Hubsan Zino: With a Drone Through Life

Introduction

As pre­vi­ous­ly sug­gest­ed, the devel­op­er has announced its first fold­able drone, the Hub­san Zino (H117S). The easy-to-use drone is built in accor­dance with mod­ern trends, the fea­tures of which will allow the user to save sig­nif­i­cant moments of life from a bet­ter angle and unchanged for a long mem­o­ry.

Peculiarities

• Fold­able, impact-resis­tant portable design
• GPS/GLONASS posi­tion­ing + barom­e­ter
• Brush­less pow­er plant
• 4K cam­era built on a 1/3‑inch Sony IMX258 CMOS sen­sor in tan­dem with an Ambarel­la A12 proces­sor
• Image sta­bi­liza­tion: 3‑axis motor­ized gim­bal
• Panoram­ic shoot­ing modes
• FPV 5.8GHz WiFi
• 2 × flight modes
• 4 × auto­mat­ic flight modes
• Auto takeoff/landing
• Hold posi­tion
• Pro­tec­tion against loss of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and low bat­tery lev­el
• Max. hor­i­zon­tal flight speed 60 km/h
• Max. flight time 23 min­utes
• Pop­py. FPV removal dis­tance 1km
• Head­less Mode
• Drone weight 700 grams

Equipment

The devel­op­er offers the drone in three trim lev­els:

1. Zino (drone, remote con­trol, drone bat­tery, spare set of pro­pellers and fas­ten­ers, 3 × cables for pair­ing a smart­phone with a Micro USB / Light­ing / Type‑C remote con­trol, charg­er, pow­er sup­ply to charg­er, adapter for con­nect­ing drone bat­tery to charg­er, USB cable for PC con­nec­tion, screw­driv­er, user man­u­al).
2. Zino with an extra Bat­tery (Zino kit + addi­tion­al drone bat­tery).
3. Zino Portable Ver­sion With One Extra Bat­tery (Zino kit + 2 × sets of spare pro­pellers + trans­port bag).

Specification

Brand:

Hub­san

Mod­el:

Zino

Fold­ed dimen­sions:

115×115×90mm

Dimen­sions in flight con­di­tion (L/W/H):

304.6 × 252.4 × 90mm

Flight weight (with­out rotor pro­tec­tion):

707.1 gr

Posi­tion­ing:

GPS + barom­e­ter

Motors:

brush­less

Drone Pow­er:

intel­li­gent bat­tery 3S 11.4V 3100 mAh

Max. flight time:

23 min

Charg­ing time:

180 min

Cam­era:

4K cam­era built on a 1/3‑inch Sony IMX258 CMOS sen­sor; works in tan­dem with the Ambarel­la A12 proces­sor

Max. video res­o­lu­tion:

3840 × 2160 at 30 fps

Sup­port­ed microS­Ds:

FPV:

5.8GHz over WiFi

Video stream qual­i­ty:

1280×720p

Pop­py. FPV Removal Dis­tance:

1km

R/C fre­quen­cy range:

2.4GHz

Appearance

Motors

The drone is pow­ered by four brush­less motors. At the moment, the devel­op­er does not spec­i­fy infor­ma­tion about the per­for­mance of the motors.

Camera

On board the drone is a high-per­for­mance 4K cam­era built on a 1/3‑inch Sony IMX258 CMOS sen­sor, work­ing in tan­dem with an Ambarel­la A12 proces­sor. A 3‑axis mechan­i­cal gim­bal is respon­si­ble for image sta­bi­liza­tion. Max­i­mum video res­o­lu­tion: 3840 × 2160 at 30 fps and a max­i­mum bit rate of 45Mbps. Accord­ing to the devel­op­er, the cam­era has under­gone refine­ment in order to improve its impact resis­tance.

FPV

First-per­son flight for Zino is imple­ment­ed via Wi-Fi at a fre­quen­cy of 5.8 GHz. The pic­ture from the cam­era is dis­played in real time on the dis­play of a smart­phone (IOS / Android) paired with the remote con­trol through the free mobile appli­ca­tion “X‑HUBSAN”. The qual­i­ty of the video stream is 1280 × 720p. Accord­ing to the spec­i­fi­ca­tion, in an inter­fer­ence-free zone, it pro­vides an FPV removal dis­tance of up to 1km.

Panorama shooting mode

Per­forms auto­mat­ic 360° panoram­ic photo/video shoot­ing from the but­ton on the equip­ment.

