Wouldn’t you just know it

Three small Amazon orders failed yet again to be delivered today, after tracking showed that they were out for delivery two days ago. At least yesterday I received an email saying that they had been delayed and would be delivered today, a day later than expected, but today, nothing. Have they fallen into a Covid-19 black hole? Who knows, only time will tell I suppose.

But yay! At least I had the compensation of having my new upgraded drone being delivered first thing this morning by GLS, who are playing a blinder. That’s twice recently they’ve exceeded delivery expectations at this problematic time with unpredictable delays, staff sickness and other issues coming into play, so kudos to them. I hope that they reap the rewards when things eventually get back to some kind of normality.

The new drone is another Eamachine, this time the EX4 which costs a bit more than the EG16 that I’ve been learning on but with some nice additional features. Firstly, it has a ‘true’ battery life of 25 minutes, which is much more acceptable than the 9 or so that I’ve been getting out of the EG16 with its claimed battery life of 15 minutes 😐

Secondly, it has a considerably better range of about 1000 metres, compared to 200 metres for the EG16 with its FPV video link dropping out way before then, and reviewers on Youtube have also found that it retains its FPV link over that whole distance in good environmental and operational conditions.

And the third advantage that it has over the EG16 is a brushless 360 degree gimbal mount for its video camera. I’ve found while learning to fly the EG16 that it’s video output is considerably degraded by movement and wind and that’s because as a platform it rocks in pitch and roll taking the camera with it because once its angle has been set from the ground, it’s fixed. The gimbal on the new drone almost totally eliminates that making for stable videos that are much more watchable.

When I researched the EX4, I found that it came highly recommended by those who reviewed it on Youtube. The general conclusion was that all it lacked compared to machines costing twice as much was a 4K video camera (like the EG16, it delivers 4K stills but only 2K videos) but for my budget, I decided that I could live with that, certainly until it’s proved its worth anyway.

Here are several shots that I took of the machine and its accessories as I unboxed it and set it up ready to fly.

But that’s about as good as it got, unfortunately. The way that drones like this work is that you have a controller with twin joysticks, one for up/down and left/right turn and the other for forwards/backwards and side-to-side. So basically quite simple, as I’ve found, made easier by the fact that they come with on-board gyros for stability and GPS so they can be positioned accurately and made to hover ‘hands-off’ at any chosen altitude.

And to pilot them, you use an app installed on your smartphone (only modern ones because the apps link to the drones using 5G wi-fi) giving you a pilot’s-eye view through the video camera that’s known as FPV (First Person View). And this is where my original EG16 and my new EX4 differ. The video link to the EG16 is direct from the phone which I guess must make for its potentially being more fragile depending on the quality of phone being used at the very least.

However, with the EX4 the drone links to the controller which allows for the link to be factory optimised and the phone also links to the controller which is, of course, only inches from the phone. So potentially the link between the phone and the drone is much stronger explaining why the range of the EX4 is so much greater.

The EG16 uses a smartphone app called FPV Go which is readily downloadable from the Google Playstore for Android or the App Store for iPhones. The EX4 uses an app called Enjoy-Fly, which offers similar functions but looks and handles differently. The first problem that I encountered was that when I scanned the download code in for Enjoy-Fly, I found that it’s no longer in the Playstore (I don’t know about the App Store because that’s irrelevant for me).

An internet search revealed that other users had found that there are one or two other drones that are the same model but rebadged and use the same app under different names. However, when I checked the apps for those I found that they’d also been removed from the Playstore. So potentially I had just acquired a drone that was only flyable blind as there was now no app to control it with, thus drastically reducing its potential, which would be a disaster.

But yet another internet search came up with various ‘app’ sites that still had downloadable copies of the Enjoy-Fly app, so it looked as though such a disaster would be avoided after all. After setting it up on my phone (with considerable difficulty I might add as I’m not as savvy with Android as I am with Windows PCs…) as I knew how to make the thing start up and fly after watching a host of Youtube videos, I was ready to go.

First the controller had to be connected to my phone and that happened quite quickly and smoothly as its wifi SSID came up almost immediately. Then the drone had to be ‘paired’ with the controller and the app started on my phone so it could take off and be flown with video. But although the drone appeared to connect quite quickly to the controller, as shown by the indicator light turning to solid green, there was no sign of the app starting up as it should have and as it had done for the many others on Youtube.

But eventually it did and I was up and away. The first thing that I found was that despite its GPS positioning, the EX4 was quite a lot less stable than my EG16. I’d also inserted a SD card so set my video recorder going while I flew away for a short distance and then returned. I had two more goes and decided to call that it for the moment to see what the results had been like.

And they were most disappointing. Although the camera gimbal had worked well, the video itself had lots of missed frames and therefore kept jumping, which was totally unacceptable. And not only that, although I’d taken some stills plus a couple of videos, nothing had been recorded on the drone’s SD card and I was only able to retrieve the results such as they were because recordings had been made to my phone.

After such a debacle, I naturally wanted to try again so went out to fire the machine up once more for another flight. But that was not to happen because this time not only would the app not run on my phone even after waiting for several minutes but my phone also couldn’t see the controller’s wifi signal.

Taking one thing at a time, an internet search revealed that the most recent update of the Enjoy-Fly app (1.3.7) turned out to be a disaster and that users should revert to an earlier version. I found version 1.3.4 and this did seem to start on my phone but that still left the controller wifi problem.

The signal has never returned and I can only believe that there’s a controller wireless problem. I’ve emailed Banggood who I bought the drone off so now must wait for a reply and in the meantime, my new drone is totally useless. After the anticipation and build-up waiting for it to arrive, wouldn’t you just know it 🙁