In just a split second my Holy Stone HS720-4K drone came crashing to the ground. Luckily, only 2 arms broke clean. I think I can fix it. The Holy Stone HS720-4K that I received as a gift is now broken. I crashed my drone by pressing the RTH(return home) button and the quadcopter drone caught the outer fringe of a pine tree limb and came crashing to the ground. Of course, you would think it would auto-correct and recover, but that is not the case in this case. I wonder if drones have auto-correct / auto-recover in some of the more expensive models from DJI, Autel Robotics, SHIYANLI, or YANSHU.
This SHIYANLI drone is $18,000. This drone is designed for work. Agricultural spraying and the like. I bet it has some serious programming to help with flying and NOT crashing.
Some of the more popular brands of drones have less costly versions that are not meant for commercial applications. Then they also have the big $$$ drones for photography and also drones for inspections. Peforming inspections with drones has become more popular in the last few years as the camera technology has improved on the drones. 4K is now a standard item on most drones.
The Holy Stone HS720-4K is more of an amateur drone that does have a pretty decent camera. That is along with ease of use setting up and flying. Besides all that it is a somewhat simple process of downloading the videos and photos. This is the part that I like, because saving the better videos and photos to use in social media and YouTube is what the camera is for. I use Android, but iPhone has to be even easier right? I wouldn’t know.
Flying a Quadcopter drone is much different than flying a helicopter or airplane from RC days gone by. The quadcopter drone is very responsive to the controls. It’s almost like playing a video game, except that you don’t get a new life or regenerate once you’ve crashed. I mean, unless it doesn’t break. Once that happens, you’re down and out until it get’s fixed, or you buy a new drone.
All in all, I am very happy with the Holy Stone HS720-4K. I don’t have any use for it in my job, but could see where it might come into play at some point. I believe, in order to use a drone commercially, you must be licensed by the FAA. I am not sure about that. Either way, the quadcopter drone is much more forgiving than when I tried to fly an RC airplane many years ago. The camera is also a plus. I still haven’t been able to get the 4K, but I think I know why and hopefully will be able to blog about it soon.
The HS720 by Holy Stone is a great starter drone. This drone is very well built and seems on the heavier side as opposed to the other ones I have seen. Not nearly as expensive as a “Professional” rated drone like the DJI Mavic 2 Pro or the Yuneec H520 Multicamera Drone. This drone has many of the features a professional drone has, but may not be as precise. One of the features that is very forgiving to the pilot is the RTH or Return to Home function. This is the function that lets the pilot relax and by pressing 1 button the drone will return to where it took off. The HS720 also has an automatic RTH function when it gets low on power. There are many settings that can be customized within the flight application on your smartphone.
So after connecting to the drone’s WiFi signal, the camera is then visible through the smartphone app. The phone is placed on the remote or transmitter and can be piloted by viewing the camera. Old schoolers, like me, will still look at the drone to see where it is flying. After going through the instructions and initially setting up the drone, 2 buttons put the drone in the air. Then it is a question of “where to we go now?” I like to go above all the trees and look around. The camera is also movable up and down from the remote, and side to side by turning the drone. Once you get used to flying it, it’s just like riding a bike. Except with around 50 more functions and settings.
The HS720 drone also has “follow me” and “point of interest” functions.
The “follow me” function basically follows the remote around. Seemed like it wanted to stay around 20 feet behind me, but may get confused after a couple of flights. I believe learning how to calibrate the drone is a must. I think that when it gets bumped around a bit, it needs to be recalibrated.
The “point of interest” is a little different. This function is also called “orbit”. Find a point of interest and place the drone 15 feet or so out from the point of interest, and the drone will orbit around this point. Now this is a customizable distance. So the camera then focuses on this point of interest and just keeps going around and around until you turn off the function. Then it just hovers where you turned off the function waiting for your command.
Definitely need some space to fly a drone. Buildings and trees around is not a good mix, especially for new pilots. What happens is the drone gets turned around and then you get confused and start making it go this way and that way and bump into something. It will just crash at that point.
They are saying the camera is 4K and there is a setting for 4K (3840 x 2160). I was only able to get 1280 x 720 resolution. Still decent resolution. The instructions say the video is stored on the TF card and in order to view the phone has to be connected to the drone’s wifi. I haven’t tried, but maybe if I plug in my phone to the computer in order to download the video while the drone is turned on and my phone is connected to its WiFi it will be available. I’ll have to put that on my list.
In just a split second my Holy Stone HS720-4K drone came crashing to the ground. Luckily, only 2 arms broke clean. I think I can fix it. The Holy Stone HS720-4K
All in all, I am very happy with the Holy Stone HS720-4K. I don’t have any use for it in my job, but could see where it might come into play at some point. I believe, in order to use a drone commercially, you must be licensed by the FAA. I am not sure about that. Either way, the quadcopter drone is much more forgiving than when I tried to fly an RC airplane many years ago. The camera is also a plus. I still haven’t been able to get the 4K, but I think I know why and hopefully will be able to blog about it soon.