Flight modes

The user has two flight modes avail­able that deter­mine the poten­tial of the drone:

1. Nor­mal — the angles are min­i­mal, the elec­tron­ics 100% con­trol the hor­i­zon­tal posi­tion of the drone. Suit­able for aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy.
2. Sport — max­i­mizes the flight poten­tial of the drone. Rel­e­vant for dynam­ic first-per­son flight.

Autonomous flight modes

1. Line fly
2. Image track­ing
3. Way­point
4. Return to home (Return to the take-off point when the sig­nal is lost, when the bat­tery lev­el is low and forcibly from the but­ton on the con­trol equip­ment)

Food

The Zino is pow­ered by an intel­li­gent 3‑cell (3S 11.4V) lithi­um-poly­mer bat­tery with a capac­i­ty of 3100mAh. Accord­ing to the spec­i­fi­ca­tion, it pro­vides a max­i­mum flight time of 23 min­utes. In prac­tice, this time was no more than 20 min­utes, which is very com­mend­able.

Control

Hub­san Zino is con­trolled using the includ­ed portable con­trol equip­ment — HT016B, inter­faced with a smart­phone (IOS or Android) through the X‑HUBSAN mobile appli­ca­tion. Oper­ates in the 2.4GHz fre­quen­cy band. Video stream trans­mis­sion in the fre­quen­cy range of 5.8 GHz (Wi-Fi). Accord­ing to the spec­i­fi­ca­tion, in an inter­fer­ence-free zone, it pro­vides a removal dis­tance of up to 1 km.

In prac­tice, this dis­tance was no more than 500m, then pilot­ing in FPV mode becomes not “com­fort­able” due to the grad­ual dete­ri­o­ra­tion in the qual­i­ty of the video broad­cast as you move away. Com­plete loss of video sig­nal occurs at a dis­tance of 990m. Built-in bat­tery (1S 3.7V 2600mAh) Charges with includ­ed charg­er.

Price

The Hub­san Zino quadro­copter is avail­able for pur­chase on the offi­cial web­site of the devel­op­er, as well as on var­i­ous Inter­net trad­ing plat­forms. Hub­san kits are sold at the fol­low­ing prices:

1. Zino — $369.
2. Zino with an extra Bat­tery — $399
3. Zino Portable Ver­sion With One Extra Bat­tery — $419.

Conclusion

Hub­san Zino from $369

Func­tion­al­i­ty

9/10

Flight time

9/10

flight qual­i­ties

8/10

com­pact­ness

8/10

Equip­ment

10/10

Reli­a­bil­i­ty

9/10

Price qual­i­ty

10/10

pros

• Exe­cu­tion qual­i­ty
• Fold­able frame and pro­pellers
• Easy to oper­ate (does not require man­age­ment skills)
• dynam­ic
• Shoot­ing qual­i­ty
• First per­son flight
• Auto­mat­ic flight and shoot­ing modes
• Flight time
• Price

Minuses

• Does not iden­ti­fy obsta­cles
• No rotor pro­tec­tion
• Poor qual­i­ty plas­tic con­trol pan­el
• But­ton indi­ca­tion is hard to read in day­light
• Inac­cu­rate stick oper­a­tion (takes some get­ting used to)
• The TX firmware update pro­ce­dure requires an addi­tion­al 1.5mm JST XH plug.
• Short USB cables (only 10 cm). It is not pos­si­ble to direct­ly con­nect a tablet to them.

A sim­ple and afford­able solu­tion for the imple­men­ta­tion of ama­teur aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy, designed pri­mar­i­ly for a novice user. Hub­san devel­op­ers had to work hard to offer a drone that is in line with cur­rent trends at a very rea­son­able price. The declared poten­tial of the copter is ful­ly con­firmed in prac­tice and will be pos­i­tive­ly eval­u­at­ed by both begin­ners (after mas­ter­ing the pri­ma­ry skills on sim­ple toy UAV mod­els) and advanced pilots (who are look­ing for an afford­able solu­tion). It will show itself as much as pos­si­ble on vaca­tion and trav­el. Age lim­it 16+.

Video

Com­par­a­tive review of shoot­ing qual­i­ty: Hub­san Zino vs Zino Pro vs Zino 2.

Hub­san Zino vs DJI Mav­ic Mini vs Mi Drone 4K.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01yjIN9DtFU

H117S video qual­i­ty after edit­ing in Adobe Pre­miere Pro.

Test of the “Flight by way­points” and “Point of inter­est” func­tions.

Video tak­en from the Hub­san Zino quadro­copter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br6v0pMvCP0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMTD5ITPDtU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGm_99KADoU

Devel­op­er about Hub­san Zino drone.

Video instruc­tions from Hub­san.