Gadget Review - UDI U818A Drone

Hey, first off, this thing is awesome. Straight out of the box, the drone batteries are pre-charged, so all you have to do is pop 4 AA batteries into the remote controller and you’re good to go! Packaging was secure and well organized. I recommend keeping the box as it acts as a great carrying case for travel and such. For you folks coming over from Amazon, I figured I would do my review here on my blog as to save space on Amazon’s review section of this product’s page. Anyhow, I have been using one of these units for the past 4 months now and saying it is cool is a complete understatement. In public, the question I get asked the most is “Don’t you need to register it with the FAA?” Sort answer: No, because it is under 1/2 a pound. Amazingly, with the battery installed, it weighs about 1/4 pound.

As you can see, the propellers and their driver motors are separated by a gear system in order to prevent strain on the motor thus making it last longer.

Flying. You will get the hang of it. Is has built-in flexible plastic bumpers all the way around, so run it into as many walls as
you wish.

The Remote Controller. Nothing special here. Although,
I do have to say the responsiveness from the drone is darn near immediate to my commands from the remote controller.

The Video. Yes, the video. My favorite part, and the primary reason for me wanting this thing. It is HD, low quality HD, but nevertheless HD. Notice I say video not sound. Obviously, all you hear is the propellers. Just that high-pitched constant noise. Here is some footage I took this past weekend, the sound is muted, other than that, the video has not been altered. From about 200 feet up.

Durability. This thing is very well built. In my testing, I have dropped this thing from upwards of 200 feet onto sheer concrete more than once, just a couple of scratches, no broken parts, still works 100%.

 Maintenance? No, just keep it out of the water. One of my favorite things to do with it is flying high and across ponds, lakes and rivers. That makes for great video. What I do, before I take-off,
I go-ahead and press the video button on the remote controller to begin recording because I can edit the video down later. It’s not like you are wasting film or anything.

Cost. Let’s talk about cost. What cost? This thing is 100 bucks. Totally worth it, it’s a bargain.

Trees. This deserves it’s own section. Trees are your worst enemy. I both lost it in the top of a 60 foot tree after the wind easily carried it over there for me and a 10 mph gust took it from me and carried it into a heavily wooded area where I searched for it for a good 30 minutes at sunset with less than 1/2 battery life left in it. In this situation, I used the remote controller drone signal meter to locate it, I likely wouldn’t have located it otherwise. Good engineering.
Avoid trees.

My Favs. Here are my favorite features of this product. Very lightweight. Great camera. Memory card for ease of media transfer. Return home function (Thank you gyroscopes.) Headless mode
(turn on to keep flying the direction you are pointing the joystick, regardless of the front of the drone. Thank you gyroscopes.)
Fast speed setting (for those windier days.) and durability
(not waterproof). Lastly, audible beeping from remote controller when drone battery starts getting low.

Pros. Very fun. Easy to fly and maneuver. Camera quality is very good (especially for how small the camera lens is on the thing).

Cons. Battery life = 10-15 minutes. ~200 foot remote control distance. Easy to loose in winds of +2 mph. Must be somewhat stabilized for good video shots. No GoPro/camera mount. No app.

Get it, now. I now own one.

 

Verdict:  out of 5

App Review – Wunderlist

Let me tell you something about a little app called Wunderlist. This free, cross-platform, power-horse of a todo list is amazing and is something I have been needing for my day-to-day for a while now. It does just that. Plain and simple, you make a list on your computer and check the items off on your phone or tablet as you run your errands around town. No more utilizing OneNote for this daily task for me anymore. Cons? I don’t see any. Get it today, trust me.
Verdict: /5

W10 so far

I got Windows 10 running on multiple rigs throughout my wide-spread weekly geographical locations. I like it, it is snappy, very clean, very light and easy to work with, chocked full of useful tools some deeply hidden, and consistent. Those are just my top (positive) reasons for the new OS. I really like having the close-to-exact experience across all these rigs. This way, when problems arise (and someone needs my remote assistance) I can easily dial-into their computer and help them out. This makes my job sooooo much easier. It’s clean, light fast and it works (most of the time it works).

So, let me talk about the other times when it doesn’t work. I have run across 2 circumstances where this OS became unstable big time. Let me explain the problems and how I resolved them. First, my personal rig. Long-story-short I would be working along just fine for 20 or so minutes, then suddenly the entire machine would completely freeze (sometimes the speakers making loud, drawn-out tone). This drove me up the wall for weeks, and after investigating the event viewer,reconfiguring all the ram and HDD’s in all configurations feasible, and installing a beefier PSU, it turned out to be the damn USB microphone. I kid you not, people of the interwebs, the mic. So, now I just sit here with it switched off and have no problems at all (knock on wood). Now for the other time, my roommate’s computer. About 2 weeks ago (I guess), his would periodically not load webpages and BSOD on him randomly with different excuses/causes. Ranging from ”Memory Managment”, “Drive Failure” and the confusing “System PTE Misuse”. So,
I tried everything to his that I did to mine, to no avail. Here’s what I did. Updated to latest version of BIOS, reset BIOS to “Failsafe Settings”, formatted OS SSD, clean-installed W10Home to SSD (successfully). EXACT SAME ERROR MESSAGES on following boot! Long-story-short on this one, it turned-out to be a bad stick of RAM. To be honest, that was one of the first things I mentioned to him when he reported to me about his computer acting up. So, he is happy and I am happy.

Moral of the story: Unplug your microphone and test all your RAM.

Please don’t let these 2 experiences discourage you from Windows 10

So long WLW, Hello OLW

I got Windows 10 (about 5 Months ago?) and I have been itching to start blogging a little again (Happy New Year and Valentines Day btw). Anyways, I had been using Windows Live Writer in the past and Recently discovered (today) that it no longer works with blogger. As you can see in that article, it introduced me to Open Live Writer. Very nice … or very same thing? lol. Whatever, all I know is that it works. Awesome, lets gets stared.

What the hell is this? What was I thinking when I created this blog? Let's just see were it goes, post whatever you want people.