Freefly Alta X: For Film Professionals

Introduction

While the leader in the field of unmanned tech­nolo­gies DJI Inno­va­tions remains silent, com­peti­tors do not sleep. Par­rot — slow­ly but sure­ly, con­tin­ues to con­quer the low­er end of the mar­ket for portable and afford­able drones. Skidio is prepar­ing to release a stand­alone rival for the Mav­ic 2 series drones. And the devel­op­ers from Freefly recent­ly intro­duced a new drone aimed at film pro­fes­sion­als and doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers, which has put new com­pet­i­tive pres­sure on the top UAV mar­ket. The Alta X is a fold­able high-end quad­copter with octo­copter poten­tial, capa­ble of great­ly expand­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy in a qual­i­ty unri­valed today.

About company

Freefly Sys­tems is a fast-grow­ing tech­nol­o­gy and film com­pa­ny that rep­re­sents the inter­sec­tion of art and tech­nol­o­gy. The team con­sists of lead­ing indus­try experts who are focused on one task — the inven­tion of solu­tions that pro­vide unlim­it­ed cam­era move­ment. Ini­tial­ly, the com­pa­ny devel­oped the CineS­tar line of mul­ti-rotor cam­era plat­forms, which made it pos­si­ble to real­ize smooth, sta­ble and dynam­ic aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy from low alti­tudes. After many years of research and devel­op­ment on cam­era sta­bil­i­ty, the com­pa­ny intro­duced the MōVI (MōVI SR/XL/PRO/CARBON) series of cam­era sta­bi­liz­ers. With the arrival of the MōVI, a new era of sta­bi­lized cin­e­matog­ra­phy has opened up across plat­forms rang­ing from hand­held to heli­copter and every­thing in between. The com­pa­ny is pas­sion­ate about inno­va­tion and dri­ves inno­va­tion by design­ing and devel­op­ing film prod­ucts that it uses in its own film pro­duc­tions. The head­quar­ters is locat­ed in Wood­inville, Wash­ing­ton.

Mōvi Carbon

The world’s first hand­held and drone-mount­ed 5‑axis cam­era gim­bal. The devel­op­er has minia­tur­ized, opti­mized and reduced every gram of weight of the 5‑axis design so that the user can shoot in the most inter­est­ing places in the world. The Mōvi Car­bon is equipped with two inter­nal high-speed axes that ensure the cam­era is per­fect­ly sta­ble even in the most dif­fi­cult con­di­tions at full 240mm zoom. Equipped by default with a Pana­son­ic GH5S pro­fes­sion­al cam­era in tan­dem with a Fuji­non XK 20–120mm lens.

The devel­op­er on the new drone: “We designed the Alta X from the ground up to take advan­tage of the ben­e­fits of large and effi­cient pro­pellers while main­tain­ing the pre­cise con­trol and unri­valed pre­ci­sion that the Alta range is renowned for.”

Peculiarities

• Works flaw­less­ly even in the harsh­est envi­ron­ments
• Robust, mul­ti-test­ed, fold­able car­bon con­struc­tion for low vibra­tion and pre­cise flight char­ac­ter­is­tics.
• The Alta X folds at the touch of a fin­ger, reduc­ing it to half its fly­ing size.
• Changes from trans­port to flight in less than 2 min­utes
• The design allows you to quick­ly install the pay­load both at the top of the drone and at the bot­tom
• Fold­able car­bon-nylon pro­pellers are built around a new and unique Active­Blade* mech­a­nism that reduces vibra­tion gen­er­at­ed by the pro­pellers to about one-fifth of nor­mal lev­els.
• Pow­ered by 2 × FreeFly 12S 44.4V 16000mAh 20C 710.4Wh LiPo bat­ter­ies
• Pow­er­ful and reli­able DJI E7000 brush­less motors
• Car­ries up to 16kg pay­load while main­tain­ing a 2:1 thrust-to-weight ratio
• Thanks to the inte­grat­ed quick release sys­tem at the top and bot­tom of the drone, it can be mount­ed with var­i­ous pay­loads, such as: gim­bal, LIDAR, LED back­light, gen­er­a­tor, map­ping equip­ment (with a res­o­lu­tion of 50–100MP), cable and oth­ers
• Cus­tom PX4 Flight Con­trol Stack
• Flex­i­ble soft­ware stack with Aute­ri­on Enter­prise PX4 and MAVSDK sup­port
• RTK sup­port (includ­ing pho­to tags)
• Alta con­trolled by ded­i­cat­ed MAVSDK API soft­ware, which can be used from the ground via radio or via an option­al com­put­er (not includ­ed)
• 7 × flight modes: Man­u­al, Alti­tude, Posi­tion, Mis­sion, Loi­ter, Orbit, Return-to-Launch
• Alta X has 3 5V, 12V DC pow­er out­puts to pow­er pay­loads + an extra row of ports for easy access.
• Max. hor­i­zon­tal flight speed 137 km/h
• Flight time with Mōvi Car­bon (9kg pay­load) over 20 min­utes
• Flight time with max. pay­load (16 kg) more than 10 min­utes
• At low­er loads, the flight time can exceed 40 min­utes
• Flight case holds up to 175% pay­load
• Freefly Sys­tems Part­ners: PX4 and Dronecode/Ublox/Auterion
• Alta X Check­up ser­vice pro­gram (detailed in the FAQ below)
• 24/7 tech­ni­cal ser­vice. real time sup­port
• Spe­cial train­ing pro­gram for future oper­a­tors
• A team of engi­neers is at your dis­pos­al to help you, from cus­tom inte­gra­tions to advice on adapt­ing your pay­load to Alta X.
• Spare parts deliv­ery around the clock
• Pre­dic­tive main­te­nance/Re­al-time air­craft mon­i­tor­ing
• Effi­cien­cy and trans­paren­cy in all aspects of the rela­tion­ship with the client

