Hello Fellow Yuneec Pilot!
Join our free Yuneec community and remove this annoying banner!
Sign up

Typhoon H+

Many a business has taken it in the shorts due to obstinance[emoji6]. Even more from inability to adapt to changing market demands and conditions.

What you mention is why some builders of first responder systems remained with “home” assembled versions of Pixhawk. The system has the flexibility to adapt and the existing versatility eliminated a need to develop new code that had to be protected to remain proprietary. Nothing in either the H or H Plus is highly crafted code that needs to be protected from copying. I have yet to see anything the 520 does that can’t be done easier and perhaps better using flight planning features in a basic Pixhawk. Certainly Pix4D was fully compatible with Pixhawk long before the 520 was even dreamed of.

But this is an H Plus thread so lets see what it brings us.

Well, we both know there has been a lot of industrial espionage going when Arducopter was first introduced and began rapidly evolving starting around 2013 with a certain large drone manufacturer stealing code from AC and then locking the FC. If anyone doubts this, just go back and looking who followed who on certain features. Even with that, *** was the king of flyaways. Besides, a reliable source within the drone industry assured me that was in fact happening.

Ok, this is an H Plus thread, so I'll stop going OT now.

If the hardware is that much better than the H480, and Yuneec has improved the flyaway tendency by incorporating the PX4 flight stack, now with a better camera the price may be worth it. I'm going to wait and see what the community has to say.
 
I suspect we are entering a new Big Brother era whereby governments won't want clever people producing DIY-updateable code or add-ons which might offer a route to bypass the factory-installed safeguards and security features. I guess all future software updates will be force-fed on the fly by the manufacturers so that operators don't get the option not to install the latest NFZs for example.

There are countless Pixhawk FC's around with open source firmware. There is no way any government can stop people from doing pretty much anything they want. It's just typical bureaucratic logic to think they can. It's like any other stupid Big Brother logic. At least Yuneec had a good advertisement mocking DJI about the need to be connected to the internet (hence to DJI.....BB) and get permission to fly.



What factory safeguards are in place to stop a madman from running over dozens of people with a truck?

QED
 
This could become a religious war - there are strong proponents of Arducopter/Mission Planner and equally strong advocates for PX4/Q GroundControl. Personally, from an end user's point of view I think both systems show their roots in engineers/hobbyists and are not particularly friendly to use. From a flight point of view, a lot of the differences in opinion come from wildly different use cases for individual pilots. Simple things like whether you're comfortable switching between Mode 1 and Mode 2 can become major blockers in some people's eyes. Certainly a lot of people seem to fixate on individual features (never the same individual features!) when they complain about or praise a particular drone.

As it is, the decision to go with one or the other will have been as much a commercial as a technical one. I know Yuneec discussed the flight system with a number of external teams and chose the one they felt would deliver the best product, within the time and budget limitations they had. Whilst the H480 flight stack grew to be a reliable system, I understand that it runs pretty much at its limits and is very difficult to change to add new features. Yuneec's decision was about moving to a system that could support new developments going forward.

From my perspective, gliders' list:

1. Redundant compass/GPS - I'd like to see the failure rate before thinking this was a major issue. It adds a lot of cost and complexity to a drone.
2. Battery monitoring - Fairly irrelevant to me, I fly well within my battery limits and check the batteries properly on the ground with a balance charger. 'Smart' batteries don't help here.
3. Better flyaway protection - Again, I'd like to see the failure rate, but I believe PX4 has EKF filtering, and certainly innovation is to be encouraged
4. Fully autonomous flight - Given the current regulatory environment, no company can offer this in a consumer (or even semi-commercial) drone - it would be suicide.
5. Community based feature/bug tracking - This highlights the difference between AC (community based) and PX4 (commercial based) development. Ultimately though, the community support around a drone is down to the company selling it. Yuneec could not have launched a commercial product and told pilots to go hang out in the AC forums if they need a fix!
6. More RTL options - Certainly, so long as they have a good user interface to explain what's happening. As it is, most users don't understand their options or what happens in these cases and only find out when they actually have an emergency. Adding complexity can be a bad idea in a consumer product.

