With the Voyager5 Walkera have created a modern platform, with IP43 weather rating, dual IMU, GPS and Compass for reliable operation, optical-flow to steady the aircraft during take-off and landings, and when flying in environments with poor or no GPS signal, and a number of attractive payload options. Including Thermal camera package, 30x zoom package and more. Click through for the full post.
** Im still writing this post, and will be adding pictures and details over the next couple days, pitch in below with questions and stuff you like to see added to the write-up.
PREFACE
If you have been following Walkera the last decade or so, you could say its about time, just couple years ago the company manufactured a series of large hobby quads that was notoriously unreliable, I owned several and learned to operate knowing their weaknesses, but that was far from ideal.
For commercial operation you need platforms that are reliable all day long, and Walkera demonstrated this firmly beginning 2016 with the Voyager 4, I have had a Voyager4 for about a year, and am comfortable saying, up until now, the Voyager 4 was hands down the best multirotor from Walkera ever. it was reliable, boringly predictable, and did exactly what I expected from it at any time. Its biggest short coming was the short battery life.
With that, the stage is set for the all new Voyager 5. So far I have flown it only about a week, and its already proving a worthy successor to my trusty Voyager4. its far easier to deploy than the V4, build like a tank and reassuringly smooth in take-off and landing.
The take-off / landing personality is mostly a product of the optical-flow camera system. that manages drift at low altitude. As soon as it gets up a bit, the GPS system takes over, and so far my experience says that the Voyager 5 stays solid even when coming up into wind. overall, im very pleased with the flight characteristic.
UP close and personal the Voyager5 is a beast of a drone, its ready-to-fly take off weight is 10.6 pounds or about 4.8kg. this is a lot beefier than your average consumer drone, but even hauling 5kg through the sky, the Voyager5 feels quick and precise to fly, you can easily manage it in the sky with precision.
Flight time
The FlightTime was a biggie with the V4, and walkera have dealt with it firmly, the new V5 have 3 batteries, (it is capable of flying on just one if need be) flying the V5 naked (no camera or payload) it have been tested to about 41 minutes before auto landing, hanging the beefy 30X zoom camera on the platform, reduce the flight time to about 30 minutes. practically speaking I tend to land between 20-25 minutes and my low voltage is set to 30%.
Drift-camera (AKA Optical Flow)
Walkera have finally completely implemented the downward looking camera for managing drift and positioning at low altitudes. this is especially important at take-off and landing where in the old days multirotor tended to want to slide a bit sideways as soon as they got off the ground. the Voyager4 had that solved, and the Voyager5 is perfect coming straight up as it was on a lift. no sliding its rock stable.
The down-facing camera also manage stability when flying indoor,
I flew the Voyager5 at 2m (6feet roughly) indoor in a metal roof building with no GPS signal.. the app indicated optical-flow active and the aircraft was locked in place just like it would have been outdoor. *I have not yet tested the height limits for the optical flow, but thats probably not a big issue since eventually we have to move out-door to get higher anyway.
FLIGHT CONTROLLER
The Voyager5 have a new flight controller utilizing dual GPS-GLOSNAS receivers along with dual compass and IMU systems for increased flight stability. using dual IMU & GPS systems is the trend in all commercial systems, as it protect agains drop-outs and mid-flight failures.
While not common on consumer systems, I feel dual systems is a requirement for commercial operation, this make the Voyager5 a comfortable choice for commercial missions.
Weather proofing
The Voyager5 is advertised as being IP43 rated, that technically speaking means resisting water drops at angles less than 60 degrees. so not resisting completely sideways water but most. that should probably do the trick, that said, Im not sure I'm keen on testing this.
4K 30X optical zoom
At the moment the most notable camera for the Voyager5 is the 4K 30x zoom camera. I have not yet concluded testing, but resolution is good on the wide end, with resolution falling off after 15x zoom. The camera is optical zoom, this is probably related to some degree of digital image stabilization which is required to stabilize the image at full zoom. The amount of data you can pull out of the image at 30X is significantly more than you get from the wide shot. so yes, it is proper optical zoom, not just enlarging pixels. Frankly a very impressive camera.
The camera is designed for surveillance and industrial inspection applications. its NOT designed for pretty picture profiles. however it may also be quite interesting for news-teams because of the long zoom on a aerial platform, for those days when the content of the image outweighs a slightly inferior image quality for broadcast.
Here is a frame-grab from the video, the right is full 30x zoom, to the left is the shot before zooming in, shot from 100m range.
* The aircraft is also available without cameras as just a airframe.
* The X30 camera is interchangeable with the X18 camera from the Voyager4 series, you should be able to bring your 18x camera from the Voyager 4 along to a Voyager5 platform if you wanted to.
IN DEVELOPMENT
At the moment Walkera have a Thermal camera in test for the voyager5, and are developing a more standard non-zoom 16megapix camera intended for 3D mapping mostly. but it may also serve as a good entry level camera on the Voyager for users who do not need the more expensive zoom or thermal camera options.
EDIT, there is currently also a agriculture analysis camera system available, this is a complete software package. contact Walkera or shoot me a PM for more information.
YES 30X OPTICAL ZOOM
Did a couple shots at the office to get a if the camera actually did have optical zoom. you can see the wide shot on top with the electric outlet marked with a red box to show roughly the space of the zoomed in shot.
First the wide shot, optical zoom at full wide, even at fully wide you have a far longer shot than the typical drone camera.
Here is the zoomed in shot, full optical zoom, take a close look at the composite below, click to see at 100%, OK so this is NOT the worlds best zoom, but it definitely do the job, the digital file with the zoom holds a lot more details than the wide shot.
