My initial experience with the recently released Powervision PowerEgg X has so far been very disappointing, but I’ll start first with some good bits.
Construction.
The quality of the materials used in the manufacture are very good as is the overall build. Nothing about it feels cheap, and the quality of the controller leaves all the Mavic range wanting. It even has waterproof rubber boots around the control sticks and gimbals. It uses WiFi only for connecting the mobile device to the main body when used as a handheld camera. In drone mode the mobile device connects to the controller using a USB connection. The controller appears to connect to the drone using a proprietary link, possibly something similar to Ocusync or Lightbridge as the control commands, telemetry, and 1080p video downlink are all on the same data stream. I’ve yet to look at this on a spectrum analyser and collect some bits to try and identify the protocol.
The AI tracking is very spooky. The camera can move nearly 180 on the horizontal axis and during testing I could walk out of the room, out of view, and on my return it would lock onto me instantly. The second try with this I sent my wife into the room and the camera remained stationary until I reentered whereby it locked onto me again.
The received video on the mobile device, in this case my iPad, was very clear and sharp. Captured video and photos were also very clear and sharp.
Now the not so good stuff.
Powervision offer the Vision+2 app on both iOS and Android. Unfortunately I’m finding the Android APP an unmitigated disaster. I tried the Android APP on a Samsung S6 (listed as one of their tested devices), a Samsung S7, and a Huawei M5Lite8 tablet. Both Samsung devices were not able to display the video downlink making them useless. The Huawei tablet did display the live video feed but the APP would randomly crash or revert back to the home screen, both in camera and drone mode. Certainly something you don’t want to happen while in flight. The whole system would work flawlessly on the iPad but as the mount on the controller is only big enough to hold a standard sized phone, and I don’t have an iPhone, I could not test the flying abilities.
Powervision are rumoured to have exceptional customer support. When I sent an email detailing my issues I received a reply within five minutes. Unfortunately this wasn’t an offer of a solution but to tell me they had opened an account for me on their system and that a ticket had been created. As I sent the email toward the end of the business day on Friday I’m not expecting any further comms until tomorrow at the earliest. However I have been able to add more info/details to the ticket via their support system over this weekend.
Overall I think the release of this product was rushed in order that Powervision could make a big noise at this years CES. In the first three days after delivery they have updated the Android APP twice, both on the Play Store and the direct download on their webpage, but for some reason there are small differences between the two downloads. The Play Store download does not display a map on the map screen whereas the direct download does.
Nidge.