Tag Archives: hoten-x

Walkera Hoten-X with 808 #16 wide angle camera, sample footage

The following two short clips were shot in Villa Borghese in Rome with the Walkera brushed Hoten-X quadcopter with wide angle 808 camera #16 setup illustrated in the previous post. Video was stabilized with Final Cut.

The light was just perfect at around 8 in the morning, shortly after sunrise. Wind was very gentle.

So unless I improve my pilot skills, which is actually happening every day, this is about the best I can get now with this equipment. It’s starting to be decent although still far from the nice footage I am aiming at.

Stay tuned for developments!

An aerial view of the Globe Theatre in Rome, Villa Borghese

An aerial view of the Pincio in Rome, Villa Borghese

Walkera Hoten-X with 808 #16 Camera

So far we have been experimenting a bit with the most small devices, Hubsan H107C and Walkera Ladybird or Spacewalker with a normal 808 camera onboard. The video we could capture with those, is basically poor. This is because the quadricopters are very small, lightweight and wind sensitive. This makes the video inherently shaky. The relatively low quality of the cameras does not really help to get a great result.

Those are still valid devices maybe in situations in which a bigger drone would attract unwanted attention, and the event to be captured is still worth the poor quality, maybe because it is interesting for other reasons anyway, as it happens for so many videos we see on youtube.

Anyway, as a next step I took of the DEVO-4 FPV camera off my brushed Hoten-X quadcopter and I built a little sorbothane basis to attach a 808 #16 camera with a velcro strap.  Since the lens of the camera was nearly to the floor after mount, some foam was added to skids to gain some free space under the camera. See the picture gallery.

The resulting video is a net improvement over the previously captured footage. Stability is much better, no traces of Jello effect, possibly thanks to the sorbothane mount and the mount for the DEVO-4 with little rubber foots that I left in place.