Getting Started in FPV | DJI Avata Review

11 years ago I wanted to get into dreads started building my own I learned to solder flash some esc's program PID settings and a whole bunch of other stuff unfortunately at the time I tried Acro mode and I was like this is way too hard so I just went with auto level and kind of like never looked back let's fast forward introduce potato jet if you're not familiar I highly recommend going and checking out his main Channel and his secondary Channel potato potato jet or Gene started getting into fev which is first person video a year maybe a little longer it might be more than that but he started getting into it that really inspired me to give it a try now fpv gives you a first person view from the Drone and if you throw on some goggles then you're gonna get this really immersive flight experience I didn't know exactly where to start and then DJI released the Avada [Music] here [Music] I was considering building my own fev drone I still want to but to get started DJI just had the total package ready to fly with amazing HD first person video piped into these smaller goggles that they have now and then let's fast forward even to today because I'm a few months behind I've never flown any drone manually I've flown plenty of hours on custom and DJI drones where I can match the sticks and get this like cinematic footage but I've never mastered the manual or Acro flight now what's the difference in auto level and this manual or Acro flight DJI has core of the market of course so let me clear a few things up dji's normal and Sport modes those are both using back in the day if you're building your own drones you would call auto level you push a stick in a direction the Drone moves in that direction you let go of the stick the Drone stops and then levels itself back out and just kind of sits there if you get in trouble you can just let go the sticks and the Drone will sit there being held in place by sensors and GPS and whatnot and it'll just stay there this way of flying drones makes it incredibly accessible and opens a hobby to basically everybody it is awesome I love that drones actually have this capability and they can do all these awesome things and it makes getting amazing pictures and videos super easy dzi has even added obstacle avoidance sensors to make this type of flying even safer and easier let's talk about Acro mode or as DJI calls it manual mode same thing we'll just interchange those words probably it's helpful to understand your typical four channels of input on most drones you're gonna have the throttle and the yaw on one of the sticks and then the pitch and the roll on the other stick in manual mode the Drone will require constant manual controller input to stay in the air and not crash you're required to give throttle input to keep the Drone hovering if you give an input for the Drone to pitch or roll the Drone will continue that movement until you stop giving the input but it will not automatically return to level this form of light is really challenging to say the least so to get started I went to the DJI site I started shopping for the Avada and unfortunately the Drone is sold with a motion controller which I'll get more into it's a non-traditional way and a more intuitive way to fly as DJI claims if you want to get newer goggles the goggles 2 not the goggles V2 as well as the traditional fpv controller the dji's insurance which I definitely recommend for a beginner like myself and you add all that stuff up on DJI site you're looking at two thousand dollars plus tax here's a great tip for you go to eBay eBay was filled with DJI avados also Mini 3 Pros if you watch this video and you're like fpv is not for me the Mini 3 Pro is amazing I did a video on that both you can find on eBay in great condition I figured most people they'd get the Avada and then they wouldn't want to put in the practice hours and they would end up selling and I think my hunch was correct I was able to get the Avada the goggles 2 the fpv controller two extra batteries ND filters and two years of dji's insurance for about 1500 US Dollars which is about 500 off of dji's price my unit also was brand new so it truly was getting exactly what was on DJI site for about 500 off next up practice okay so I went through all that and now I have the Drone now let's learn to fly this thing typically I'm someone who tosses out the instructions and I just learned from my mistakes make some mistakes and figure it out in this rare instance I took most people's advice and I committed to myself to at least five hours on the simulator before I attempted manual flight outside I had no idea what I was getting into after an hour on the Sim it felt hopeless but I committed doing 20 to 30 minutes a day and after about six hours on the simulator I was actually able to fly Outdoors pretty well I'm being serious you have to start on the simulator if you want to fly a manual outside do not attempt just fine manual at first put in those hours and it will save you a lot of money and heartbreak trust me there's no way around the simulator everyone starts somewhere and even if you're an amazing Fe view pilot there was a day where you weren't and learning on a Sim is definitely safer it's just better in every way even with six hours on the Sim I still crash quite a bit and the Avada has held up remarkably well can you see that oh snap it back in hey hey good is new right I know there's probably some pros out there that are like this is not the toughest hey for starting out this is giving me everything I want nothing has broken yet and I've crashed it hard over a dozen times so here's a simulator as well as a first outdoor flight tip start in a wide open place please either the level on the simulator or out in the field somewhere until you can control the Drone without having to think which stick does what that takes a little bit of time like a couple hours or so but then you'll have the muscle memory to move once you get that muscle memory move to the smaller levels on the Sim it's really going to challenge yourself to hone that control so I started on the outdoor ones and then I immediately once I kind of figured everything out I moved to the parking garage I was