up on my Linux, so I don't need to deal with Windows driver issues.

@Mugzilla

If you're that afraid of screwing up the settings. Just fly it on the firmware it's on.  To get anything that old up to Betaflight 4.4.x, you're pretty much looking at a scratch setup with a bunch of gotchas with the new cloud build. Not all the needed code is included for every flight controller. So things like the gyro and blackbox flash may be missing and need to be added manually. Not exactly the job for a beginner.

I set up all my friend's quads since I guess I have the most experience.  I just did some for a guy half way across the country that had stuff so screwed up he was lost. I told him to cover shipping and I'd take care of it.  It was bad, but I got his radio, module, and 3 quads squared away.

https://www.racedayquads.com/collections/all-ready-to-fly-quad-combos/products/betafpv-rtf-cetus-pro-fpv-kit

So something like this is basically a small stunt type toy? Primarily large indoor and some outdoor on calm days? I do have several large buildings where my son could fly inside 100 x 150.

But if I want to saw fly 50 - 75 ft in the air and take something as simple as a 2mp still picture of the my property or the property next door (not leave my property), I need something more in the $500 and up range?

No good for pics, fantastic for learning to fly racing or acro drones.  Look up tiny whoop on YT.

Racing a tiny whoop around the house makes me giggle like a retard.

Something more like a DJI Mini 2 SE, which is more dedicated for outside would be a better way to go for some basic photography?

Yes, or one of the various copies.  They are more designed to be stable and idiot proof with a much shorter learning curve.

The biggest difference in DJI style drones and FPV drones(in my highly limited experience on the FPV side) is hovering.

When you release the sticks on a DJI drone it will hover in place with no input to the sticks. If you let go of the sticks on an FPV drone its going to keep moving in the same direction as the last input until it crashes.

Completely depends how it is set up.

Is this new? I haven't been on DJI's website in a while but, I thought their only FPV drone was the Avata.



DJI FPV

I think they released it late 2020 or early 2021.

@TotalUnRecall

Sorry, I missed your question.

YES, I am running BF 10.9. But, the drone was configured with 3.2.2 .All of YT University says DO NOT load an old config from 3.x.x in to a newer one. (Bad things can supposedly happen.)

I just loaded BF on an Naze32 Acro.  From 2015ish.  Seems to run fine, but I am only using it to test a big camera platform drone.  It is on BF 3 something,  I would have to look.

The worst part is getting the right STM drivers loaded and figuring out if SBUS is inverted.

Not great, not terrible.  

Fucking firmware/stm bullshit.

ImpulseRC made a driver fixer utility that is FUCKIN THE SHIT.

God that whole time frame of bootloader asshattery bullshit.

ImpulseRC driver fixer, find it.

Also fuck 2015-16 betaflight but Naze 32, yeah you get what you get.

Darn kids these days don't even remember when KK boards were the standard and some servos had reverse polarized wiring.

I figured I would post - I have bitched about some of these drones in posts for multiple years, and I was wrong.

RC can be a lot of different hobbies for different people.  Flying and taking pictures to me are 2 different hobbies.  I grew up flying and try to check every November what is the state of the hobby.  Last few years, dead seemed to be what I found.  Likewise, I tried to get into drones in 2017 - but they did not feel like flying to me (my bad - perhaps I should have read the instructions).

I am normally good at web research - and I missed something major.  In 2017 I got a Blade Inductrix.  It flew perfectly - perfectly boring.  After a few weeks they got set aside.  Meanwhile, for years now since then I have been reading about Tiny Whoops - pretty much the entry point for indoor FPV flying.  But so many options, decision (and price) overload - never bothered to persue.  My daughter told me she wanted a "drone" to fly - so I started doing research.  A LOT of research.  On day 4 or 5 of research now.  And I realized my old research had a MAJOR hole.  2 MAJOR holes actually.

First off - the Blade Inductrix was not the piece of boredom I thought it was.  I had not read the manual.  It came on an easy flying mode.  Different companies call things differently - but most call it angle mode now.  The right stick controls the angle of the quad (yes, that sounds obvious).  But in angle mode, it controls the angle of the quad rather than the change in angle of the quad.  HUGE difference.  In angle mode, max stick will put the quad at a predetermined max angle.  No stick, the quad will self level to no angle.  This to me is not flying.  It is telling a little flying robot where to go.   Had I read the manual, and seen it could be put in acro mode - it would have been a completely different thing.  There is no max angle anymore.   Keep the stick off center, and the angle will just keep increasing.  Let the stick go - well the angle stays the same (not self levels).  All of a sudden, the quad can do loops, rolls, flings - etc...  FLYING.

