Hi guys,

We usually make our own drones to work, because we really don't like to sudden stupid technical limitations from everywhere.

But we also work a lot in big cities and we had problems with french law (weight limitations) to have a good pictures quality < 4 kg (no light enough SSD recorder). So we decided to buy and try an Inspire X5R because there are no other light drones witch can record in RAW. And after to flight, we regret to buy this Inspire because it is almost unusable.

I wonder what are doing beta testers...

First, what is positive ?

• Design is cool (but we don't care)
• We can transport easily almost everywhere
• Using an app to pilot everything is rather a good idea because we can change all parameters on camera during the flight
• Changing propellers is easy and retractable landing gear works fine (no propeller on pictures)
• Possible to record in RAW
• DJI Go is rather well done (but not lightbridge, see below)
  

And that's probably all !

Now, what is wrong ?

• Tilt is limited from 30° to -90°, it should go to -120° and it can when manual moving, why to impose a soft limitation at -90° ???
• Pan is limited to 640° and it is a big problem, it should turn without limits (please DJI use a slip ring with such a selling price!)
• Why does photos and H264 going on a SD CARD and not on SSD ?
• Why is it not possible to record in ProRes (better codec for current jobs) ? We have to convert DNG all the times and it takes a lot of place
• Why we can't see DNG files on SSD and you oblige us to use your awfull soft Cinelight (when it works, initialing without end most of the times) ? You would like to impose it and you hope it would become an unavoidable soft for cinema o_O ??? Workflow is totally ruined because of this choice and i wonder how we will work with that. This is terrible, please change this quickly !
• Your lightbridge is catastrophic with too much lag and footage are not smooth even in 720p, impossible to frame properly. Please give us an HDMI output on zenmuse to allow us to use amimon solutions for example, or make a deal with us. You sell it saying we can make live broadcast with, but it's a joke ?!?
• Why to put an HDMI mini output on radio and not normal HDMI, stronger and compatible with most of materiels ? Even if radio was a little bigger, it would be better
• LIPO are too expensive, but we could agree to pay more if the Inspire was really usable...
• Where is Ground Station ?
• Why we can't affect any function to buttons under radio ?
• Why we can't change batteries from radio when we work for long time far from electricity ??? We have to change radio after few hours ?
• Everything is DJI owner technologies (Apple is your model, but you are not Apple), but at all, we can't use correctly.
• Why do you impose No Fly Zone to professionnal, what we have to deactivate each time ??? You can't propose us (we are identified and you know who is doing what) to deactivate definitely and just send an alert in DJI Go when we are in restricted area (to ovoid a mistake) ? If a professional violated the law, it will be easy to find him. Please do something with this, we often fly near nuclear centrals, football stadiums, airports, etc, etc, with all permissions.
  

All this list was done after two flights only (!) and we were very angry/desperate/disappointed to see that, this machine is not for professionals. We still didn't try autopilot and we will complete this list soon.

It is really a pity. You could have the best drone in all world for prefessionals, and all these problems make it more or less unusable in professionnals conditions. I don't think people buy this product for hobby, so if you want to work with professionnals, give us solutions to work properly, because this in not the case for instance. This is DJI's problem : they have almost good ideas, but nothing is well finished and fully usable.

For example new DJl Matrice 600. the sales pitch says that it uses 6 small batteries < 100 Wh to be transportable by plane. People will buy this product to carry heavy weight, so in most of cases it will not fly more than 15 minutes maximum. It means that to fly only 10 times, you have to carry 60 batteries ?????? It's a joke ???? In a day work, you fly more and more than 10 times...
So what ? We would arrive to boarding at airport with more than 60 batteries in hand bag ??? Customs will hallucinate. And we should not sleep all night to charge all these batteries ???
There is no sens, make a machine with big batteries and if we have to travel with, it will go with cargo transport, there are no other solution.

If you want critical comments on your futur products, contact us and we will help, because if your testers didn't told you about it, there is a problem. Or maybe they told and you don't want to ear and it is dangerous, because in future, someone will build a perfect machine, an Inspire killer and everybody will move.

So please, ear your professional customers, we would become your best ambassadors.