trying to dial in all of my movements much more when you're ready for outdoors absolutely go to a wide open massive feel this drone can get up to 60 miles per hour and it can get up there quickly and wherever you're flying can feel really small I stupidly started in my backyard and in just a few seconds I was like five houses down and I crashed and I still crash a lot so please listen to what I'm saying couple things to keep in mind about crashing is that the battery does pop out sometimes so don't think like oh it's got GPS it's got a video signal I'll be able to find it keep that in the back of your mind that if you take a hard crash the battery can pop out that's happened to me multiple times thankfully I knew exactly where the Drone was went and got it another thing that can happen is when you crash initially you'll have video feed and you're like oh I'll be able to find it and then it goes into the low power state which cuts the signal strength and the video will drop out on you so the controller might be you know able to communicate with it so you could do the ESC beeping to try to find it that way but a lot of times you won't have video if there's something obstructing between your headset and the Drone because it goes into that low power State when it crashes really anytime that it's not flying it's in that low power state so that is something to keep in mind for the noobs like me when you're out flying this thing is so fun to fly and I definitely am hooked I just can't wait to keep flying charge batteries keep going and eventually to get into other fpv drones here are some more pros and cons so far the Drone is incredibly loud I came from the Mini 3 Pro which was the exact opposite it's incredibly quiet and discreet when flying [Music] it's unbelievably quiet [Music] especially in this day and age with drones people just are not super friendly towards them and this thing is so loud the Avada could not be further on the other end of the spectrum this thing sounds like a high-pitched leaf blower or vacuum especially at high throttle even at 400 feet of altitude I can still hear this drone easily which is definitely not the case with the mavics or the minis I kind of even have to get as far as a thousand feet away sometimes before I can't actually hear it which is just nuts you're likely going to disturb your neighbors and flying in public is going to give you issues another con the fact that the bundle doesn't come with the fpv remote controller and it comes with that motion controller instead is just an absolute crime DJI please make some type of package that includes the controller I understand that you think the motion controller is probably the future and it's gonna be super intuitive and people are gonna be able to use it and whatever most people want to learn on that controller start out with the Avada and unfortunately for DJI they're probably going to want to build their own switch to something else it's so so terrible that you cannot get the motion controller in a package and you have to buy it separate for two hundred dollars another con as I alluded to earlier the cost is just it's really high you can do better there's far cheaper drones out there they're just not going to have like that total package with the crystal clear HD video in the goggles so keep that in mind this Con is totally going to be beating a YouTube dead horse but the SD card slot is just awful to access maybe the way they design things that's the only place that it could go to me it's actually not that big of a deal I was kind of prepared because all the YouTubers were just harping on that thing but SD card slot not convenient now this isn't quite a full-blown con but the video stabilization is just okay I think and you can turn it off and then fly like that and then you can get the gyro data interlaced with the video you can pull it into this third-party program and you can stabilize the footage in there that's great and the results are awesome the workflow just kind of unfortunate that you have to do that it would be amazing if you could just kind of pull it off on your phone get something that looks off awesome go straight to social media which I think most people are doing these days but that is kind of a con now this is not a con to me because I'm just starting out I don't know anything about fpv at all this is the only fpv drone I have ever flown but according to a lot of the experienced fbv Pilots the performance of this versus the price just isn't great you know if you're buying a six or seven hundred dollar fpv drone you can probably do a lot better but this drone you don't have to worry about balancing batteries or any of that kind of stuff it's all just in the package it does an amazing job it's very easy to hook everything up the batteries you just plug them in charge them you put them in the Drone the Drone lets you know hey the battery is getting low we need to Auto Land I know there are solutions outside of DJI but DJI just makes it so easy the Drone also has a one axis gimbal which is excellent for beginners like myself so when you're starting out if you really don't want to go too too fast which I alluded to like the 60 miles an hour then keep that gimbal just looking dead forward and that does a good job because as you pitch forward to go you'll start looking down and you'll kind of auto correct and slow down by pitching back and the Drone will just slow down if you raise that camera up let's say 15 20 30 degrees you can get going fast incredibly quickly if you level the video feed with the Horizon you're going to be shooting forward like a rocket I like that it has the gimbal so as I get better I can increase the angle at which the camera is looking and that's been very helpful for me I know you could manually do it but also being able to do it on the Fly is great as well one other negative and I understand this is super nitpicky because what DJI is trying to do is give you the fpv view and also like GoPro footage because on a traditional fpv drone what you're going to have is your video feed and then you'd strap a GoPro on it as well and DJI is doing that both through one camera so this saves weight and all kinds of stuff but one of the drawbacks is