Drone penetrates Virgin's shapely space arse US UAV outfit 3D Robotics is about to unleash its much-anticipated Solo, and has prompted a bit a of a geekgasm with a vid showing the "the world's smartest drone" penetrating Virgin's shapely space arse. Yes indeed, that's the Virgin Galactic terminal/hangar at Spaceport America, a structure we described as "a huge pair of …
Having just DIY'd a quadcopter of roughly the same size, here are some rough maths...
Frame kit: $100
Motors: $120
Battery: $30
Flight controller (Naze 32): $40
Camera gimbal: $120
Props: $20
ESCs: $100
Radio transmitter, reciever, and GoPro not included... a DIY kit comes in at around $500'ish, with shipping, etc. So, $1000 for an almost ready to fly kit, really is not that bad... and the flight controller in my kit is not nearly as sophisticated (or expensive) as the pixhawk. The naze 32 is more than enough for simply flying a go-pro-gimbal around. If you want autonomous mapping, yeah, the pixhawk is great... but also $200. Apples to apples, you save about $350 building it yourself.
TL;DR, 3DR drone is good deal if you don't like building these things yourself.
Ha ha.. I was thinking of taking video / panorama pics outside and getting them professionally printed as the wedding gift. Purchased wedding gifts have been banned by the bride, she'd rather we spent the money on enjoying ourselves at the wedding, ie. getting drunk, which is quite a refreshing idea.
From my far from expert opinion there is not much difference in tech. The solo seems to have a slight edge mostly in terms of programming and software, simply by being of a newer design and using the latest Pixhawk. I do however also have some reservations about some of the (over)promised things in the kickstarter like LiDAR an a ballistic parachute system. Both of which seem to me like enormous weight penalties with a payback for only some people.
It's probably possible to mount the gopro in its watertight housing. Other than that it's not usual to mount it in some sort of dome. It is VERY hard and VERY expensive to make a dome or something that is clear enough not to impact video quality, doesn't give a lot of extra reflections and flare, etc.
The hangar looks like one of Zahar Hadid's designs she has a penchant for organic looking architecture such as the Qatar Football stadium (http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/28/zaha-hadid-stadiums-vagina) but apparently Foster& Partners built it so they must have similar interests.
http://www.flyelectric.com/ans.kv.html
Quote ~ "KV as we use it refers to the rpm constant of a motor - it is the number of revolutions per minute that the motor will turn when 1V (one Volt) is applied with no load attached to the motor. In summary, we call it revs per volt - but do not think you will obtain those revs when you attach a propeller; obviously the revs will be reduced because of the load.
I have seen this aspect of a motor referred to as KV and Kv and kv - just be sure not confuse it with kV which stands for a kilo-volt."
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