The third image is a composite at 100% (when you click on it to see full size) you can easily see that the right shot holds far more details than the left which is cropped and scaled up from the first capture.
I shot JPG's and you probably notice the left shot is overly compressed, would like a higher JPG quality setting.. But heck, this camera was not created for photographers and more for surveillance and inspection, I doubt bridge inspectors will spend much time lamenting JPG quality settings.
FLIR VUE
Personally Im most excited about two other gimbals they are working on, as Walkera are creating support for the FLIR VUE and FLIR DuoPro camera with a set of Voyager 4 & 5 gimbals for these cameras, Im one of many users to have picked up a VUE camera for thermal applications, only to find myself and many others flying the VUE in awkward 3D printed inspire mounts. a proper platform for the VUE is a big advantage to the Voyager 4 & 5 series from my perspective as I get calls to fly the thermal one a regular basis and my 3D printed setup is functional but far from ideal.
Battery system
Walkera use a set of 3 batteries on the Voyager5. this is literally 3 times the power of the Voyager4, which is good news for us all because it means we have lots of power for the duration of the flight.
The charging station is a 3 bay brick that charge 3 batteries in one go, after a 25 minute flight the charger took about 90 minutes to recharge the set.
BTW the batteries are 6S (22.8v) 4300mah which add up to the legal shipping limit on each batter of 100wh. naturally the 100wh is also the reason most manufactures started breaking batteries into smaller pieces to keep it easy to travel with the platforms. A possible upside of this development, we can hope manufactures start using the same modules on more platforms moving forward.
Take a CLOSER look, notice whats missing..? Yeah thats right, this picture show the V5 flying with only ONE battery, this is important, because it mean the Voyager5 will continue to fly with two battery failures. naturally you will get a low-battery warning and should land ASAP, but the important part is, that the aircraft is still flying and your investment is safe.
Controller
The controller is mostly the trusty F18 that have accommodated most of the newer Walkera products, its a solid radio with traditional sticks for control, rotating switches have replaced flip-switches, and the deck is clearly lapeled with the functions available in each position. there are 5 lights on the bottom front of the radio indicating charge status, always make sure you have a charged radio when flying.
The F18 radio have a USB out port for tablet connection and require 12v from the battery charger to recharge.
*Remember ALWAYS turn on the radio before powering the aircraft.
OPSTACLE AVOIDANCE
The Voyager5 have a forward facing IR obstacle avoidance sensor. this will keep you from flying into bridges, but are not terrible effective with small branches. So please don't rely on obstacle sensors to keep you from running into stuff. ;-)
Personally I would have liked to see the IR sensor deployed on all 4 sides for 360 obstacle avoidance, this is a small issue, but would make for fantastic support when flying indoor where IR sensors are very effective.
APP (iOS and Android)
The Voyager 4 & 5 both use the slick new APP interface, thankfully Walkera have chosen to make a hard-wired connection to the smartphone-tablet rather than some companies that still use WiFi connections for the flight tablet.
The app is easy to use, fairly well laid out, personally I think all of the app on the market suffers from the developers not being hard-core quad pilots, however the latest Walkera App is surprisingly easy to use and show you the information you need at the time directly without adding confusing information.
FLIGHT TIME
The platform have been flown to 41 minutes "naked" without a camera onboard.
adding the 30x zoom camera it flew to 31 minutes before auto-landing, but remember you may need to fly back from somewhere, so 20 minutes is probably a good time to start thinking about the trip back home.
RANGE
The Voyager5 have been tested to 5km which is roughly 3+ miles, not as far as some, but more than adequate for the design-mission of industrial inspection and event / incident monitoring.
Practically speaking I have virtually never really flown a mission requiring 5 miles of range, both when doing 3D mapping, and inspections I have rarely exceeded 1000m. however for a couple SAR missions we pushed out to about 3 miles. only you can really evaluate the actual needs for your drone operation in terms of range. but its probably safe to say anything past 1000m is far out of the FAA mandated LOS commercial operation requirement.
TRANSPORT CASE
Walkera are good at providing functional transport cases, the Voyager5 standard case is well laid out, easy to get the aircraft in and out from it, its easy to move with 4 rollers and a extendable handle to function as roll-along luggage.
But I can't help wish for a injection moulded case with the same layout. something bullet proof for airplane shipping and traveling around loose in the back of trucks in the desert kinda stuff. I would suggest offering that as a optional case upgrade when ordering the aircraft.
How do this all stack up then?
Wellll... thats always a question hugely depending on your typical missions.
At this time the Voyager5 is a strong value proposition for inspection missions, and will be stronger when the thermal camera package is released.
The 30x camera don't quite cut in for broadcast and photography. the sensor is simply not creating a "pretty" enough file, I suspect its running higher ISO than I would prefer because of the light-loss in the monster optical zoom lens. That is a tradeoff to get some killer zoom shots, engineers, police and fire will surely make that tradeoff in a heartbeat, but photographers will probably take pause here.
Broadcast news then? well, yeah actually probably this will be a interesting news drone, mostly because you can get up to 400 feet and get a tight shot at the long end of the zoom if you don't have a helicopter handy, think of it as a 400-feet pole-cam option.
Chime in below.. what are your suggested Voyager5 missions, how are you using the Voyager5? did I miss features and details or forget weaknesses? chime in and I will try to update the write-up accordingly.
Love the portability factor, for someone like myself thats a big plus though it does not look as good as the previous models in business that cant be a factor..
Posted by: Kevin Knight | 02/02/2019 at 05:32 PM
That is a terrific review of Walkera Voyager 5. It's looks great and is very robust. Love the camera options. This is going to be a terrific choice for site surveying and for search and rescue teams.
Posted by: DroneZon | 04/25/2018 at 03:41 PM