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Skydio 2 wand / drag 'n' drop repositioning using only the beacon

stefanonwheels

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Here's a video of me trying out what I'd call drag 'n' drop positioning:
(drag 'n' drop starts at 5:50)
 
That was a really good demo, bro! Plus you crack me up because you're so direct! It was weird watching it knowing what happens later. Hopefully, Skydio takes care of you! I'm starting to think that $500 warranty might make sense after all...
 
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That was a really good demo, bro! Plus you crack me up because you're so direct! It was weird watching it knowing what happens later. Hopefully, Skydio takes care of you! I'm starting to think that $500 warranty might make sense after all...
Thanks :) Yeah, well, let's see what the $0 warranty gets me first :)
 
Thanks :) Yeah, well, let's see what the $0 warranty gets me first :)

I'm trying to research the Premiere warranty without much success. The website doesn't say if there's a deductable or not or how many times they'll replace it. Just that it costs $500, it's good for two years and they'll ship a "new" one to me before they get mine. At first I laughed at the idea but... I've seen a lot of crashes already and I'm redoing to the math.
 
Yeah, there's not a lot of info about that. To me, the premier support sounded a bit like it was made for people who use the Skydio 2 for work and actually have a loss of income when it's not functional. Did you read through their legal statements in full, though? I only read up on the standard warranty.
I'm not that concerned about the repair/replacement turnaround time, to be honest, because shipping the drone from AZ to CA should take 2 days at most, compared to a couple of weeks to wherever DJI had me send my drone back then when that crashed.
I'll see what Skydio support and the $0 warranty is like and if it's worth buying that $500 premier support, I might get that, too. Given that I ordered my Skydio 2 about 2 minutes after they opened pre-orders and that I'm pretty much a customer who paid full price for a product in its final testing phase and volunteers as a tester every day, I'd hope that Skydio treat me in a very premier way even without the $500 premier support.
 
Yeah, there's not a lot of info about that. To me, the premier support sounded a bit like it was made for people who use the Skydio 2 for work and actually have a loss of income when it's not functional. Did you read through their legal statements in full, though? I only read up on the standard warranty.
I'm not that concerned about the repair/replacement turnaround time, to be honest, because shipping the drone from AZ to CA should take 2 days at most, compared to a couple of weeks to wherever DJI had me send my drone back then when that crashed.
I'll see what Skydio support and the $0 warranty is like and if it's worth buying that $500 premier support, I might get that, too. Given that I ordered my Skydio 2 about 2 minutes after they opened pre-orders and that I'm pretty much a customer who paid full price for a product in its final testing phase and volunteers as a tester every day, I'd hope that Skydio treat me in a very premier way even without the $500 premier support.

That would be nice for sure! I'm a warranty guy and appreciate to tier treatment. I'm willing to pay and have put DJI Care Refresh on everything I've ever purchased from them.

If the Skydio Premiere Support covers at least three replacements without a deductable, it'll be totally worth it. Since I paid $160 initially for the M2P, another $120 for the second year and would pay about a $150 deductable for each of three replacements. In the end, if you think you may crash even once, the initial cost of the DJI warranty and deductable covers the $500.
 
That would be nice for sure! I'm a warranty guy and appreciate to tier treatment. I'm willing to pay and have put DJI Care Refresh on everything I've ever purchased from them.

If the Skydio Premiere Support covers at least three replacements without a deductable, it'll be totally worth it. Since I paid $160 initially for the M2P, another $120 for the second year and would pay about a $150 deductable for each of three replacements. In the end, if you think you may crash even once, the initial cost of the DJI warranty and deductable covers the $500.
Solid math! The thing is, though, that most likely, I personally will not fly the drone using the controller often and even if I do, it shouldn't crash unless I fly it at night or in crazy weather. So in most cases, if the drone crashes, it will crash itself and it won't be me crashing it. If they honor their warranty that if the drone crashes, they replace/fix it for free, then technically, I shouldn't need their premier support during the first year, which is how long their standard warranty is valid.
 