*Active­Blade mech­a­nism com­pen­sates for dis­sym­me­try in lift and load cycling by turn­ing the blades when the Alta X is oper­at­ing at max­i­mum speeds. The Active­Blade reduces peak vibra­tion lev­els to 1/5 of the lev­el seen with props with­out such a mech­a­nism, result­ing in bet­ter reli­a­bil­i­ty and more pre­cise flight per­for­mance.

Equipment

The devel­op­er offers a drone in a sin­gle con­fig­u­ra­tion. The type of pay­load is select­ed indi­vid­u­al­ly and depends on the tasks of the cus­tomer. These can be devices such as a gim­bal, LIDAR, LED back­light, gen­er­a­tor, map­ping equip­ment (with a res­o­lu­tion of 50–100MP), a cable, and oth­ers.

Includ­ed:

1. 1 × parts kit 910–00417
2. 1 × Alta X frame
3. Relat­ed tool: Screw­driv­er set (Allen Dri­ver Set) 2.0 mm, 2.5 mm and 3 mm

Main add. accessories

Specification

Dimensions

Diam­e­ter in flight con­di­tion (exclud­ing pro­pellers):

1415 mm

Diam­e­ter in flight con­di­tion (includ­ing pro­pellers):

1415 mm

Fold­ed Diam­e­ter:

877 mm

Height:

387 mm

Height (with increased Skyview clear­ance):

434 mm

Power point

Num­ber of motors:

four

Max. con­tin­u­ous motor pow­er:

100A

Max. short-term motor pow­er:

130A (> 3s)

Kv equiv­a­lent:

115 rpm

Propellers

Mod­el:

33×9″

pro­peller type:

840 × 230 mm fold­able

Mate­r­i­al:

car­bon + nylon

Direc­tion of rota­tion:

pro­pellers 2 × CW and 2 × CCW)

battery

Rat­ed bat­tery volt­age:

44.4V

Bat­tery Pow­er Con­nec­tor:

XT-90

Required min­i­mum bat­tery dis­charge:

320A per bat­tery 20C for 16Ah pack

The weight

Max. gross weight for take­off:

34.86 kg

Max. pay­load:

15.9 kg

Typ­i­cal Stan­dard Emp­ty Weight:

10.4 kg

flight controller

Autopi­lot name:

Cus­tom PX4 Flight Con­trol Stack

Flight modes:

Man­u­al, Alti­tude, Posi­tion, Mis­sion, Loi­ter, Orbit, Return

Sup­port­ed radio:

Futa­ba, Spek­trum, PX4 com­pat­i­ble SBUS and PPM receivers

Sup­port­ed radio con­troller teleme­try sys­tems:

sub­ject to volt­age sup­ply to Futa­ba RX Teleme­try

Min. num­ber of chan­nels for the radio con­troller:

5 (Roll, Pitch, Yaw, Throt­tle, Mode)

Sup­port­ed satel­lite posi­tion­ing sys­tems:

GPS/Glonass/Beidou/Galileo

Default data log­ging rate:

vari­able, 25 Hz for basic flight data

Lighting and navigation

Ori­en­ta­tion lights:

at the end of each ref­er­ence beam

Light ori­en­ta­tion col­or options:

col­ors can be set by soft­ware — Red/Orange/Yellow/Green/Cyan/Blue/Purple/White/Off.

