Drone has advanced features, nice price

I’ve wanted to get a personal drone for several years but the ones that had the features I wanted were beyond my budget. Then I discovered the EC 20 drone from UNTEI. 

This is a drone made for adults. It’s not a toy for the kids to play with a smash up. It comes with a high-resolution 4K camera and, a controlling app and GPS auto return home capability. The brushless motors are high quality and the battery delivers more than 40 minutes of flight time. 

The drone is east to pair with the manual remote. But for the advanced features you’ll want to get the WOWI FLY app which is available for free in the iOS and Android app stores. 

When the app is linked to the drone, you phone’s screen presents a view from the drone’s camera. That makes it easy to find your target for shooting video or taking still photos.

The remote has multiple control buttons including one-key launch, an emergency landing button, camera controls, and auto return. 

The WOWI app delivers more advanced options. For example, you can tell the drone to fly a circle pattern above your head or fly a mapped route by entering waypoints on your phone screen. You can also tell the drone to follow you from behind.

The EC 20 comes with a custom carrying case, a 256GB memory card and two rechargeable batteries. This is everything that I wanted in a drone that’s available on Amazon for less than $250.

Check out my video below to see how much fun I had learning to be a drone pilot.

By: Ric Manning On 6/06/2022

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What drone pilots need to know before takeoff

Gizmo Editor Review  

Thinking about buying a drone? Before you hand over your credit card, first check out The Complete Guide to Drones, a new book by drone expert Adam Juniper.

Far from a dry textbook on quadcopter aerodynamics, Juniper’s guide is an easily accessible introduction to everything a drone pilot needs to know before their first flight or if they want to expand their knowledge.

The opening chapter covers drone basics, from their history to the current range of models for hobbyists and anyone who thinks a drone might be useful in their business.

Do you understand pitch, roll and yaw? Juniper explains the technical functions and concepts with bite-sized descriptions and large color photos and illustrations. I particularly like the sections that explain autopilot and GPS systems work together on more advanced drones and how to choose and use the best camera for your purposes.

One section of the book that could have been larger is the one that drones and the law. Juniper says drone pilots “must not fly commercially,” but the rules in the US are changing rapidly and entrepreneurs are beginning to get permits for business applications.

And that’s just one more indication of how fast the world of personal unmanned aircraft is expanding - and one more reason why anyone who thinking about acquiring and launching one should read this book.

The Complete Guide to Drones is published Wellfleet Press. It seems for   about $14 on Amazon.

By: Ric Manning On 5/31/2016

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Drone Pilot's Handbook gets you up and hovering

I don’t yet own a drone, but I will. And when I do, I’ll be a better pilot because I will have read The Drone Pilot’s Handbook.

Adam Juniper’s book it not an aircraft flight manual. It’s more of an lightweight introduction to the one of America’s fastest-growing hobbies. In simple language, it explains how drones work and how us earthbound pilots can keep them aloft and out of trouble.

The book covers the basics from Ground School (telemetry, line of sight and controllers) and Piloting Skills (battery care, pre-flight prep) to Missions (photography, racing) and Safety (wind, birds and airspace restrictions).

Juniper dispenses with each topic in just a few paragraphs and there are sections where I would have welcomed a little more details, especially on the state of current rules covering drone flights. But the handbook’s task is to get novice drone pilots up and hovering and it succeeds nicely.

The Drone Pilot’s Handbook, published by Ilex, is scheduled to be released May 5 with a list price of $12.99. Pre-orders are being accepted at Amazon.

By: Ric Manning On 4/15/2016

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This drone shoots blockbusters

Most consumer drones come with a built-in camera or a harness to mount a Go Pro or similar camera. But if you’re a director of a big-budget Hollywood movie, you have other choices for difficult overhead shots.

One example is the Shotover U1 drone, billed by its creator as the world’s first professional grade unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for the broadcast, motion picture, law enforcement and industrial survey markets.

The Shooter was on display this week at the HAI Heli Expo trade show in Louisville, KY, where it shared the spotlight with helicopter manufacturers and their support services.

The U1 is designed to carry cinema quality cameras and lenses made by Sony, Canon and other companies. When it begins shipping early this year, the U1 is expected to catch the attention of filmmakers who have already used Shotover’s gyro-stabilized camera systems on movies such as Jurassic World and Spectre. Shotover will also be used by the BBC for filming telephoto 4K footage of wolves, bears and caribou in Canada’s remote Northwest Territories for a six-part wildlife documentary series scheduled to air in 2016.

