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I have received my new Inspire One. I have updated the firmware when it came out of the box and did about three flights on the first version. Since I am an experienced R/C helicopter pilot, all flights were controlled manually. Today, I did the second firmware update and have updated the app twice. I have done a couple of flights in both GPS mode and ATI mode. Everything went fine, however, when I flew near a row of tall trees I did lose the GPS signal. This was no problem since I could take over manually. Without the GPS signal the machine will not stop quickly as it does in GPS mode.
I want to say as a retired Electronic Engineer with many years flying both full scale and R/C aircraft, that I think the designers did a great job of putting together a well thought out and well integrated end to end system. The current feature set is great. I love the machine and look forward to do a lot of fun and work flying in movies and commercials. My congratulations to the engineers who designed this system.
Now the constructive comments:
1. This machine is at a Beta state and must be used carefully. It still needs a lot of testing and feedback and it needs some tweeks here and there.
2. The documentation needs a lot of work.
a. There are many things lost in the translation. The english writer does not understand how the system works and has many confusing statements. There are many statements that do not make any sense.
b. There are items totally missing…here is an example…No where in the manual is the “Enable Multiple Modes” switch explained. This is an important piece of information. If you don’t switch this on, the mode switch on the top left of the remote unit does not function. The unit stays in GPS mode as long as it has a signal. This is only one example. There are many more.
c. To correct these problems a professional engineer would bring in a native English speaking person, off of the street, who has never flown anything like this. He would then ask them to read the documentation and follow all of the instructions and would watch the test person to see if they could get the machine working and flying properly. This is called “User Testing” of the documentation. This step has clearly not been performed. This needs to be done for each language that the documentation is written in.
I love the system and the direction you are working towards, however, there is still a lot of work to do to make this a full functioning and polished professional product.
This is a very abbreviated report of my experience to date. If you would like a full engineering report, I require some form of compensation.
Good luck and I am willing to work with anyone who wants me to help in this regard.
Ray Maxwell
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lvl.4
lvl.2
"The Elephant in the room" bit...Is what an in game radio announcer says 