The second thing I missed was what a Tiny Whoop was.  Apparently, an FPV drone racing team in Ft Collins was called Big Whoop.  Someone on the team put a micro FPV system on a Blade Inductrix.  They nicknamed it a Tiny Whoop - and micro FPV quads were born.  Learning that one tiny bit of history changed my view of what has been happening in the last 5 years completely.  Things have changed - they have changed a lot.  Now the Inductrix is a footnote in history.  It was a cheap ($40), brushed, micro quad.  Every part has been changed many times by clone companies - and what is sold today is only related to it in form factor.  Those old brushed motors, straining to keep a camera lifted had about a 4hr life span.  Now they are brushless - more weight (but much more life and power), but tech has eroded that to the point it is not.  The video cameras have gotten better by generations.  As of this year, there are now nano systems with 3 different types of digital camera systems (abet for racing, analog still is king - it is super cheap and super lite).  Prices have gone up - sure.  But a new brushless Tiny Whoop is only about $100 with camera.  Oh, sure, it does not come with googles or TX - but a good computerized TX can be purchased for $65 (my Spectrum system was more than 5x that).  Decent entry level analog googles can be purchased for $100 (abet top of the line analog is every bit as expensive as digital these days).  Plus the analog camera and VTX (video TX) is about $30 (damn lot cheaper than the $150 for the cheapest digital - and the cheepest digital still weighs a lot more - well 5 grams, but on a quad that weighs less than 30 grams without battery - that is a lot).
---
I am still researching a lot - and thanks to Christmas a lot of what I am finding is out of stock.  But out of stock is kind of the standard in an industry where electronics have a 6 month half life.  Companies are not even bothering to say things are a new version, they are just making incremental changes.  A new all in one board comes out that is a 2 grams lighter for the same price - the old one is so obsolete they just put the new one in and don't even change a label on the box.  FPV planes are also changing,  FPV wing drones are changing.  Everything is changing - and info is harder than ever to get because FCC rules have changed and nobody really wants to post online all the illegal shit that they are enjoying (such as it is illegal to fly FPV outdoors without a human spotter yet).  Long range - OMG long range, but better not post a video of it (you can not legal fly out of line of sight).  Yet FPV equipment can hit 30km (or more) now (with directional antenna).
---
So I will leave this post with a link to a new product review for March 2023.  Yep, that is NOT very new anymore - but I thought this site might get some insight to what can not be talked about.  Sure, flying outside of line of sight is illegal.  Sure using a drone to spot game, or drive game is even more illegal (but using it for security, not so much).  Flying without transmitting a radio ID is illegal (unless you are under 250grams)-illegal...  But just imagine what you could do with 2 toys on this video.  00:00:56 - a small (not nano) thermal camera for an analog FPV TX.  00:04:43 a small digital "starlight" camera (ok, moonlight is probably more appropriate).  Sure the thermal is still expensive - but $2k for a 480 core, or $3800 for a 640 core is not bad compared to what I have seen from manufacturers making equipment marketed mostly to LOE's.  But $65 for a moonlight camera ($150 with TX).  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhjKh4WZbtg   I got to say someone is going to be using this shit for hog hunting.  A sub 5oz moonlight or thermal drone (even a wing drone) is possible.  While it would be tight - that sub 5oz wing drone could possibly even fly a 5 mile circuit on a battery.  Go up to 1lb - and a 20 mile circuit might be possible.  Imagine seeing Orcs hogs on thermal from 10 miles away (with a tad over $3k invested).  Well, that is probably why the FCC is doing a hell of a lot to kill this hobby.
---
So for our members that glow.  I believe in strict adherence to the law.  I am only doing research for my daughter to fly FPV outside of airspace (in a building), with a sub 50 gram drone.  But damn, the possibilities...  FWIW, I have my recreational FAA license, as well as my FCC license (I have not researched the specific laws - but I think the long range FPV may have an output wattage that requires a HAM license).  My camera drones are all in boxes now (until I can get RID modules installed).  I don't fly outside of LOS and I don't even own goggles that could do FPV (well, I will own them for flying indoors soon).

But yes, the temptation for civil disobedience is strong - chasing squirrels with a 40 gram FPV drone would be fun as shit.  But harassing wildlife is illegal...

LOL.

I dont give two shits about what the FAA wants of me.

I bought heavy during salad days and have things that will swing a 22 inch prop if need be.   A 5 pound drone with a meter between motors doing 0-80mph in about 2-3 seconds is pretty impressive to see/hear.

There is a very real skill set that a person learns when flying beyond LOS regarding signal propagation as well as problem solving for finding your way back home.

The hobby isnt completely dead.   People just stopped posting online.

Squirrels are one thing, pidgeons at the park being driven to the ground because I could out corner them so their only evasive action was to roll and dive was an interesting experience.