Skytech TK110HW Foldable Quad With Height Hold Function

A review of a fair­ly suc­cess­ful and rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive quad­copter from Skytech, which boasts the abil­i­ty to fold, auto­mat­ic alti­tude hold and con­trol, both using the com­plete con­trol pan­el and using a smart­phone / tablet. A fresh “trick” in the world of quad­copters today is the abil­i­ty to fold/unfold the arms of the engines, which allows you to sig­nif­i­cant­ly (up to 2 or more times) reduce the space required for stor­ing the quad­copter, as well as pro­tect the device from dam­age dur­ing its trans­porta­tion.

The Chi­nese com­pa­ny Skytech has released its next nov­el­ty under the index TK110HW, in which such an oppor­tu­ni­ty was suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed.

The tech­ni­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of the quadric are as fol­lows:

• Engine type: col­lec­tor
• Radio con­trol: 4‑channel
• Sta­bi­liza­tion: 6‑axis
• Cam­era res­o­lu­tion: 0.3MP
• Remote con­trol range: up to 50 m
• Smart­phone con­trol range: up to 30 m
• Bat­tery: 3.7V 850mAh Lipo
• Charg­ing time: about 110 min.
• Flight time: 8–14 min­utes (depend­ing on load)
• Weight with­out bat­tery: 390 gr.
• Unfold­ed size: 360x360x85 mm

Avail­able “chips”:

• Con­trolled by remote con­trol or smartphone/tablet
• Dou­ble costs, acro­bat­ic som­er­saults (flips)
• FPV over WiFi
• Auto return
• Head­less Mode
• Smart­phone tilt con­trol func­tion (grav­i­ty sen­sor)
• Auto­mat­ic take­off and auto­mat­ic land­ing with one but­ton
• Ded­i­cat­ed baro­met­ric sen­sor for auto­mat­ic alti­tude hold
• Flight along a giv­en tra­jec­to­ry

The quadro­copter is deliv­ered in a good, dense, two-lay­er pack­age.

In addi­tion to the device itself, the pack­age includes:

• detach­able 0.3MP cam­era;
• 3.7V 850mAh LiPo bat­tery;
• USB charg­er;
• screw­driv­er;
• spare blades (4 pcs.);
• blade pro­tec­tion (4 pcs.);
• smart­phone clip;
• instruc­tion in Eng­lish.

The reg­u­lar con­trol pan­el is sup­plied with the infor­ma­tion mono­chrome LCD dis­play.

The remote con­trol is pow­ered by four AA bat­ter­ies / accu­mu­la­tors.

On the front end of the remote con­trol there is a flip but­ton (som­er­sault) and a but­ton to turn off the “dual costs” mode. Also, in the upper part there are sep­a­rate but­tons for turn­ing on the Head­less mode and the auto­mat­ic take­off / land­ing mode.

To free the quadric from the box, I had to tin­ker a bit. The yel­low stripe on the hull is a warn­ing about how to cor­rect­ly lay out the beams with the engines so as not to dam­age them out of igno­rance.

When fold­ed, the copter fits eas­i­ly in the palm of your hand.

The motor gear­box­es are cov­ered with trans­par­ent over­lays, under which there are also back­light LEDs (green — at the back, red — at the front).

Near each beam there is a small chrome but­ton, which is a lock of the unfold­ing mech­a­nism.

If you need to fold/unfold any of the beams, this but­ton must be kept pressed.

This is what the copter looks like unfold­ed.

How­ev­er, he no longer seems quite a toy.

At the bot­tom there is a 0.3MP video cam­era unit with 2.4GHz video trans­mis­sion (via WiFi) and a bat­tery com­part­ment.

The angle of the cam­era can be adjust­ed ver­ti­cal­ly.

The cam­era unit itself is remov­able, inte­grat­ing the WiFi mod­ule. If there is no need to shoot, you can remove it and add a cou­ple more min­utes to the flight time of the copter by reduc­ing weight.

The bat­tery com­part­ment is designed with­out any mar­gin in size, so I had to rack my brains a lit­tle to find a posi­tion in which it could be closed with the con­nec­tor con­nect­ed.

To charge the bat­tery, you must use the bun­dled cable with a USB con­nec­tor, which can be con­nect­ed both to a com­put­er and to any charg­er with an appro­pri­ate USB sock­et.

To turn it on, you need to press and hold the but­ton on the back of the copter for a while until it starts flash­ing LEDs and then turn on the remote con­trol for syn­chro­niza­tion.

It is very con­ve­nient to use auto­mat­ic mode for take­off and land­ing. Just press the but­ton and the copter takes off on its own to a height of about 1.5 meters from the sur­face.

Press­ing again — the device low­ers itself and turns off the engines.

The auto­mat­ic alti­tude hold func­tion does not require any acti­va­tion, sim­ply by reach­ing the desired alti­tude, you can release the stick and the air­craft will hold it on its own.

All con­trol func­tions can be used with­out a stan­dard remote con­trol, con­trol­ling the copter using a smart­phone or tablet via WiFi. To do this, you need to down­load the spe­cial WiFi GO appli­ca­tion, install the cam­era unit and turn on the copter. After that, in the list of avail­able net­works, find the one cre­at­ed by the copter called SKY_WIFI_, con­nect to it and launch the appli­ca­tion.

The screen will dis­play the con­trols of the copter, as well as the image from the cam­era itself.

In a spe­cial mode on the screen, you can draw a tra­jec­to­ry along which the copter will fly. True, this must be done either in a very large room or on the street, because. there should be plen­ty of room to maneu­ver.

In addi­tion, the pro­gram can be switched to con­trol mode using the tilt sen­sor of the smart­phone. After that, the copter will be con­trolled by tilt­ing the device in the desired direc­tion. These con­trol modes can be seen in the video at the end of the review.

As it turned out, the copter is very easy to oper­ate and even a novice “pilot” can han­dle it. A big role in this is played by the abil­i­ty to auto­mat­i­cal­ly hold the height, in which you do not need to wor­ry that as a result of a rash or too abrupt change in the posi­tion of the con­trol stick, the copter will fall or hit the ceil­ing.

If desired, in com­plete calm, of course, you can even remove your fin­gers from the con­trols and watch how the copter impos­ing­ly bar­rages in the air “by itself”.

In gen­er­al, the quad turned out to be very suc­cess­ful, its main draw­back is only video shoot­ing, which, first­ly, can only be per­formed on a smart­phone, because. The quad­copter does not have a slot for a mem­o­ry card, and sec­ond­ly, the qual­i­ty of this very shoot­ing is rather mediocre. But in this case, it is nec­es­sary to recall the small cost of the copter, which could not have been so if the devel­op­ers had installed a good, expen­sive cam­era in it, as in a beard­ed joke about a taxi — “Do you want check­ers or go?”.