Little Neo-buzzy thing

General Drone Discussion
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Progress to report; Li’l Buzzy flies! I got stuck in an activation loop yesterday and didn’t get very far with her, but had a go today with a resuscitated iPhone 11, and she seems fine on the vlogging buttons; haven’t checked out the vids yet but she flew aound the living room happily enough for about 10 minutes until she gotvherself cornered and auto-lande, but we have a functioning bird!

The weather is overcast but otherwise good and the rec for some proper test-flying beckons, but not, sadly, today unless things improve over the next few hours. I’ve done something, I wot not what, to my knee and am hobbling about like one of those Chinese robots that try to walk but have to bend their knees so that it looks as if they’ve shat themselves. I think this might be payback for the heavy parcel I pushed upstairs for my neighbour Irini yesterday; no good turn ever goes unpunished! I was fine yesterday evening, even went up the pub, but my increasingly decrepit mainframe components are reminding me of my age today! So, rest up & see what’s on tv; lucky I don’t need any immediate shopping! It’s a sobering reminder of how little would be needed to permanently immobilise me, or at least put me on in a chair…

Next task is to get her over the park and test-fly the buttons, then to have a go at phone-control. Happy to use the old iP 11 as her dedicated phone for now! But it night take a littke while if I can’t do it in the light winds of the next few days, and I obviously need to mend my wobbly knee as a priority. Walking in it is painful now just and very tiring, and I will have to do an Aldi’s tomorrow and keep a close eye on it.

Getting old is such fun, isn’t it…

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No it’s a pain in the arse, or in my case pain in the big toe. Tomorrow see the second week of gout and it’s getting a tad tedious.

Anyhow, I didn’t post to share my woes with you but all this talk of finding your Flyer ID stickers has me confused. Isn’t it your Operator ID that need to be stuck on your drone and not your Flyer ID? As explained elsewhere your Flyer ID is your ‘driving licence’, your Operator ID is the ‘number plate’.

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Yep, he’s getting old! :smiley:

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And that was a senior moment! Read what I meant, not what I wrote…

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My Operator numbers have arrived and been stuck on to the starboard side of the fuselage, so, as long as the rain holds off, test-flying this evening! Exciting stuff, what?

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Took Li’l Buzzy over that park yesterday evening, and flew all the presets before the battery ran low, no problems, all good. Looking at the forecasts, she’s grounded for the next week or so though, and I still haven’t flown her ‘virtual stick’ off the phone.

I know this is a less-than-ideal way to fly, and that I would be much better off using the RC-3 controller from the Lito. but that misses the point; the thinking behind her purchase; a drone that can live in my jacket pocket and be flown Martini-style, any time any place any where, without using a controller and with no more than what I have in my pockets. No point in having her, otherwise, the Lito is better at everything but needs a bag of bits to accompany it, not always convenient (don’t forget I rely on public transport. In a perfect world where my ex-wife hadn’t ruined me all my drone stuff would live in a bag in a van).

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I’ve now done a bit of ‘virtual stick’ off the phone indoors, and proved the principle, as well as the general roubustness of the drone using walls and doors… It works, but I see why people don’t like it, it’s very crude. Still, my original idea, a drone that lives in my jacket pocket and can be put up with the phone without any pre-planning or need to carry rc and the rest of the kit about, is viable. Next stage, of course, is to pair drone and rc, but this will mostly be to confirm that that can be done, because in practice any situation in which I have the rc with me will by default mean that I have the Lito with me, and the Lito is a much better bird in every respect. I might conceivably use Neo/rc mode if I wanted to get in very close to architectural detail, but I can do that pretty well with the Lito and 3x zoom in practice.

The main drawback with virtual stick phone control is the lack of graduated control. You can go up, down, turn, forwards, backwards, sideways, even compound movements with both sticks, but only at full speed, which is not always what you want! Well, Johnstermeladdo, it isn’t a perfect world, now, is it, suckitupbuttercup, is is what it is. A degree of slow control can be impossed by ‘blipping’ the virtual sticks, but that’s about the best the system can do! The drone will hold station pretty well indoors on ATTI, in normal indoor daylight, so it’s not the same as a cheapie where you are contantly overcorrecting drift until you crash, you can fly it with phone control, you just have to think about what you’re doing and it’s less intuitive and doesn’t ‘flow’ like with an rc. Am I happy I bought a Neo? Yes. Do I think it was worth the money? Yes, pretty much. Do I want a Neo 2? Probably not, this one ticks as many of my boxes as is reasonable to ask for £120. Do I want whatever the next wonderdrone Deej bring out is going to be, not FPV because I’m not particularly into that*? Shut up and take my money, except I haven’t got any…

*Nothing wrong with FPV/whoop, just not my thang…

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Crop by any other name

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Well, yes, did you expect motor-driven zoom glass within 250g! But, for closing in on architectural detail or bringing distance vistas up a bit, it works, and the Lito’s bigger sensor brings pixelisation down to a tolerable level. It might be that in the future gas-filled aspheric lenses or lens caps might give us true optical zoom projected on to the sensor in focus, but probably not in my lifetime and almost certainly not within my budget! I’d be fairly confident the military already have this, but not on sub-250g birds! It is what it is and we do our best…

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My understanding (for what it’s worth) is that graduated control is achieved by keeping your finger on the phone “joystick”, and sliding it to the required position, rather than lifting and tapping.
Not so easy to do when trying to keep the Neo visible, stable, and safe, I admit.

