Product Review: Phantom 3 Advanced Drone

I have been very pleased with our purchase of the Phantom 3 Advanced Drone. After taking it on it's maiden flight and then using it to film some shots for a number of different PES film festival movies, I feel as though I am only scrapping the surface of its capabilities!

The Phantom 3 has an amazing full-HD camera with a fully integrated gimbal that creates the most incredibly smooth professional shots. It has excellent safety features, perfect for new pilots, which include: sensors, satellite navigation and a return to home button (RTH) for when you have to do an emergency landing. it is very easy to fly, especially if you have lots of experience playing Playstation, or the like! My only advice when flying however, is to make sure you have a spotter who is watching the drone from the ground. This allows you to fly using the camera view on your controller.The app is also the best drone flight app tat I have ever used. It's well worth searching for Youtube clips showing the app in action.

A couple of things that aren't as good as they can be are firstly, the battery life. The 20 minutes goes really quickly, especially when you should be heading for home once the battery reaches 10%. If you want to buy more batteries, they aren't cheap! At a minimum of $350 extra battery life isn't coming cheap! Secondly, if you are an android user (if not, you should! It is the superior phone after all!) there isn't much in the way of Android support.

So, it is easy to say...it is well worth spending your money on this Drone!


DJI Phantom 3 Advanced Features
(Source: First Quadcopter)

• Vision positioning system (visual and ultrasonic sensors);
• GPS+GLONASS dual positioning system;
• 2.7K video recording;
• 12MP photo resolution;
• 3-axis stabilization gimbal with remote control of the tilt angle (90° to +30°);
• 720p HD downlink (with up to 5KM range);
• Auto-takeoff through DJI Pilot App;
• One key return to home (RTH);
• Failsafe auto return to home;
• Auto flight logs;
• Versatile mobile APP;
• Intelligent flight modes (Follow Me, Point of Interest, Waypoints, Course Lock and Home Lock)
• Smart flight battery with charging level indicator;
• About 23 minutes flight autonomy.

Some example footage from our DJI Phantom 3 Advanced Drone:

   

Pt England Ambassadors @ Epsom - 2017

Today I had an opportunity to step in for Dorothy Burt and present our learning to students studying to be teachers at the University of Auckland in Epsom.

I took with me the year 6 Ambassadors to start off the session - and they were fantastic! They did an excellent job of passionately describing how they learn and what works for them. What was interesting for me was to watch young people (the uni students) who were very paper based in their own approach to learning listening to kids half (or more) of their age describe how to learn in a way that is better, more natural for this day and age. The ambassadors were way more tech savvy and described an ever increasingly 'normal' classroom for 2017 to up and coming teachers who were in essence quite anti learning in this way - it was so totally not what I thought would happen! However, by the end of the session I think we had shifted some mindsets and ways of thinking. From questions asked throughout the session it became clear that the uni students were starting to connect to the following key ideas - Rewindable + Visible + Transparent + Personalised + Accessible - and that these result from teaching and learning in a digital way.