In short - yes, of course you can 'roll your own' and get a drone that does exactly what you want. You can't expect a company that saves you the time and effort that rolling your own involves to also provide a completely unique-to-you configuration. Yuneec add value by solving those problems. If they don't add value - by just sticking freely available components together - they'll make no money. We're seeing the same in the FPV market, where the free availability of flight stacks causes great innovation in the short term, but razor thin margins for the companies involved which ultimately stifles serious investment.

@PatR I completely agree with your points - it's down to Yuneec now to communicate what has changed in the company and what their goals are with the new machines. I don't like having to 'read the tea leaves' to try and guess what they are doing.
 
  • Like
Reactions: thoneter
Perhaps where you are this is true, but for here our military recently grounded all consumer drones doing work for them having direct linkage, or the ability to direct connect with the manufacturer. In fact, they grounded all COTS drones. Those currently maintaining their ability to do business with government agencies all design their own versions of code, the majority without flight restriction software.
 
Regarding semi and fully autonomous flight. For commercial operators it is both common and highly desirable. The only condition is that such flights must remain monitored with the ability to instantly assume manual control. Having autonomous capability is pretty much a prerequisite for BLOS UAV’s, and most all of any size possess the capability.

As Yuneec elected to use an extremely modified version of the Pixhawk FC components in the H-480 it should come as no surprise it ended up extremely limited. As for choosing PX4 to handle the 580 based on time constraints they obviously screwed the pooch with their necessary time estimate.

The ability to use dual GPS has been present in Pixhawk for at least 3 years. I think closer to 4. The actual cost to employ it at retail level is fractionally over $100.00. For safety the need is not great, for positional accuracy in multiple applications the need is very great. If all one does is shoot pretty pictures there’s no benefit but it’s pretty clear there’s a lot of people that want to do more than shoot pictures with a $1500.00-$2,000.00 drone, especially as those they compete with can do more.

It’s called competitive advantage and companies that don’t understand the concept and structure their business accordingly are doomed. That is the only thing that PX4 has an edge in at this time by allowing the incorporation of proprietary function code. The sad part of that is PX4 still lacks the capability of the FC it was intended to replace. Systems have been flying smooth waypoint intercepts for over 12 years yet PX4 can’t. There’s a serious problem in that.
 
My H+ is arriving tomorrow. I pray to the lords above it’s not a dog like it’s orange sister
I never got too excited about the 520 since I never saw any compelling video or photos generated by it. I've wondered if in a nutshell if anyone who owns one could sum up the various issues it has or had. Seems like it was also not very widely embraced and has had very limited sales which perhaps is due in large part to it's price tag. However if any one has the time I would very much like to hear a summary of it's failings.
 
Same in Madison, WI or there website BestBuy though touted as "exclusive" vendor seems to be waiting for shipment. Guess they may have shipped out via Yuneec headquarters in Cal. and are on their way to BestBuy. Since one of their former biggest distributors they used filed bankruptcy perhaps they're dealing directly with BestBuy...Fed-X tells me mine will arrive tomorrow however...Ordered E90 8 ND filter pack from Carolina Dronz which should arrive tomorrow or Saturday at latest.
 
I never got too excited about the 520 since I never saw any compelling video or photos generated by it. I've wondered if in a nutshell if anyone who owns one could sum up the various issues it has or had. Seems like it was also not very widely embraced and has had very limited sales which perhaps is due in large part to it's price tag. However if any one has the time I would very much like to hear a summary of it's failings.

Perhaps not here though :) The 520 forum is over there ----> :)
 
Perhaps not here though :) The 520 forum is over there ----> :)
Yes I know but over there is a smattering of complaints with no one making a summary of things that people do not like. I was hoping that Peggy who responded and owns one of those orange things would be kind enough to tell us about it.
 
I think the two big things were that the E-90 was not producing rectilinear images and there is no POI/Orbit feature - this hits both people wanting to do surveys and those expecting to use it as a videographers' tool. There have been niggles around gimbal stability, not having Mode 1 controls, mission planning limitations (spline paths) and a few other bugs. It took too long between firmware releases to address this, and I believe we're still waiting on another release.

There was a lot of noise initially as Yuneec gave out mixed messages about what the drone was for (or, some people really didn't want to hear). Some pilots bought it expecting a 'H480+' that they could use for cinematography. However the flight controls and camera were not tuned for that. It hasn't helped that successive firmwares have moved towards more conservative settings - so the early promise of a very sharp (and fast) device was watered down a little to a softer, slower craft which doesn't do justice to the airframe. As with the CGO3+, it's taken a few firmware updates for the camera to begin to hit its' stride, and there's still room for improvement.