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No, I’ve tried that, it’s all or nothing, full speed as soon as your finger is on the virtual stick at whatever position and sliding it won’t slow you down or speed you up. Crude and basic, but useable. ‘Blipping’, high-frequency tapping on the virtual stick, will, in combination with the drone’s momentum and inertia, provide a measure of finesse, but it is nothing like as good or intuitive as proper graduated physical stick control. Like I said, it is what it is, and one has to live with it, not that this will prevent me trying, over time, to develop techniques to compensate for it!

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Did some more Li’l Buzzy flying this evening trying things out and I found out 2 things, one good one not so good. First, let’s get the bad news out of the way; this thing is shit in even a very light wind. It was warning me to fly lower in what I reckoned was about a 15moh wind at 100’, and was all over the place at even 60’, nothing like the ‘level 4’ 19mph Beaufort 4 it is rated at! I will have to watch this!, The better news, well it won’t be news ot most of you here, is that if you put the phone screen into landscape mode, you get a) much more head-up information and b) much better and even graduated virtual sticks. Still not as good as an actual controller, but much, much less bad than I was complaining about 3 days ago! Plus the map/compass, height/distance info, and a load of other stuff I was wondering about. This is probably in the manual, but not that I’ve noticed so not in any obvious way, more like the typical Deej ‘bury it in the small print’ or allude/suggest rather than actually inform! This is of course all part of the fun of dealing with the World’s biggest drone manufacturer, finding things out is more akin to Easter Eggs than to proper manual information, but it’s all come good in the end!

Li’l Buzzy is not quite as hard to see in the sky as I’d feared, either, small, certainly, but the prop guards are fairly bulky from most angles and make a more positively identifiable silhouette than the M4K or Lito. Onwards and Upwards, or at least, Diagonally and Widdershins! More indoor flying to develop finesse, but not tonight, everything’s being charged!

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That’s the reason I sent my Neo 1 back to Amazon and spent out on a Neo 2, which is a lot more stable in wind, but still not as good as the Lito in gusty stuff.
That and the camera quality which is far better.
I found flying by mobile phone far too clunky and eventually sprang to an RC-N3 controller.

Cheers :slight_smile:

Hugh

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I’ve found the phone control is great for the autonomous modes and having a bit more control over it while using them but I’m so glad I bought it with the RCN3 for doing anything more than that.

I’ve got a Neo 2 though so I’m unsure if there are any differences in how they behave with the phone though.

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I have a RC-N3, used with my Lito 1, which would clearly be a superior tool to use with the Neo, but that misses the entire point of me having a Neo. This is to have a drone that can live in my jacket pocket and be flown from the phone that is also in my jacket pocket and is availavle for use at any time. The Lito is great, but needs to have with it a controller, and (for my purposes) spare batteries, landing pad, and various other bits & bobs; too much for my jacket pocket and needs a bag. I don’t have a car or that would serve the function of a bag!

If I want to fly a specific mission, the Lito/stuff/bag/public transport setup is fine. and I don’t need the Neo for that. The Neo is for ad hoc ‘oo, that’d look good from 150’ video/photo’ on the fly (sorry) stuff when I’m out and about in general rather than specifically drone-flying, so it needs to be flown from just the phone. Up, get the (reasonably adequate quality, 4K) shot, down.

Now, I accept that this is nor really what Deej had in mind when they designed it; it is for vlogging, which I have very little interest in, and an itroduction to fpv whoops, which I am also not interested in. But it is capable of this role, and indoor flying, and is probably better suited to flying in wooded environments because of the propguards, and therefore I will be using it in this way. A little practice in technique and control finesse, and so long as I avoid anything that even thinks it looks like wind*, it should be fine!

It also has a bit of wobble room for attaching things and keeping within weight limits, particularly lighting, which may mean it is better than the Lito for night/low light flying, but tgat would be a bonus, not the reason I bought it!

*May as well put it away until about next June, then…

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Nooo! Don’t put it away, I’m enjoying reading about your Neo exploits and am so tempted but I can prevaricate for England so the Neo 4 will be out by the time I make my mind up and get one. Keep your exploits coming please.

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I have the Neo 2 and love it. Such a fun drone to learn on, race around and get great photos and videos on. I know this thread is about the original Neo, but go on, you know you want one! :wink:

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@Inca , sorry if you have seen them before, but the below are two videos from my Neo 2. The first is me messing around learning how to navigate through small areas. The second is in Cornwall around a copper mine. It is such a multi-use drone, it really is.

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Brilliant @WoolySheep, thanks for posting. I’ve a Mini 4 that I’ve had for 2-3 weeks but the Neo seems so less intimidating to fly and a lot more durable. With the Mini 4 I’m worried about crashing it, I know it’s going to happen one day but hopefully not too soon, and I’ve yet to get full confidence in the electronics. This little thing however is just asking to be thrown about.

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Just spend twenty minutes at a nice open area and you’ll soon be convinced the Mini 4 is a dream to fly and wonder why you were ever nervous. Damn thing almost flies itself and there’s plenty of material on Youtube explaining the settings to make the controls more manageable for your own personal style of how you want to fly it.

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