I’m not looking into buying a drone right now, but maybe in the future, so I have a couple of questions.
Not including expensive DJI and all that class drones, do most more affordable hobby type drones with cameras (sub 200 USD) have FPV realtime streams or do you only see the actual footage once the drone returns?
Again, not counting expensive class drones, but also not counting really crappy ones, what do you generally have to pay to have a relatively longish flight at these distances, with a decent camera?
a) up to 200 or 300 meters (for example xyz dollars for drones of this class)
b) up to 1 kilometer
c) up to 5 kilometers
*I don’t know the American units, but 1 mile is 1.6 kilometers.
I can only speak to the first part. My son and also a neighbor have inexpensive drones (one i know is under $100). They both send real time video to the screen. How else would you control it?
You control a drone by looking at it. It is against FAA regulations to fly a drone out of your line-of-sight (for example, by relying on the drone’s video camera). cite
I have a DJI Phantom and previously had a sub-$100 toy drone. The toy would fly for about 5 minutes. The Phantom is supposed to fly for 25 minutes but I’ve never flown it that long.
ETA: My toy drone also had realtime video, although it was not great quality and of course the image would tilt whenever you steered the drone, since the camera is not on a gimbal like on the Phantom.
The DJI Spark is not really that expensive, you can get one for about $400, it has a fairly long flight time as drones go (I think I’ve flown mine for around 25 minutes at a time - certain maneuvers may eat up more battery power, I’m not exactly sure how it works.) By the way, if you have multiple batteries, you can essentially fly the thing indefinitely as long as you land it periodically to swap out the battery.
I fly Phantom 4s at work, and regularly fly 25-30 minutes, so they definitely are capable.
To the OP, the cheapest I’ve flown is a Phantom 4, which definitely provides a real-time view. A Spark should be the same. And DJI is definitely a reliable brand to go with, from my experience.
It’s capable of traveling over a mile from the controller, and will automatically return to its starting point if contact is lost. It can be flown entirely via real-time streaming (looking at a pad attached to the controller), but it’s best to keep in visual contact with it. I’ve flown it high enough that I literally couldn’t find it, but mostly I keep it in training mode so it’s limited in altitude and distance. It is also capable of rotating around a designated point and filming it automatically (you preset distance and altitude), or simply following the controller at a preset distance and altitude. The latter is pretty cool, as you can set it and bike/boat/whatever and it follows obediently and films.
If you stop controlling it (let go of the sticks) it will hover in place using the GPS. In normal settings, even if you wander off and forget about it, it will stay stationary until battery gets low, then automatically return to the starting point and land.
I acquired this from my son, who took some interesting video here and here while backpacking and camping out in west Texas. Sorry for the length, but you can see how far away the drone gets, and he’s flying it almost exclusively via the camera.
The total cost including case, spare props, hiking backpack and extra batteries was around $1200. There were some small additional fees to register with the FAA and receive an N-Number for it. Each battery is capable of 20 minutes or so, but I’ve never gone beyond 10 minutes.
From my research a couple years ago, no drone except DJIs have a decent range. DJI drones use some sort of “lightbridge” WiFi technology that gives miles of range. Other drones, even expensive ones like Yuneec, didn’t have nearly the range.
Any drone that doesn’t have GPS or some sort of stabilization technology will be like trying to control a leaf on the wind. It takes a lot of skill, and don’t expect you can fly with fuzzy/small FPV, you really need to fly by looking at the drone. Which gets tricky when the drone is facing behind you; all controls are reversed.
Really I would suggest at least a Phantom 3 for decent video quality, range, and stability. But buying a ~$50 drone to learn on isn’t a bad idea.