that that camera switches ISO very quickly because it would be very dangerous for you to fly in something that's dark and the camera to like slowly give you maybe that like cinematic reveal you want to see what's in the dark as quickly as possible so if you're going from like indoors or Outdoors you need to be able to see so that you don't crash that's just kind of a con on the actual outputted video that you want to look at later I mean that is so nitpicky but I just thought I would mention it now let's talk goggles my face doesn't work well with the goggles for I mean I get a ton of light leak maybe I have a massive nose maybe my face is just weird I'm waiting for some type of third-party foam that's going to go around it that'll help seal that up but I just get tons of light leak I do like that the goggles have adjustments for your eye so the goggles can be adjusted from negative eight all the way to plus two like if you have glasses or something like that and also you can adjust the spread the distance which is very nice so spend some time really to dial those in because it'll help a lot make sure that you don't have any blurry areas on the screen use those adjustments they're very handy they work very well so I like the customizability of those two lenses I will also warn that those lenses will work in reverse and it will focus the sun on those screens and burn them out kind of like a magnifying glass on leaves or an ant or something like that so they have the cover that goes on those goggles and just whenever you're outside not using the goggles get in the habit of putting that cover on your future self will definitely thank you I've had some trouble figuring out the video range sometimes it seems to work incredibly well and I can go a thousand feet away and it's still Rock Solid HD looks great other times I'm like super close by and I would just get a drop out that's not super common and again it's probably my fault for not understanding this but I had a pretty close call in Hawaii actually was flying in a wide open Mountainside and I'm just kind of like zooming around and I just lost video feed now I thought I recovered perfectly because when I got video feedback it was returning to home and everything when I got home and analyzed the footage I lost that video feed it does not automatically go into return to home unless you lose the controller so you should keep that finger on the pause button because once you put it in pause it'll go into like the normal mode it'll self-correct it'll just hover there it's awesome but when I watch that video feed the Drone actually slammed into the ground balanced off and then I hit return to home and it came back home I was close to maybe losing it I probably would have been able to find it but definitely learn from me fly when you're starting out with your finger on that pause button in case you lose that video feed because if you lose video you're done for in manual mode you're just totally done for so hit the pause the Drone will hover and it'll just stay level sit there until you give it its next command and then you can hit return to home and it'll come back now if you lose the actual controller between the Drone it should automatically go into return to home but just letting you know so along those same lines a big tip definitely for beginners maybe not for the experienced people but if you have multiple batteries especially and you're in a new spot put the Drone in normal mode or sport mode where it's not gonna fall out of the sky if you lose that video feed go around your new area as far as you think you would go just to test the video just to say hey are there any spots where I might lose this don't just start flying like I did that was such a dumb thing to do picture quality is just stellar and the goggles have head tracking which is cool but I don't use it so like if you look to the right the Drone could look to the right if you look down the Drone could look down it's cool seems a little gimmicky maybe I don't know there might be people out there that hate on that comment that absolutely love it in manual mode I just like to fly manual mode I can't even think about head tracking or anything like that and I think it only works with the motion controller if they use the motion controller you could be flying around you could be kind of looking around seems kind of cool might be a little bit of a gimmick but they have that built in also the touch controls on the goggles super intuitive and work very well it also has a built-in recording with an SD card slot you can record your feed whatever you're seeing in the goggles also can be recorded as well I do wish the battery for the goggles was a little bit bigger it seems that I can get like a few flights out of it and then I need to charge it it makes sense because it's like the fly more combo can accommodate three or four batteries on the charger I'm thinking of buying an additional battery for the goggles just so that if one gets low I can just switch it out at the end of the day I do love this thing I'm a first time fev pilot the Avada has fulfilled basically all of my expectations and has kind of started me on the Journey of fpv I'm excited to keep flying and just to get better and eventually try building my own fpv drone as well and installing their air 3 unit so I can keep my goggles and keep my controller one thing to keep in mind is remote ID currently I haven't upgraded my firmware yet on the Avada but if I do then essentially the Avada is going to be required to have cell service whenever and wherever you're flying which is a big bummer so you like plug your phone into the goggles there's nothing we can do about it at this point but I figured I would just let you know I hope this video was helpful if you're thinking of getting into fpv give it time be patient practice practice practice on the simulator and have just a ton of fun thanks so much for watching break it yourself as always don't forget to thumbs me up and we will see you next time [Music]

Channel: Break It Yourself

Views: 25,707

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Id: xQhJP4YW3qc

Length: 17min 58sec (1078 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 25 2023