/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>1378887
I've built all sorts of multirotors, including a Pixhawk quad for aerial photography, but I also work in commercial aerial photography with DJI gear (mainly a dual-control Inspire) & I also own a Spark myself, so I'm talking from actual first hand experience of the whole ecosystem when I say that DIY & AP simply doesn't make sense for the overwhelming majority of users.

Probably the biggest factor & the one that most people seem to ignore when eagerly telling hopeful DIYers to strap an action camera gimbal to a Flamewheel clone (eg >>1378506), is that a HD video downlink & proper remote control of the camera is honestly the most basic requirement of any AP setup. Simply being able to stop recording video to instead take a photo is really fundamental functionality that even an absolute beginner to AP will find themselves wanting to be able to do.

A second hand older generation Phantom, or a brand new Spark, gives you these fundamental features for <$500 in a turnkey package with everything perfectly integrated into a hardware & software system that lets you focus completely on your photography (which is the whole point of an AP setup).

To build a DIY copter with a HD video downlink & even just rudimentary camera control, would require you to spend more than $500 on *just* the video link & the camera control gear. That's *not* including the cost of the actual copter itself, nor the camera, nor the radio, batteries, charger, etc.

And all this is without even starting to think about the multitude of quality-of-life improvements that something like a DJI setup gives you - vision based automated flight modes, subject tracking, quickshots, etc. are honestly a very useful addition to even an experienced aerial cinematographer's toolkit.