Go find Your Drone

S

spudman49

Member
Fellas, I have been thinking about when a person loses there drone. Why don't the manufactures put in a audible device say like a beep beep alarm that is activated by
a button on your transmitter. You have an idea where your drone crashed but you cannot
see it, just hit your alarm button it gives off a beep beep and go to where you hear the
sound. It makes perfect sense, especially for a new flyer that does not have enough drone flying experience. I have already lost 3 drones in tree areas learning to fly, it would have been nice to have a safety alarm to find them.
 
Gyro Doctor

Gyro Doctor

Electronics Tech for over 45 years
o_O ... That ability has been around forever ... you can either mount a battery monitor that will beep at whatever voltage level,
telling you it's time to land, which also serves well as a lost model alarm (works well for "toys") OR install a common beeper and
assign it to an aux channel ("hobby" grade) to turn it off and on at will. Some FCs even come with them already installed.
But don't expect any of these features on a "toy" grade quad.
 
SNSTRLefty

SNSTRLefty

Well-Known Member
That was the deciding factor for the drone I chose. I pay a few bucks more but the value of being able to find it is priceless.
 
RENOV8R

RENOV8R

Well-Known Member
There are also little GPS devices like the Trackimo or TrachR that uses an iphone app to find your lost quad. Problem is the devices can cost more than the drone itself. They are more reliable though in that a buzzer will only work as long as the lipo on your drone has power, whereas a Trackimo's battery will last weeks or months
 
Zoe Salinas

Zoe Salinas

Member
RENOV8R said:
There are also little GPS devices like the Trackimo or TrachR that uses an iphone app to find your lost quad. Problem is the devices can cost more than the drone itself. They are more reliable though in that a buzzer will only work as long as the lipo on your drone has power, whereas a Trackimo's battery will last weeks or months
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I found this forum and yes, i agree. I am a Trackimo user as well @RENOV8R . It is just a precaution whenever you lose your drone.
 
GlassKnees

GlassKnees

Well-Known Member
I just have to share my lost drone story:

Back when I built my first quadcopter, I was flying it and let it get too far and lost orientation. I didn't have enough time to figure out which way it was facing as the prevailing breeze blew it behind my house and over the woods behind it. My wife and I searched for it for several days to no avail. Then a day later, a construction guy came to my house with my aircraft - I had taped a mailing label with my name and address on one of the arms. There was some road construction going on and the workers had put up two parallel sheets of plastic that stood about a foot high and were separated by a couple of feet - a sort of mud barrier. Anyway, the aircraft crash landed between these two sheets of plastic. We must have walked right past it and not noticed it! It suffered some minor damage but was easily repairable. I had a sport camera affixed to it (no video transmitter), and I was able to pull the video from it....
 
Zoe Salinas

Zoe Salinas

Member
GlassKnees said:
I just have to share my lost drone story:

Back when I built my first quadcopter, I was flying it and let it get too far and lost orientation. I didn't have enough time to figure out which way it was facing as the prevailing breeze blew it behind my house and over the woods behind it. My wife and I searched for it for several days to no avail. Then a day later, a construction guy came to my house with my aircraft - I had taped a mailing label with my name and address on one of the arms. There was some road construction going on and the workers had put up two parallel sheets of plastic that stood about a foot high and were separated by a couple of feet - a sort of mud barrier. Anyway, the aircraft crash landed between these two sheets of plastic. We must have walked right past it and not noticed it! It suffered some minor damage but was easily repairable. I had a sport camera affixed to it (no video transmitter), and I was able to pull the video from it....
Click to expand...
Had you not checked your logs before searching for it?
 
Rick M

Rick M

Absent-minded professor
Zoe Salinas said:
Had you not checked your logs before searching for it?
Click to expand...

There are so many assumptions built into this question that it defies answering. "Logs" assumes a great number of things, the first of which is that when he decided to start flying quadcopters, it was with something that had the technology to "log" what was happening.
 
GlassKnees

GlassKnees

Well-Known Member
The aircraft was a Parallax Elev-8 with a basic flight controller - it was not capable of providing any logs. This was a basic aircraft - no GPS, compass, etc. I later rebuilt it with the APM 2.6 flight controller - by then, I learned not to let it get so far away that I could not determine its orientation - also had RTL as a backup.
 
Zoe Salinas

Zoe Salinas

Member
GlassKnees said:
The aircraft was a Parallax Elev-8 with a basic flight controller - it was not capable of providing any logs. This was a basic aircraft - no GPS, compass, etc. I later rebuilt it with the APM 2.6 flight controller - by then, I learned not to let it get so far away that I could not determine its orientation - also had RTL as a backup.
Click to expand...
Ohh didn't know that. But how 'bout hooking it up with a tracker?
 
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