Announced with technical characteristics, the Xiaomi mi drone is a competitor to the DJI Phantom 3.
The cardboard of the Xiaomi mi drone is relatively flat, which may seem surprising for a drone of this format. This can be explained by seeing the retractable landing gear which manually unfolds. It is therefore not intended to rise automatically when you fly, but rather for easy storage. Then you will notice the slightly different format compared to a DJI drone that forms a perfect X.
Then you find all the accessories to load the Xiaomi mi drone, notably with its charger of 1.5A and a power of 46.4W. It will recharge the 4S 5100mAh HighVoltage 17.4V battery. This battery weighs 442 grams and offers up to 27 minutes of flight according to Xiaomi.
The propellers are in the 1046 format, which means they have a length of 10 “and a pitch of 4.6”. They are called self-locking, for quick fixing by screwing them on each of the motors. The screw threads are not linked to the propellers, it can be tedious to fix these … To protect them we find protections of orange propellers to fix with the provided screws. For this, a screwdriver is included, but you will not be able to count on it for very long in view of its fragile design.
The camera was delivered to us separately, which confirms that the Mi drone remains the same in the version 1080p and 4K. Only the version of the camera changes according to your choice. The camera can be fixed easily under the drone by removing a small hatch, and by coming to the clip. We have not recorded any images yet, but the features look correct: Sony sensor of 12.4Mpx, lens with field of view of 104 ° and a video recording rate of 20Mbps. In version 4K, which we have not received yet, the field of view will be limited to 94 °, but it will have a recording rate of 65Mbps.
The remote control has five buttons, a smartphone holder and two USB ports. It is lit by the power button, pressing briefly and then pressing down. The diode will remain red until the drone and the remote control are connected. A take-off and landing button is available to perform these actions automatically. It will also remain red as long as you have not established the connection between the drone and the smartphone application. The orange button on the top of the remote control allows you to activate the RTH mode. Simply moving this button will automatically return your Mi Drone to its take-off point. Two adjustable buttons, A and B, are present at the rear of the radio control. The USB port allows you to connect your radio to your smartphone, and the microUSB port recharges the battery. The remote control has an internal battery that is recharged using the supplied USB cable on a 2A power supply.
To fix a smartphone, it is enough to extract the support integrated to the radio control, and to place it between the two fixations. This system is well thought out and will save you even more space during transport. Unfortunately you will not be able to fix a tablet since the distance is 8cm max … The two antennas will therefore be oriented downwards since the support smartphone does not allow to leave them up.
Our first flight test
We downloaded the latest version of the application, unfortunately in Chinese, to carry out our first tests. On Android, it is necessary to download the APK from the QRcode available in the manual. Once it is installed, registration to an account Mi is mandatory. Then it will be necessary to activate the sharing of your connection via USB, in order to update the radio control. For the time being, we have remained there since the application has stopped working at each of the attempts we have made. And yes, despite our many attempts on different media (tablet or smartphone) the application never managed to work properly … Xiaomi is working on it? We hope…
Do not worry, we still managed to steal the Xiaomi Mi Drone by downloading an English version of the application and taking advantage of the short time before the application closes … To start the engines it is imperative that the automatic take-off light changes to white. Once this is the case, then you press this button twice, once short, then a second long. The Mi drone then takes off on its own. Once in flight, the behavior is rather surprising with unwanted altitude losses when the drone is within two meters of the ground. This is certainly due to the analysis of the two sonars present under the drone probably disturbed by the tall grass. Once you reach altitude then the drone behaves normally.
We hope to see a stable version of the application in English soon to fully enjoy all the features of the Xiaomi Mi Drone!
Sure the drone is priced at $460 USD for the 4K version and $380 for the 1080P version. This may be a result of most drone manufacturers already making thin margins on most products to date.
When comparing the Xiaomi Mi drone against offerings by DJI. The lowest end Xiaomi Mi drone that will sell for $380 is comparable in many ways to the DJI Phantom 3 Standard that currently retails for $499.
Conclusion
The Mi Drone has potential that unfortunately can not yet be exploited because of its smartphone application which is not stable. We look forward to the upcoming updates and we will track the price evolution based on Xiaomi ads.
The post Xiaomi mi drone first flight test appeared first on Drone Inner.
No comments:
Post a Comment