Certainly it's able to produce some good footage if given the chance:

 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Rubik and Kev Waite
I think the two big things were that the E-90 was not producing rectilinear images and there is no POI/Orbit feature - this hits both people wanting to do surveys and those expecting to use it as a videographers' tool. There have been niggles around gimbal stability, not having Mode 1 controls, mission planning limitations (spline paths) and a few other bugs. It took too long between firmware releases to address this, and I believe we're still waiting on another release.

There was a lot of noise initially as Yuneec gave out mixed messages about what the drone was for (or, some people really didn't want to hear). Some pilots bought it expecting a 'H480+' that they could use for cinematography. However the flight controls and camera were not tuned for that. It hasn't helped that successive firmwares have moved towards more conservative settings - so the early promise of a very sharp (and fast) device was watered down a little to a softer, slower craft which doesn't do justice to the airframe. As with the CGO3+, it's taken a few firmware updates for the camera to begin to hit its' stride, and there's still room for improvement.

Certainly it's able to produce some good footage if given the chance:

Many thanks for your detailed response. On another topic, will the existing UAV Toolbox work on the H Plus? Thanks
 
To be fair the original Typhoon H had its issues when released and the platform and camera improved over its life and if willing to mess about with better lenses the CGO3+ could be made quite good.
The H520, I'm not going to open the can of worms yet again, but unfortunately the marketing initially was not good claiming it to be a jack of all commercial trades, including cinematography and broadcast media, this proved not to be the case and it is more suitable for mapping and survey work. The camera although visibly much better than the CGO3+ suffers from lots of lens distortion. Yuneec like on the Typhoon H have steadily been improving the H520 and E90, sometimes 1 step forward and 2 back but slowly moving forward. I’ve seen images from the upcoming camera firmware and it is much improved. On video almost no distortion and level horizon and photos about 85% there. More features are going to be added to the H520, but will be tuned toward mapping, survey work and emergency services. If your goal is video and photography then I think the H+ will be the route to take. I love the natural colours the E90 produces, I tend to use unprocessed colour profile and adjust in post. In my video Tuna posted above the conditions were less than ideal, very misty and windy. The footage out of the camera looked totally washed out, but that is what unprocessed looks like, a bit like between Dlog and Dcinelike on another well known drone. The magic happens in post, with more control over the finished video than other settings. The gimbal works very well, but you have to work hard to keep the props out of shot if moving forward at speed. I am quite excited to see where the H Plus goes, Mr Tuna, please get to work on your magic for this one.

This is a before editing screen shot from the video Tuna posted above from the E90. It shows the detail that's hiding in the E90 and C23 images, that can be pulled back.
 

Attachments

  • Before.jpg
    Before.jpg
    963.4 KB · Views: 18
Last edited:
To be fair the original Typhoon H had its issues when released and the platform and camera improved over its life and if willing to mess about with better lenses the CGO3+ could be made quite good.
The H520, I'm not going to open the can of worms yet again, but unfortunately the marketing initially was not good claiming it to be a jack of all commercial trades, including cinematography and broadcast media, this proved not to be the case and it is more suitable for mapping and survey work. The camera although visibly much better than the CGO3+ suffers from lots of lens distortion. Yuneec like on the Typhoon H have steadily been improving the H520 and E90, sometimes 1 step forward and 2 back but slowly moving forward. I’ve seen images from the upcoming camera firmware and it is much improved. On video almost no distortion and level horizon and photos about 85% there. More features are going to be added to the H520, but will be tuned toward mapping, survey work and emergency services. If your goal is video and photography then I think the H+ will be the route to take. I love the natural colours the E90 produces, I tend to use unprocessed colour profile and adjust in post. In my video Tuna posted above the conditions were less than ideal, very misty and windy. The footage out of the camera looked totally washed out, but that is what unprocessed looks like, a bit like between Dlog and Dcinelike on another well known drone. The magic happens in post, with more control over the finished video than other settings. The gimbal works very well, but you have to work hard to keep the props out of shot if moving forward at speed. I am quite excited to see where the H Plus goes, Mr Tuna, please get to work on your magic for this one.

