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We had a brief outage on one of our 69 kV transmission lines last week, and had a heck of a time finding the cause. It turned out to be a flashover on a failed insulator, and it had to be located on foot using binoculars because the affected pole is located in sugar sand where a line truck can't go. Repairing it was a challenge, as well, since we had to rent a tracked bulldozer to drag the line truck to the structure and back again. Since we have a number of poles located where trucks can't easily get to them, we have no practical way to inspect these lines to locate potential failures until they actually occur.
I'd like to buy a quad copter with good usable range, equipped with a video camera of decent quality and resolution. Ideally, the camera would allow real time viewing from the controller, or a GPS recording of position so that a problem can be located later after the survey is done. I think I can sell the boss on something in the $1000 - $2000 range, if such a beast exists. I know there are enthusiasts here - any suggestions for a solution?
Thanks! 
Will Rogers never met me.
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Parrot makes drones. I think they're in the price range you mentioned.
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.-John Q. Adams
You must accept one of two basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not alone in the universe. And either way, the implications are staggering.-Wernher von Braun
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.-Albert Einstein
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No matter what kind of aircraft you use, you may want to take a look at a FPV system.[^].
Flying in First Person View actually is fun and personally I would not use a quadcopter. Instead I would go with a single main rotor and a tail rotor, just as Igor Sikorsky meant it to be. 
A T-Rex450[^] is relatively inexpensive, parts are easily available and the quality is quite good. There are only few plastic parts. The chassis is mostly made of carbon fiber and the mechanical parts like the rotor head are made of aluminium alloy.
Take a look at this video[^] of a T-Rex 550 with FPV.
Edit: In any case, how are your flying skills?
Edit^2: You wanted to inspect power lines?[^]
Esit^3: Here is a recent picture of my T-Rex 450.[^]. I had to mount the receiver/flybarless unit on the side to have access to it for setup and adjustments. Inside the chassis there would now be some room for the FPV and telemetry transmitter...
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
modified 13-Jan-15 19:48pm.
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Looks great, but how much extra is the camera system? Or is that included?
Will Rogers never met me.
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I must admit, I don't know. There are all kinds of modular devices that you can combine and I have not yet put together a system for any purpose. For details you should look up a good store anyway and get some advice and perhaps a good price on what you need.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
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We forgot something very importatnt!
You may need a transmitter and a receiver before you can fly anything at all. I use a spectrum DX8[^] together with a AR7200BX flybarless receiver and stabilisation [^]. There are cheaper options and also other manufacturers, but you will need a decent range and reliability.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
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Undoubtedly choppers have a higher cool factor than Quads (or multi-copters) do.
However, they're more difficult to control and have a higher mechanical complexity and repair cost.
Out of curiosity, what benefit do you see in using a chopper rather than a multi-copter?
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enhzflep wrote: Undoubtedly choppers have a higher cool factor than Quads (or multi-copters) do.
True
enhzflep wrote: However, they're more difficult to control and have a higher mechanical
complexity and repair cost
Not so true.
Light crashes usually cost you a main shaft and the feathering shaft. For a 450 class hlicopter that would be about 10 bucks. Next in line are the gears, which is a good thing. The motors don#t like to be stopped abruptly or being banged around. Whatever I did, I have not yet killed a motor yet. The exposed motors of a quadcopter tend to suffer more in a crash, as I hear.
Harder to fly is a bit subjective. I don't see much of a difference, actually. It does not matter much wether I tilt the swashplate to tilt the rotor plane or wether I simply tilt the entire quadcopter.
One big difference I see is that it is harder to recognize the current attitude of a quadcopter due to it's symmetrical shape. And you know how misinterpreting what you see of your copter, followed by a wrong command, will end.
The mechanical complexity may be higher, but once properly set up it makes the copter more reliable. Last summer I had 150 flights without a single incident. Then I lost one of the swashplate servos in mid flight. The helicopter went into a steep dive, but I was able to compensate, get it into a stable hover, carefully get it back and (hardest of all with a dead servo) manage an acceptable landing.
That worked because I was flying and not some microcontroller. I doubt that many quadcopters can recover from the loss of, let's say, a motor. And the less skill the pilot needs, the less the pilot can do in case of a failure, which is only a question of time.
Last, I fly for fun. It's interesting because it's hard and simply pushing a button 'Fly' would be boring.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
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 Thanks for your thoughts.
I think that your use of the word subjective was perfect. Without exposure to a range of experiences, it can be easy to mis-label something as fact.
It sure sounds like you've been having fun with your Trex. I've got a Blade MSR and a Blade SR sitting around somewhere, also have flown a mates Blade450 and I found with the exception of the MSR, them to be incredibly twitchy and verging on hateful machines.
The cheapest I ever got out of fixing the SR was about $35 - having done the blades, main shaft, feathering shaft and main gear. I don't miss flying it! ( I guess I'm just a crappy heli pilot. :grin: )
Nice save when the servo gave-up. Would loved to have seen that exciting few seconds.