You can get a closer look at he UAV - and put in a pre-order - at the Shotover website.    

By: Ric Manning On 3/04/2016

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What's the best drone for GoPro video?

Yesterday NASA released video footage shot by two astronauts who brought along GoPro cameras when they made some repairs on the International Space Station. The beautiful images show what that remarkable camera is capable of when it gets some serious elevation.

Getting your GoPro into space is probably not going to happen but mounting it on a drone is well within reach.

"With the use of the high quality GoPro cameras, it’s possible to take incredible aerial videography and photography with a quality quadcopter," says Jesse Young, who writes the Drone Guru blog.

Jesse has tested and profiled many unmanned flying vehicles and he's picked four that are especially well-suited to GoPro photography.

A special page on the Drone Guru blog lists the features of the 3DR IRIS, Parrot AR.Drone 2.0, DJI Phantom 2 Blade and 350 QX3 RTF. Each profile also has YouTube videos of footage taken with GoPro cameras mounted on those vehicles.

By: Ric Manning On 4/14/2015

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DroneGuru has news and tips on drones and quads

After seeing a slew of drones at CES in January, I started researching personal drones, looking for one that would be right for me. And what a chore that was. The Web is crammed with drone news, reviews and promotional information. What I needed was an unbiased source that could help me sort out information that was often confusing and conflicting.

That's when I found DroneGuru. It's a blog that offers a handy collection of drone reviews, news reports and tips for drone pilots.

I found one article that ranks the best drones for mounting a GoPro camera. Other stories offer advice for aerial photography and extending a quadcopter's flight time.

The blog's News section keeps track of commercial drones and how they are being used in agriculture and law enforcement and when we might expect to get a package or a pizza delivered by a drone.

I haven't yet selected my first drone, but I'll let you know when to start looking up.

By: Ric Manning On 3/21/2015

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Why you might want a personal drone

When new technologies burst into our lives, it often takes a while for us to figure out how they fit in. Many skeptics thought they would never want a personal computer or a mobile phone. Now we can’t get along without them.

We may be heading down the same road with drones. Not the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that the military uses but the ones you may have seen buzzing around your neighborhood. 

As civilian drones get smaller, cheaper and easier to fly, they’re finding a niche in homes and businesses.

Quadcopters, the newest versions of personal UAVs, have four battery-powered rotors that make them as easy to operate as a radio-controlled toy car. A starter drone like the Hubsan X4 has a low-resolution camera and costs about $50. The JJRC-H9C (about $120) can shoot high-definition video and the Parrot AR Drone 2.0 (about $350) can stream live video and be controlled using a smartphone or tablet.

Current regulations say UAVs can't be flown higher than 400 feet and must stay away from airports and aircraft. But drones keep straying into trouble. Last month a man in Washington, DC, crash landed his drone on the grounds of the White House. And organizers of big events like this year’s Super Bowl declared them No Drone Zones.

In the US, drones can’t be legally used for commercial purposes until the Federal Aviation Administration adopts a broad set of regulations. Those are expected to be released later this year. 
Meanwhile UAVs are finding lots of work to do outside the US. In Australia, drones watch for sharks offshore at the popular Bondi beach. And a beach resort in Italy says it will use drones to assist lifeguards and quickly deliver life jackets to swimmers in trouble.

In some farm areas, drones are doing fly-over crop inspections and checking on livestock grazing in remote pastures. A drone with a thermal sensor can take a cow’s temperature from the air. Drones deliver small batches of medicine to remote communities in the North Sea and transport tuberculosis test samples in Papua New Guinea.

A Drones for Good competition produced proposals that would use UAVs to enter damaged buildings, speed up the delivery of organs for transplant, get first aid items to hikers, skiers or climbers and drop seed pods to plant trees in deforested areas. 

Back in the US, Amazon is testing drones for delivering packages and news organizations are getting special permission to deploy drones in place of expensive helicopters to photograph fires, traffic accidents and other events. 

Style maven Martha Stewart is among the many fans of UAVs. She used a drone to shoot bird's-eye photos of her 153-acre farm in New York. In a column she wrote for Time magazine, she said the drone's view of her fields and gardens helped her plan and evaluate her landscaping designs. 

"Drones can be useful tools," she wrote, "and I am all about useful tools."

By: Ric Manning On 3/03/2015

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