This is a before editing screen shot from the video Tuna posted above from the E90. It shows the detail that's hiding in the E90 and C23 images, that can be pulled back.
Thanks for your perspective on what's ailing the 520. I'm already keenly aware of the limits of the H as I've owned 6 of them and the incremental changes as it evolved. If for example when I boot the H Plus after changing the battery and I have to redo all my settings I will not be very happy. I've got 4 different lenses installed in my H's and I was hoping that the Plus would have a smaller field of view than 91 degrees. I will test it for a few days starting tomorrow to see if I want to take it to Iceland for a project I've been doing there for 5 years. I've always shot raw video as I prefer to do my own color grading. I figure for the price it's worth a try...Thanks like Tuna for taking the time to tell me about the 520.
 
@YuKay yes, I love all the specs and what I’ve seen so far on the H+. I’ve also got 2 TH and if I bought the H+ right now the divorce proceeding might be quite expensive. :rolleyes: :D

Get rid of the wife and one of the H's... reinvest in batteries. ;)
 
Thanks for your perspective on what's ailing the 520. I'm already keenly aware of the limits of the H as I've owned 6 of them and the incremental changes as it evolved. If for example when I boot the H Plus after changing the battery and I have to redo all my settings I will not be very happy. I've got 4 different lenses installed in my H's and I was hoping that the Plus would have a smaller field of view than 91 degrees. I will test it for a few days starting tomorrow to see if I want to take it to Iceland for a project I've been doing there for 5 years. I've always shot raw video as I prefer to do my own color grading. I figure for the price it's worth a try...Thanks like Tuna for taking the time to tell me about the 520.

@Mickeyboo check this thread... looks promising!

Cool battery mod for H520 (and TH H series?)

And if anyone does this mod, please do a video in English... the one above is good, but as all of them are... that auto-translate CC on YouTube is f'n useless...:confused:
 
A battery mod for the H type units is very easy if you’re willing to make one hole in the bottom of the fuselage. Add a little velcro to the back of the battery port and you can fit batteries that fly for a long time, and do it cheap. Since the H batteries are nothing more than standard batteries with a plastic shell added and a company plug it’s not hard to figure out. Same applies to the Chroma and Q models.

Remove the plug from a factory battery, extend the wires to route out the bottom of the fuselage, install the connector of choice, and plug the factory connector into the H. Leave it plugged in forever. With the battery chosen, insert it with the power wire out the back to make the connection.

The method in the video is cleaner, extremely invasive, and uses easy to displace banana plugs. If you go that route pick up an ESD pad and do all your electrical work on it while you are connected to it to prevent shorting out components through static discharge.
 
Last edited:
Well my H+ arrived today and I flew 3 batteries. Was I impressed? Yes and no. Instantly one of the things that hit me was the fact you cannot change your colour settings whilst in video mode. If it’s set to gorgeous your stuck unless you flick to photo and then change it then flick back to video.
Also it flew like the first batch of 520’s abrubt and sharp. In sport mode it it’s mental on the sticks, there are no expos like in the H and it is very much the sister of the 520.
How’s the camera? There is distortion but no where near as bad as when the 520 came out with E90. Is it liveable? Yes just but I do hope updates improve this.
Is it good to get poi, ccc, journey and follow me? Yes poi worked very well and because I haven’t got it on the 520 I was quite excited, it made some good smooth videography.
Ccc wouldn’t work for me. It wouldn’t go to the first waypoint. Now that might be pilot error as I was rushed at this point and running on 50% battery so I won’t judge that until I try again.
That’s all I’m going to say for now as I really haven’t run it through it’s paces yet.
Do I like it? Yeah sure. I had to get it because I am a cinematographer and not a mapping guy. After spending £6000 on the 520 with all cameras and lots of accessories another £1700 ain’t gonna hurt is it?
I like the hex, and I just wanted to get away from dji when I bought the 520 on Uk release date. But at the end of the day it’s just a 520 with a few different modes that the 520 should of had in the first place as advertised.
Let’s hope this doesn’t turn into a grey lemon as well.

I will of course come back with a more thorough review next week when I’ve had more time to fly it.
 

New Posts

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
20,955
Messages
241,599
Members
27,286
Latest member
lahorelaptop