Many thanks for the positive comments Beehpee.
You may wish you hadn’t asked, and for those who have no interest at all in drones, or are not considering one, please stop reading now, for your own sake ! :evil:
I paid £499 for the “Fly more combo” pack and a 32G Class 10 MicroSD back in November last year, during a promotional offer that Maplins had on at the time.
The combo pack includes an additional,battery, bringing the total quantity to 2, the controller, charging station and a decent quality carrying case with shoulder strap.
In standard form, the Spark can be flown without the dedicated controller. In this way, you would connect your mobile device, be it a smartphone or tablet (iOS or Android) directly to the Spark, using Wi-Fi. The Spark would be controlled using the dedicated DJI App (DJI Go 4). The two main drawbacks to this are first of all that the range is very limited, and rather than have the tactile feel of physical controls, you fingers are operating a virtual joystick on the screen.
When you have the controller, your mobile device physically clips (or rather claws) onto the bottom of the controller. Your mobile device connects to the controller via wi-fi (a cable connection for this is also possible, known as an OTG cable, but that’s for another day), and then the Spark connects to the controller using Wi-fi. So, two different wi-fi streams going on.
With this method, the range is vastly increased and the tactile feedback from the controller is incomparable to that of the touchscreen.
Video feed from the Spark begins even before takeoff and streams directly to the screen of your mobile device, in real-time. This can also be recorded and stored on your mobile device, and uploaded to a DJI cloud server, but for best results, there is a Micro-SD card slot in the Spark onto which the live stream can be recorded in a higher resolution to that given by the feed being streamed to the phone. Of course, this is a direct Recording straight from the Spark onto the card and so as subject to no streaming loss or artefacts.
It is possible to control the Spark entirely from looking at the screen of your mobile device and never physically looking at it once, although this takes the pleasure our of the whole experience, and in any case, the drone code states that it must remain within your line of sight at all times.
All of the key info is overlaid onto the video image on your mobile device such as altitude, speed and battery level. Automatic Take-off is performed by simply swiping across an icon, and then the Spark hovers at about waist height awaiting your control.
With regards to the level of competence required to take quality footage, I would honestly say that very little is required at all. All that is really required is familiarity with the basic controls, a basic understanding of how the drone works, and a little confidence, which soon comes. I would say that if you had even a novice drone user stood next to you advising, you would be able to shoot footage comparable to that in my video on your very first flight. If you were alone, provided you have read-up before hand, then if not your first outing, then second or third at the very most.
The reason it requires so little skill as that in reality, from a certain perspective, the drone flies itself. You’re just telling it where to go, and controlling the camera, but that certainly doesn’t make it any less fun.
On power-up, it locks on to a number of GPS (Maybe also GLONASS, but I can’t remember) satellites, usually a minimum of 10 if I remember correctly. Once the Spark is in flight, it maintains control of its own position by permanently referencing the GPS co-ordinates, If you leave it hovering in the air, you will hear pitch changes from the changes in rotational speed of the propellers, particularly on a windy day, as it maintains its position. You can even pull or push it gently and again you will hear the pitch changes, as it’s well aware of the delta between where it should be and where it is, and so acts accordingly.
So, in terms of taking quality footage, if you just leave it hovering, unless there’s a gale force wind, you will have a perfectly still image, so still in facts, that you sometimes need to see people or cars moving to believe that it’s a video. It’s not that the drone itself is absolutely motionless, but that the camera is mounted on a gimabal which to those unfamiliar with the term, automatically levels itself in real time, compensating for any movement of the drone.
To get the type of results shown in my video, all that is neccesary is to first move the drone to your chosen location, adjust the camera to your preferred angle, and then have it move in a particular direction, slowly and smoothly for the duration of time that you want to shoot, it really is as simple as that.
With regards to the Spark compared to other models, the Spark is generally marketed more as a drone that you can fly without the controller, and can even follow you. You can put the controller down, communicate to it with hand gestures and tell it to follow you on your mountain bike, on to follow any target, by first locking on to the target using the screen on your mobile device. Other things are possible such as using hand signals to instruct it to fly high and circle wide, taking some great aerial footage, I’ve yet to try any of these features with mine though.
In terms of range, realistically, with the standard CE version of the Spark, you will be able to fly up to about 3-350 metres away from where you are standing (that is of course a radial dimension, so a total range of 600-700 Metres, and at a height of significantly more than the legal limit of 120M. Again, the drone code states that it must always remain within your line of sight,
The non CE version, as is sold in the US can reach a range of approx 3KM from where the operator is standing, many owners in the UK flash hacked versions of firmware to allow there’s to do the same, but I haven’t done so.
The only difference between the two versions is the power of the radio signal output. In order to conform to CE regulations, it must be limited below a certain threshold.
You don’t need to worry about losing the Spark. If you suddenly find you can’t see it, just tell it to return to home, and it will do just that, landing where it took off from. It will even do that if your mobile device battery runs out during a flightt, or if you ignore low battery warning from the drone itself. It lands accurately because in addition to GPS, as it takes off, it films video footage for its own use as it ascends, and stores it. When it descends during landing, it overlays its own camera image with the footage taken during take off to precisely guide itself very accurately down to its original launch position.
The Spark is great fun, and is to be enjoyed, the only really strong advice I would give would be to avoid taking off very close to trees, and avoid flying near HV power cables.
Although the Spark is marketed more as a “selfie” drone, as you can see from my footage, it’s more than adequate as a hobbyists drone, particularly at it’s price point, but I would say that an additional battery (one battery gives you about 15 minutes flight time), the charger and the controller are absolutely essential, whether bought as part of the fly more combo pack, or otherwise. I would not recommend a Spark without these.
For me, the really impressive part is the software, more so than the drone itself, as it has been developed over many years to control DJI’s professional drones commonly used worldwide in the film industry, and for the military, where money is literally no object. The fact that their drone costs many thousands and ours is £500 makes no difference, we both have 4 variable speed propellers in each of the 4 corners of our drone, what works for theirs works for ours. The difference is that over the years, substantial investments in commercial drones has paid for all of the software development which now leads to our enjoyment,
All of the other, more expensive consumer drones from DJI work in just the same way, using the same software, but have different physical properties, different cameras, and video capabilities, more sophisticated gimbals, different range characteristics etc.
I am very happy with the Spark and don’t intend upgrading any time soon.
I think that’s probably about it for now !
. - Happy hunting and just fire away with any more questions ...
Ic.
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