FPV Abil­i­ty:

Yes

Appearance

Price and availability

The Alta X quad­copter is sold by the devel­op­er through the FreeFly Store:

1. The price of the stock kit is $15,995.

Main add. acces­sories:

• Mōvi Car­bon (stan­dard) — $45,000
• Alta X 12S Flight Packs — $999.95
• Rec­om­mend­ed EV Peak U4 Enter­prise Drone Charg­er — $799.95
• Addi­tion­al set of blades CW / CCW — $ 79.95
• Sin­gle Motor Pro­peller Set with Active­Blade — $499.95
• Futa­ba 14SG con­trol equip­ment — Alta X with Futa­ba R7008SB receiv­er — $ 700
• Alta X Case (Ship­ping Case) — $1995
• FRX Pro Pair for Alta X (US) — $749.95
• Option­al FPV Sys­tem for Alta X — $299.95

FAQ

Q. What engines does the Alta X use?

A. Alta X uses DJI E7000 motors. After exten­sive test­ing by Freefly, these motors proved to be the most pow­er­ful and reli­able.

Q. Is there an Alta X Synapse ver­sion?

Oh no. The Alta X will run on the PX4 flight stack in a sim­i­lar fash­ion to the Alta 8 Pro.

Q. What is the max­i­mum load capac­i­ty of the Alta X?

A. The max­i­mum gross take­off weight is 34.9 kg above sea lev­el, at 0°C. Full tem­per­a­ture and alti­tude per­for­mance graphs can be seen in the Alta X Flight Man­u­al.

Q. What is an “Active­Blade?”

A. The Active­Blade allows the blades on the Alta X to piv­ot to counter some of the unwant­ed effects of lift dis­sym­me­try and load cycling. The Active­Blade reduces peak vibra­tion lev­els to 1/5 of the lev­el seen with­out the Active­Blade mech­a­nism. This pro­vides bet­ter reli­a­bil­i­ty and more accu­rate flight char­ac­ter­is­tics.

Q. What bat­ter­ies does the Alta X run on?

A. Alta X can work with dif­fer­ent LiPo bat­ter­ies:

• The bat­ter­ies must be 12S, with a nom­i­nal volt­age of 44.4V.
• Run Alta X with only two bat­ter­ies at the same time
• Alta X bat­tery has XT-90 con­nec­tors
• Each bat­tery pack must have a con­tin­u­ous dis­charge rat­ing of 250A or more and max. peak dis­charge pow­er of 500A or more.

Q. What flight con­troller does the Alta X use?

A. For fast and pow­er­ful inter­ac­tion, Alta X uses the same PX4 open flight stack as Alta 8 Pro.

Q. Can I use third par­ty pro­pellers on the Alta X?

Oh no. Pro­pellers should be the same make/model/type as list­ed in the Alta X Flight Man­u­al and always replaced in matched and bal­anced sets.

Q. Is Alta X com­pat­i­ble with DroneCode SDK?

Oh yeah.

Q. What is the range of the Alta X ground sta­tion radio?

A. The Alta X uses a spe­cial­ly pro­grammed FRX Pro to com­mu­ni­cate with the ground sta­tion com­put­er. Oper­at­ing range: 1500m+ (5000’+). Range depends on sig­nal strength set­tings, RF envi­ron­ment, and line-of-sight.

Q. Can we cus­tomize the code on Pix­hawk?

A. Yes, but a lit­tle lat­er. We need to send our code to PX4.

Q. What soft­ware do I need to pro­gram an autonomous way­point flight?

A. You can use the ALTA Ground Con­trol mobile apps or the Mac/PC desk­top app.

Q. What is the Alta X Check­up ser­vice and why is it need­ed?

A. The devel­op­er under­stands that their users will oper­ate Freefly equip­ment in a vari­ety of dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions, rely­ing on the equip­ment to work flaw­less­ly. As such, Freefly rec­om­mends that users ship their used equip­ment at the fol­low­ing inter­vals for inspec­tion to ensure opti­mum long-term per­for­mance and reli­a­bil­i­ty. It is rec­om­mend­ed that Alta be ser­viced once a year or every 1000 flight hours. The cost of this ser­vice: $999.

Freefly will test Alta with a spe­cial focus on:

• Wear/Fatigue Frac­ture Items
• Update/Improve/Revise Com­po­nents
• Con­fir­ma­tion of Per­for­mance Thresh­olds: Motors, Sen­sors

The Alta X Check­up ser­vice will include:

• Ser­vice sum­ma­ry and firmware update.
• Full air­wor­thi­ness check
• Full clean­ing and replace­ment of fas­ten­ers (if nec­es­sary)
• Test­ing and requal­i­fi­ca­tion at the sys­tem lev­el

Video

A devel­op­er about film­ing a pro­mo video for Alta X.

Devel­op­er about Mōvi Car­bon.