Best regards

Whilst I agree the Inspire Raw is a long way from perfect, its still the best bang for your buck for a pro system.
I am especially pleased with the dynamic range of the camera, its a huge step up from the X5, which I wasnt very impressed with.
In regards to Cinelight and it taking so long to dump off the footage, its comparable to the amount of time it takes to dump footage off a RED Card, which is one of the worlds most used pro cameras. Why do you care if the stills and proxies get put on the micro sd card? Personally i prefer this because it leaves more room for the raw files on the ssd.
I experience zero lag with lightbridge. Are you using the newest Ipad mini on the market? I think you will find its because of the device you are using that you are experiencing lag.
In regards to the remote not having a changeable battery, given it usually lasts me up to 4 hours of flying time, that means you would be carrying around 16-20 Inspire batteries to outlast the remote battery. If you are not, theres nothing to complain about.
Currently DJI are testing a ground station.
Imposing No fly zones is unfortunately essential because we have to walk as slow as the slowest person... meaning there are many idiots who want to fly in places they shouldnt. Its the same reasons why any laws exist and I think that its a good thing DJI are trying to do the right thing, so that we can remain flying for years to come. Its only going to take one airplane crashing and people dying because of a drone and we will all be grounded... so I think the restrictions are a good thing. Yes they can be annoying but thats life in the modern age.
You admitted yourself that you went to an Inspire because of restrictions in flying a bigger aircraft. The Inspire is built not as the overall perfect copter, but as something that satisfies many people, and remains easy to transport, extremely quick to put together and simple to operate. You will be well aware that the copters that do everything you are suggesting, cost a lot more money, are big, take a long time to put together and from my experience require a lot of maintenance to keep them up in the air. Could the Inspire be better sure but they are upgrading everything pretty quickly, this is still new technology. Could it be cheaper, hell yes but compared to Octocopters that do similar things, its still a far cheaper and more efficient option that can fly in places larger framed copters cant.
In the end, its a free market economy and if it doesnt suit your needs, buy something else. I for one am mostly very happy with my Inspire and its paid for itself many times over.

FYI - the inspire come with a neat cable that lets you charge the remote from a dji inspire battery.

ian@pre-future. Posted at 2016-9-18 21:17
Whilst I agree the Inspire Raw is a long way from perfect, its still the best bang for your buck for ...

Whilst I agree the Inspire Raw is a long way from perfect, its still the best bang for your buck for a pro system.
I am especially pleased with the dynamic range of the camera, its a huge step up from the X5, which I wasnt very impressed with.
Yes, it is incomprehensible that Canon, BlackMagic, etc did not produce a light weight RAW camera with SSD recording. We almost ask them about it !

In regards to Cinelight and it taking so long to dump off the footage, its comparable to the amount of time it takes to dump footage off a RED Card, which is one of the worlds most used pro cameras. Why do you care if the stills and proxies get put on the micro sd card? Personally i prefer this because it leaves more room for the raw files on the ssd.
We should be able to dump data from SSD, we even can't see files and this is a strategy to prevent us to do it quickly. By this way, we have to by more and more DJI SSD and this political commercial is very annoying !

I experience zero lag with lightbridge. Are you using the newest Ipad mini on the market? I think you will find its because of the device you are using that you are experiencing lag.
I tryied with a Galaxy Tab 2, last generation, so i don't know what to think. Weather was to bad, but we will check how is HDMI output on Atomos Shogun... Wait and see, but but I'm not convinced

In regards to the remote not having a changeable battery, given it usually lasts me up to 4 hours of flying time, that means you would be carrying around 16-20 Inspire batteries to outlast the remote battery. If you are not, theres nothing to complain about.
We carry more batteries and fly more than 4 or 6 hours on big missions, so it a big problem. And we should use 200 € batteries to charge a radio because we can't change LiPo inside ? When LiPo is dead, radio is dead ?
And there is also an important question, can we use the radio when charging remote with Inspire batteries ?

Currently DJI are testing a ground station.
Imposing No fly zones is unfortunately essential because we have to walk as slow as the slowest person... meaning there are many idiots who want to fly in places they shouldnt. Its the same reasons why any laws exist and I think that its a good thing DJI are trying to do the right thing, so that we can remain flying for years to come. Its only going to take one airplane crashing and people dying because of a drone and we will all be grounded... so I think the restrictions are a good thing. Yes they can be annoying but thats life in the modern age.
I ask not to impose NoFlyZone to professionnals ONLY, not for everybody. We are identified and we can deactivate temporarely, but it is stupid to have to do it each time. Flights are recorded by DJI and they know our serial numbers, so juste identify us properly once, and that's it.