Solid math! The thing is, though, that most likely, I personally will not fly the drone using the controller often and even if I do, it shouldn't crash unless I fly it at night or in crazy weather. So in most cases, if the drone crashes, it will crash itself and it won't be me crashing it. If they honor their warranty that if the drone crashes, they replace/fix it for free, then technically, I shouldn't need their premier support during the first year, which is how long their standard warranty is valid.

Yea but I read all of those provisos and addendums on warranty... They may be a great company, with the best of intentions but if these crashes keep rolling in like they are already... I'm not sure, of course, but it doesn't seem like they sent out a lot of these drones, yet I've seen about a dozen crashes already. I'm not saying they weren't the pilot's fault, your crash could be argued that way, however, I'm guessing these people didn't spend over $1000, waited over 2 months, just to fly a drone for less than a week, have it crash and be told "too bad the warranty says no branches or power lines".
 
Yeah, definitely.
One thing that I noticed is that a lot of YouTubers "test" the Skydio by flying it in perfect conditions and by having it follow them while they're walking in a park with 2 trees for 30 seconds. That, people, is not what the Skydio 2 was made for and trying to be a responsible drone pilot isn't helping with testing that kind of drone and how people who will buy them will use it at all. If Skydio sent the drone to those kinds of people for beta testing then, well, hardly any testing has been done.
So what I'm saying is that they should've sent it to me for testing, a nobody with 15 YouTube followers :D
 
Yeah, definitely.
One thing that I noticed is that a lot of YouTubers "test" the Skydio by flying it in perfect conditions and by having it follow them while they're walking in a park with 2 trees for 30 seconds. That, people, is not what the Skydio 2 was made for and trying to be a responsible drone pilot isn't helping with testing that kind of drone and how people who will buy them will use it at all. If Skydio sent the drone to those kinds of people for beta testing then, well, hardly any testing has been done.
So what I'm saying is that they should've sent it to me for testing, a nobody with 15 YouTube followers :D

Hey I volunteered as well! Hahahaha! You're exactly right though, the people testing, really nice guys btw, I've managed to talk to a couple of them, didn't push the drone in any way. I found out about the lack of telemetry back in November by accident. You couldn't beg them to do an on screen range test or fly in a city.

Now I'm afraid there's gonna be a lot of crisis aversion on Skydio's part. As 3DR, FT Aviator and GoPro found out, it doesn't take much to completely turn the "drone community" against you.

Most of the big channels are already salty they didn't get one to pre review.
 
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Hey I volunteered as well! Hahahaha! You're exactly right though, the people testing, really nice guys btw, I've managed to talk to a couple of them, didn't push the drone in any way. I found out about the lack of telemetry back in November by accident. You couldn't beg them to do an on screen range test or fly in a city.

Now I'm afraid there's gonna be a lot of crisis aversion on Skydio's part. As 3DR, FT Aviator and GoPro found out, it doesn't take much to completely turn the "drone community" against you.

Most of the big channels are already salty they didn't get one to pre review.
Yeah, the fact that telemetry was one of the most requested features that Skydio now implemented in their first app update shows what people do with the Skydio 2 - definitely not what it's best at. If I ride a mountain bike and have Skydio 2 follow me using the beacon, then my ears are my telemetry and I don't need to see telemetry in the app because, well, I'm not even using the app. I'd prefer if Skydio would make their #1 killer feature - AI-powered obstacle avoidance - bulletproof before implementing functionality to support people's improper use of the Skydio 2 :D

(Before all the people who actually fly Skydio 2 using the controller get mad at me: As Skydio offer a controller for Skydio 2, you're, of course, not using it improperly. I'm exaggerating to make my point. Telemetry is a useful feature, indeed, I just think bulletproof obstacle avoidance should be the highest priority for a drone like that - that's all.)
 
