TEST: Funsnap Idol, Yet Another Selfiedrone

[Drone News]

INTRODUCTION

The Funsnap Idol is a new challenger in the category of selfie drone. It’s a new competitor for the Zerotech Dobby, Alphatech, Rcmoment drone and many many others. The Idol is a foldable brushless machine equiped of a 1080p@30fps 1/3″ sensor relatively easy to transport. You have officially a flight stablization done via GPS for outdoors and a camera/ultrasonic sensors more for indoors applications. The machine is relatively smart with a visual target tracking, gesture recognition and three basic selfiedrone flight modes. Let’s discover this machine.

BOX CONTENT

+ 1 x Funsnap Idol
+ 1 x 2S 1800mAh LiHV battery
+ 1 x Charger
+ 1 x AC/DC Power unit
+ 4 x Spare props (2 CW, 2 CCW)
+ 1 x Instruction manual (English)

The proprietary charger. A blinking blue light is here when charging and becomes solid as soon as the charge is done. Expect 1h to full charge the battery from a depleted situation.

OVERVIEW

First of all, the machine is surprizingly not small …. a 190mm unfolded and more with the full external dimensions (250mm). Not sure, it’s really compatible with selfiedrone applications.

-FRONT VIEW
The design is very similar to the RCmoment drone with a unique tube body and two latteral propguard/arm system.

Good news, no occlusion at all for camera recordings whatever the tilt angle of the camera.

-SIDE VIEW
On each side, a small landing skid is here to stabilize correctly the machine on the ground.

The left side presents a microUSB port where you can extract recorded photos&videos. There is a 8Gb builtin memory. No possibility to extend it, at least easily. You will need to power the machine to correctly access to these files.

-REAR VIEW

A unique power button. You must hold it more than 5s to power the machine. The light start from blue to red when fully powered. You will hear the ESC boot buzzing.

-UPPER VIEW

It’s really easy to unfold the machine and thanks to these four magnet pads… arms remain in place without problem.

-BOTTOM VIEW

For low altitude (<= 1.5m) and indoors flight, a small VPU and ultra sonic sensor are here to stabilize the machine.

-WEIGHT

More than 360g with the battery…… Clearly it’s heavy !!!!!! and no stablized gimbal in the menu…. Ok Ok one would say it’s a 180USD machine…. and free lunch for that price.

Motors and props

Some triblade props

LiHV battery

A Large 1800 mAh 2S LiHV. Expect 1h to charge it. Insert the battery by the front first then press the rear side until you hear to clips.

To release the battery, it’s easier to fold first the machine to press the two latteral plastic clips.

Camera module

A 1/3″ CMOS sensor with 77 degrees of FOV… Not super wide…

At least the gimbal can be controlled manually via the appz. Even a positive angle can be applied, around +15 degrees

and almost -90 degrees. Ideal for the rocket selfie flight mode.

Here is a raw video sample. As you can see no EIS …. but in windfree condition, results are not so bad. The camera sensor’s job is correct in term of color rendition and light sensifitivity.

Strange thing, for some mp4 recording, we have a variable datarate

or a fixed one to 30fps.

UNBOXING, ANALYSIS AND DEMO FLIGHT

You must download the “Funsapp Idol” appz available for both iOS and Android. For android, two important remark must be done.
1) For some of my Android 7 devices, the appz was not available in google play. I had to install the corresponding APK file manually
2) The connexion is done with a 5.8G WiFi link you must have a compatible 802.11 ac device but it’s not over… The link is done via the channel 153 and no possibility to change the channel. In practice, it means that a lot of europeans android owners…. you won’t be able to connect your device to the Idol….. It’s really a shame that there is no parameters/procedure to change this chanel. If you are living in US/China, you should have no problem of connexion.

Proof of the poor instruction manual quality…. the password for the WiFi connexion is even not printed. Luckely, it’s the classic: “123456789”. For the first connexion, I upgraded the FC firmware. Be aware, the procedure is 5min long. You will have to wait until the machine autopoweroff.

You can feel that the appz is far to be mature. For example, the top horizontal bar where current craft dynamic information are displayed is almost unreadable even with a 10″ tablet. I don’t like also the two top right button. One for the advanced features and for the craft setting. For the craft settings, you can choose between two speed modes, between mode 2 and mode 1 controls and to turn on/off headless mode. For the advanced features, we have a mix between the (intelligent tracking&gesture recognition) and the three selfiedrone flight modes: dronie/orbit and rocket. For the intelligent tracking, you need first to turn on this feature before to select a rectangle in the central area where is the target of interest is epected to be. Why this button is not directly available from the main interface ?. For the the gesture recognition..it’s even more pity…. There is no instruction at all about the pre-programmed gestures…. Incredible….
At least the associated visual algorithm associated with the target tracking works correctly…. but far to be fantastic. It’s not hard to loose the track especially with very strong sunrays. More ….. the machine only center the target via yaw moves but I didn’t observe any forward/backard/left/right movements…. to follow the target….

Concerning the three selfiedrone modes… the circular is not an orbit one !!! it’s just a clockwise 360 degrees self-rotation on itself…. It’s absoluptly not rotating around the person holding the smarphone/tablet…. Crap. The dronie and the rocket are more classic …. Two important remark:
1) There is no way to change one setting of these three flight modes
2) When turned on, these modes turn on then off automatically the video recording.

The machine fixes GPS/Glonass satellites relatively fast and the stability of the machine pretty good. In another hand, the Idol is noisy…. it will be hard in a park to use this machine if it’s crowdy. Finally the most annoying point, especially versus competitors…. is the absence of EIS (Electronic Image Stabilization)…. Results are not bad in windfree conditions…. I didn’t observe major frame rate disorders especially for fast yaw mouvements…. but as soon as the wind will blow a bit more …. don’t expect miracle in term of video stabilization. The flight duration is also not impressive …. around 8-9min…

CONCLUSIONS

Unfortunatly the Funsapp Idol is not the selfiedrone of the year…. Too many drawbacks: heavy, large, no EIS, immature appz, poor flight time. More the advanced features can’t be tuned at all so hard to shoot your favorite snapvideo with. In another hand, it’s not a complete fiasco, the stabilization and the 1080p recording are not bad, better than the RCmoment drone for example but globally the zerotech dobby is still superior to this iDol.

PROS

+ Correct 1080p@30 videos
+ Correct 720p FPV link
+ Foldable
+ Good & accurate Visual&GPS stabilization
+ 1-axis gimbal controlable via the appz

CONS

– No EIS
– 5.8G FPV transmission incompatible with a lot of european Android (Channel 153)
– Poor/incomplete appz where a lot of parameters can’t be tune (camera/selfie flight modes, etc…)
– Not small
– No real target tracking
– Poor visual tracking performances
– No real Orbit mode
– Dronies flight modes force to stop the current 1080p recording
– > 360g
– Noisy
– Propguard innefficient to protect fingers from bottom side
– 8-9 min of flight time

This quadcopter have been courtesy provided by Banggood in order to make a fair and not biased review. I would like to thank them for this attitude.
You can find it actually for 179USD at https://www.banggood.com/FUNSNAP-iDol-AI-Gesture-Recognigtion-WIFI-FPV-With-1080P-HD-Camera-Foldable-RC-Drone-Quadcopter-p-1301722.html

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