You admitted yourself that you went to an Inspire because of restrictions in flying a bigger aircraft. The Inspire is built not as the overall perfect copter, but as something that satisfies many people, and remains easy to transport, extremely quick to put together and simple to operate. You will be well aware that the copters that do everything you are suggesting, cost a lot more money, are big, take a long time to put together and from my experience require a lot of maintenance to keep them up in the air. Could the Inspire be better sure but they are upgrading everything pretty quickly, this is still new technology. Could it be cheaper, hell yes but compared to Octocopters that do similar things, its still a far cheaper and more efficient option that can fly in places larger framed copters cant.
OK, you don't understand. Inspire RAW is almost a good drone, but there are a lot of stupid choices/limitations easy to correct, with are not compatible with a full professional use. I can't believe it is not volontary to oblige custumers to by more and more accessoiries, OK why not, business is business. But it starts to be a problem when you need to have a real professionnal use and this RAW copter was not made for hobbie. The target is professionnal users, all pack is rather expensive (more than 16000$ for a full profesionnal solution with Inspire and all accesoiries) and it should not have all these "small" problems that make your life so difficult in real situation far from office.

In the end, its a free market economy and if it doesnt suit your needs, buy something else. I for one am mostly very happy with my Inspire and its paid for itself many times over.
We have different usage and i wonder why you spend so much time and energy to defend DJI mistakes...

Aerofilms Posted at 2016-9-19 10:13
Whilst I agree the Inspire Raw is a long way from perfect, its still the best bang for your buck fo ...

If you are using an Android based tablet, I would suggest that you try an Ipad Mini 3 or whatever the latest one is. From what I have read, Android is not so good with the Inspire. I may be wrong but I think it takes a bit to get it working.

The reason I responded in so much detail is to help you. I am a professional user and fly jobs all over the USA and have done many jobs in other countries. I have found the Inspire to be an excellent solution and a great business tool. I understand there are limitations to it, but I work around them. There are solutions for most of the issues you have raised,  ask questions of other users on how they use their Inspire and usually an answer will be forthcoming.

Happy flying

ian@pre-future. Posted at 2016-9-20 23:00
If you are using an Android based tablet, I would suggest that you try an Ipad Mini 3 or whatever  ...

Thanks for answer

I tryied light bridge with iPad Pro, the issue is the same and there are no more efficiency tablet.

For the rest, i'm furious that DJI doesn't take care of users. For example, the tilt as no physical limit until -120° and you can't go further than -90°. It's stupid.

We can't change batteries from radio, it is not professionnal, anyway. Can you imagine a Red cam with inside battery witch can't be change ? After 1 hour shooting, you have to charge and wait 15 minutes ???? Nobody would accept this.

And many more thinks, starting with dumping SSD. DJI's target with this Inspire RAW are professionnals, but their solution, notwithstanding it's qualities, is not efficient for intensive profesionnal use.

This drone costs more than 16 000$ for full package with many disks and batteries, it should not suffer so stupid limitations, that's all what i say.

So please DJI, go to the end of development, listen your users and achieve to make the best machine in all world. Some issues would need new developments, but some of them could be solved with a simple update of DJI Go (tilt angle, SSD storage and export, licencing ProRes, Ground Station, affecting freely new functions on radio, stopping NoFlyZones for KNOWN Professionnals, etc).

You can do something for us, don't be so sure that you won the drones war and make your products better with less limitations, we will become your first ambassadors !!

Aerofilms Posted at 2016-9-19 10:13
Whilst I agree the Inspire Raw is a long way from perfect, its still the best bang for your buck fo ...

We too have felt the frustration of how long it takes to do a data dump from the DJI SSD card and that we can't just transfer a single data file to another hard drive and do the cinelight conversion back in the office.  Seems to me some computer genius out there knows how to find that file, even though it's not viewable by we mere mortals

We're very interested to know if you can operate the RC while plugged into an inspire battery or for that matter using something like a Goal Zero power pack, plugging a charger into it, then into the Inspire RC.  

If anyone knows we would sure appreciate the information.

Thx...Jim & Kelly Watt email Info@bennett-watt.com

"We're very interested to know if you can operate the RC while plugged into an inspire battery or for that matter using something like a Goal Zero power pack, plugging a charger into it, then into the Inspire RC"

Yes please, it would be an issue, because autonomy is too short for a working day.

Hi Aerofilms,

All your criticisms are valid, well known issues and have been documented here multiple times.
The first thing anyone buying into the DJI 'world' needs to do is to abandon any belief in the marketing.