Yeah, the fact that telemetry was one of the most requested features that Skydio now implemented in their first app update shows what people do with the Skydio 2 - definitely not what it's best at. If I ride a mountain bike and have Skydio 2 follow me using the beacon, then my ears are my telemetry and I don't need to see telemetry in the app because, well, I'm not even using the app. I'd prefer if Skydio would make their #1 killer feature - AI-powered obstacle avoidance - bulletproof before implementing functionality to support people's improper use of the Skydio 2 :D

(Before all the people who actually fly Skydio 2 using the controller get mad at me: As Skydio offer a controller for Skydio 2, you're, of course, not using it improperly. I'm exaggerating to make my point. Telemetry is a useful feature, indeed, I just think bulletproof obstacle avoidance should be the highest priority for a drone like that - that's all.)

Don't worry about making people here angry, I've got that role covered!!! Hahaha! As far as their OA goes, I think it's pretty good. They may want to have a two tiered speed limit you could set when you're concerned about the terrain. Quite frankly, the marketing and hype may have oversold the drone's abilities. It doesn't matter to me since my use case has never been tracking. I just want to be able fly around structures without compass issues and a bit less concern of hitting stuff.
 
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Don't worry about making people here angry, I've got that role covered!!! Hahaha! As far as their OA goes, I think it's pretty good. They may want to have a two tiered speed limit you could set when you're concerned about the terrain. Quite frankly, the marketing and hype may have oversold the drone's abilities. It doesn't matter to me since my use case has never been tracking. I just want to be able fly around structures without compass issues and a bit less concern of hitting stuff.
It seems like there's many people like you who actually don't want to use the Skydio 2 for tracking and will mostly fly it pretty much the same as a Mavic 2 Pro - using the controller. And while that's not where Skydio came from (they didn't even offer a controller for the R1), I don't blame you because it's a great package for a great price, even if you don't use the full autonomous flight capabilities. And you're right - the OA is good enough for the use case that you're flying using the controller and therefore only use the OA as an additional safety net in addition to your common sense and piloting skills.

However, for usage of the Skydio 2 with the beacon only (no controller, no phone/app) and therefore no way to see what the drone sees, I think the OA still needs some improvements. I do understand that that isn't as easily done as said, but I also think that people would be willing to pay a premium for that. So maybe Skydio need to offer something like a Skydio 2+ with truly bulletproof OA and an AI that is aware of its own limitations and stops tracking instead of continuing to track and crash so that it's truly capable to fly autonomously in any surroundings (with sufficient light, obviously, or, ideally, they could add some additional sensors that offer basic OA in low light conditions). If they offered that for, say, $2k base price, I'd honestly put my order in right away.
 
It seems like there's many people like you who actually don't want to use the Skydio 2 for tracking and will mostly fly it pretty much the same as a Mavic 2 Pro - using the controller. And while that's not where Skydio came from (they didn't even offer a controller for the R1), I don't blame you because it's a great package for a great price, even if you don't use the full autonomous flight capabilities. And you're right - the OA is good enough for the use case that you're flying using the controller and therefore only use the OA as an additional safety net in addition to your common sense and piloting skills.

However, for usage of the Skydio 2 with the beacon only (no controller, no phone/app) and therefore no way to see what the drone sees, I think the OA still needs some improvements. I do understand that that isn't as easily done as said, but I also think that people would be willing to pay a premium for that. So maybe Skydio need to offer something like a Skydio 2+ with truly bulletproof OA and an AI that is aware of its own limitations and stops tracking instead of continuing to track and crash so that it's truly capable to fly autonomously in any surroundings (with sufficient light, obviously, or, ideally, they could add some additional sensors that offer basic OA in low light conditions). If they offered that for, say, $2k base price, I'd honestly put my order in right away.

I definitely agree with that! I told someone else that my reasons for buying the Skydio revolves around the lack of compass more than anything else. If it wasn't I'd keep flying my Mavic 2 Pro and wait for the eventual Mavic 3 Pro. I would be ASTOUNDED if DJI suddenly abandoned the compass in their upcoming drones! Not likely. So I'd be in basically the same boat, probably with better OA and video capabilities but the same compass issues.
 
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