I guess coloured props and/or lighting on quads only goes so far to help with orientation - the tail of a heli sure makes that part easier.
I moved on (backwards!?) and got into flying planes. I find it infinitely more satisfying than either quads or helis. It's also dirt cheap, which makes it a lot easier to give the kids a go. If I had $1 for every time I've watched one drive it vertically into the ground nose first, only to put on a new prop and toss it back into the air, I'd have paid for 80% of my broken $1 GWS props. :laughs:
OT: Hey, how'd you go with the gyro question you asked the other day, make any headway? It was amongst the more interesting questions I've seen recently.
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The Blade 450 can take a beating. Actually, the 150 flights and the dead servo were on my older Blade 450 3D. What do you have against the 450 class? They are not as nervous as small helis, don't cost too much and still have plenty of power. Compared with a Blade 130X, somebody said that flying a Blade 450 feels like driving a bus.
Smaller helicopters, even including the 450 class, are known not to be good for learning how to fly. They are extremely agile and also react strongly to wind. The Blade SR is plain junk. It is already to big not to have a real tail rotor instead of one driven by a separate (brushed!) motor. Anyway, you can tame the small Blades with more restrictive DR/Expo settings.
The only exception may be the tiny Blade Nano CPX. I learned to fly with one of those and now it has been tuned with an aluminium rotor head, brushless motor and an adapter to use the batteries from an MCPX with twice the capacity of the stock batteries. The only problem is the tail rotor. The motor is too weak to counter the torque of the brushless motor at full throttle. Anyway, Blade parts are relatively expensive. A T-Rex has only very little plastic, unlike the Blades. It's also more expensive, but for some reason the parts cost less while generally being of higher quality.
Learning with bigger classes may be easier, but only if you have a teacher. else it will soon become a very expensive hobby.
And yes, I found one project where you have to solder your own hardware and then upload the program code and another one which has been discontinued, but was based on Arduino boards.
Look here![^]
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
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I don't have anything against the 450s - quite some time ago I considered buying a Trex 450 clone from HobbyKing. The problem at the time I did buy however, was the price here in Aus. From memory, I sunk about $300 into the SR and another $200 into the MSR. US pricing for the SR was about $165.
No argument from me about the lack of quality in the SR - I think calling it junk is probably being pretty charitable, to be honest. The brushed tail motor was rather a joke. Pirouettes had such a different rate of spin depending on the direction, never mind the wash-out if you tried to ascend too fast. Mind you, it was much nicer after I made a CF boom for it. Also, I only used the stock transmitter - entirely non-programmable and absolutely nothing compared to the Dx6i - the curves in that thing were awful.
As for the price differential - I think the problem is that E-flite are aimed at the less serious and so it seems, individuals that are more easily parted with their money. More or less the same story with Spektrum, imho. Trex seem far more serious.
So yeah - about $500 in purchase costs and far too much in repair costs and upgrades.
In contrast, I scratch-built a plane from corflute and bought an 8ch digital radio with a 2km range for a combined total of under AU $100. (The dx6i was about $250 when I bought the $53 Turnigy 9x. Another $40 or so would have added fail-safe to all 8 channels, too) Generally repairs consist of a new prop or o-ring to hold it onto the prop-saver or some hot-glue to stick the thing back together. I've rewound motors a couple of times and replaced shafts some too.
Finally, thanks for the video link. Quite a neat effort for DIY.
Happy flying.
"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life." - John Lennon
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Take a look at Dji Phantom[^].
It has everything in one package.
Battery time is less than half an hour, so buy extra battery packs.
Also keep track on range. Mileage will vary.
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That's actually what I found today, though the one I found wasn't as capable; I located the same brand, and they seem to be doing stuff with their products that match my needs perfectly. Thanks, Jörgen. I like the stuff offered by DGI, and I'll probably be asking them for a quote.
Will Rogers never met me.
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My only concern is flight time, 25 minutes in lab environment isn't that much, but the only one[^] I've seen that is better might be a bit of overkill, and you'll pay through the nose.
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I bought the Phantom 4 not long ago and it's pretty amazing.
Honestly what you can get for relatively little money these days is incredible.
Or if you want to play around with coding for aerial devices, there's always the DJI SDK 
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I only just saw this. There may be one other minor thing to consider that I don't believe anybody else has mentioned. That is it will be illegal in the UK or USA to do this.
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I'm waiting for a Hubsan X4 Pro (with FPV [first person video]) look a good copter for the money and a few safety features which will save the copter should it ever...
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What was sliced bread the greatest thing after?
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To quote St. George....
"'The greatest thing since sliced bread'..... So this is it? A couple thousand years... sliced bread? What about the Pyramids? The Panama Canal? The Great Wall of China? Even a lava lamp, to me, is greater than sliced bread. What's so great about sliced bread? You got a knife, you got a loaf of bread... Slice the #(%*&#ing thing!"
-- George Carlin
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I miss George.
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You can't trust him. He was off his loaf.
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At yeast he was making an effort.
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Obviously he was a gluten for punishment.
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