While these products may be marketed to professionals, the basic platform is still unquestionably an enthusiast / hobby level product.
The quality / functionality of software, firmware and in some cases hardware (i.e LiPo battery packs, propeller mounts, etc.) is just not developed to a level that offers the speed, functionality and reliability that professional users demand. Are there professionals using the Inspire? of course. We hear from them here all the time. Are they happy? In some cases yes, in some cases no.

From an engineering perspective, DJI's resources are tied up in developing more and newer products - existing customers are not well supported with adequately checked and tested updates.

Some time spent reading the forum here and the many FB and other web groups around will make the reality of living with DJI quite clear.   

Farnk666 Posted at 2016-9-23 00:51
Hi Aerofilms,

All your criticisms are valid, well known issues and have been documented here multip ...

Hi,

You resume all the problem in one sentence "From an engineering perspective, DJI's resources are tied up in developing more and newer products - existing customers are not well supported with adequately checked and tested updates."
I don't think we can translate, but in French, we have an expression witch says : "Start by finishing what you started".

DJI should take care of their existing customers, because any of their products is well/totally finished. They don't communicate on future release, we never know everything and sometimes, we have a bad trip because they changes... Something witch was working well (ramping on Zenmuse H3-3D for example).

Aerofilms Posted at 2016-9-24 19:37
Hi,

You resume all the problem in one sentence "From an engineering perspective, DJI's resources  ...

Of course they should, but they don't and they won't.

The segment of the UAV market DJI is operating in is all about sales and volume, with marketing led by new product after new product in quick succession.

Quality and return business (i.e. customers returning to purchase DJI again and again) is not important to them as there are many more people ready to buy their product.

So the key is to be informed - if the equipment operates to your individual needs with sufficient reliability now then fine. Otherwise spend more money on higher end / better engineered and supported products elsewhere.

We have a saying "You only get what you pay for" - there are much more reliable and capable options in the UAV market, they just cost more.

maybe AERO FILMS need to buy more INSPIRE'S. two shovels can dig more dirt than one.

Grizz 1 Posted at 2016-9-25 02:05
maybe AERO FILMS need to buy more INSPIRE'S. two shovels can dig more dirt than one.

"So the key is to be informed - if the equipment operates to your individual needs with sufficient reliability now then fine. Otherwise spend more money on higher end / better engineered and supported products elsewhere."
No, there are no other products to fly in cities with a lightweight aircraft < 4 kg (8,82 lbs) and record in RAW 4K !!

This is the problem...

It's incomprehensible, we were speaking with other manufacturers, even for cameras, and they didn't understand in time the potential of these solutions, living the free way for chinese companies like DJI witch are unable to deliver fully realized products...

That's why we bought Inspire and there are no other reasons.

Usually, we build our UAV with different components and controllers, but there are no really light SSD external recorders on market witch could match with RAW light cam

Then, flying with big drones (8 kg) in cities, even if it is possible with strict conditions, is a stupid choice, too dangerous and restrictive.

I understand that DJI business model, but they would not lose to finish products because they would create a professional reputation instead of being one more Chinese Company who's making medium products.

When i see the matrice 600 with 6 batteries, i can say it is a stupid choice because you will not travel in airplane with 60 (minimum) batteries in your handbag !

We could continue hours, but it is not necessary, DJI should just understand they are innovative but their products are not full developped and once, they will fall down.

That's it.

Aerofilms Posted at 2016-9-26 01:30
"So the key is to be informed - if the equipment operates to your individual needs with sufficient  ...

I think the fact there is no one else who manufactures within the restrictions, highlights the fact that its not an easy thing to do. As such, as I said in my original response, you have to accept the limitations for now and work around them. It still does allow you to fly in these restricted areas, just not with the perfect setup.
The good news is that as time progresses, so will the technology. This is only the first release of the Inspire and we shall see what issues the second model solved when its released in early November.

I think you read too much into the word professional. I consider it a very powerful (prosumer) flying camera and I hardly see it as trying to fullfill any ambitions greater than that. Cracking good value for money affording many people an opportunity to have a go at shooting some amazing aerial footage. I have yet to find an alternative that does not cost lots of $$ more and definitely cannot afford the equipment to strap expensive gear to without constantly living in fear ;) Your expectations regarding batteries I think is misplaced given that I trust you hardly get a day out of a mobile phone so, what can I say. Looking forward to seeing what in coming next week with drones constantly fast evolving these days.