How much flight time are you getting on one battery. The spec is 40-45 minutes but we all know time to start and back to base is a couple of minutes easy. Especially with corridor missions where your start and end points are all the way at the end of the line and flying from a central location. Is a 30 minute mission feasible?
It’s really been dependent on the weather and wind. The first couple maps I flew were 25-30 minute maps and I landed with about 35% battery left. This was a calm day around 40 degrees F. The other day I flew it was cold and probably a 15mph wind at 300 feet and this flight was barely 25 min before I had to land. The battery is much better than my P4P V2.0 but not 45 min by any means. 40-45 min is probably hovering 5 feet off the ground from take off to low battery landing. I’m really happy with the flight times so far. I can take the drone and 6 batteries in the case and it’s a still tiny.
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Thank you for this. It’s pretty standard that actual flight time is around 70% of what they claim because 1) I do not believe they calculate that using constant loaded flight and 2) they more than likely run the battery below safe and acceptable limits for everyday work. I like to touch down at no lower than 20%. I suspect on our standard flight condition I can expect 28-32 minutes but when I planned two different missions at 27 minutes it reports 2 batteries.
I doubt that DroneDeploy has their metrics optimized and would really prefer to not have to change batteries in the middle of this mission in particular so I guess I need to do a little more optimization.
I have not flown this drone yet and have a big contract with the County coming up in a couple of weeks so I better get to testing. Unfortunately after reading all of DD’s available information it may be that I cannot use them for flight as there is no room for beta testing. I’ve got a support ticket in so hopefully I can get some better insight soon.
I appreciate all the detail you provided!
I never really paid much attention to what the number of batteries was required for a flight. Most of the time it says at least 2 and it may only be a 20 minute flight. I pay more attention to the flight times and what my environment is when flying, for example wind speeds and ambient temperature.
I have noticed and I learned after research that you don’t have any level meters for controller or HD on the top when using the M3E and Pro controller. This was touched on on the drone deploy site but I always liked seeing what my signal strength was for the controller and the live stream during my flights.
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Concur on a rut of assume about 70-75% battery vs. theoretical max, then factor in wx, type of missions (especially hovering for panos on windy days), distance, reserves, and min battery at landing. Have found on some missions DD to be conservative and able to complete a mission on single battery when it said it needed 2. Would rather DD error on side of caution vs being caught off guard. Concur with the testing of new device (and any SW/app updates) before doing actual project, easier to catch surprises before going to client site.
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Will the free version of DD support this ac?
That’s a good question! I’m actually headed to pick it up in about an hour.