GoPro Karma Foldable Quadcopter

Introduction

A well-known man­u­fac­tur­er of the best action cam­eras has intro­duced its brand new prod­uct — the Kar­ma drone. Accord­ing to the cre­ators of the drone, the main task was to imple­ment a UAV that dif­fers from oth­ers in its com­pact­ness, ease of use and, of course, high-qual­i­ty pho­to and video mate­r­i­al at the out­put.

Peculiarities

Unlike most of the released prod­ucts of the most famous brands, the GoPro drone has a com­pact size, fold­ing arms and a non-stan­dard cam­era posi­tion. In the quad, it is locat­ed not under it, but in front, thus the pres­ence of the drone rotors in the frame in any flight modes was exclud­ed.

For the rest, the quad was endowed with the stan­dard fea­tures of top drones with the let­ter Smart: auto take­off, auto land­ing, alti­tude hold, return home, etc. Every­thing here is done in such a way that absolute­ly any­one who does not have expe­ri­ence in own­ing a UAV can ful­ly use all the func­tions of the drone and enjoy this process.

Shooting modes

The Kar­ma drone received six pre­set shoot­ing modes with which the pilot can real­ize any cre­ative idea:

1. Fol­low — allows the drone to auto­mat­i­cal­ly fol­low the user by keep­ing it in the cen­ter of the frame through­out the flight. The mode is real­ized by means of GPS.
2. watch — the drone does not fly any­where, it freezes, but the cam­era active­ly mon­i­tors the move­ment of the user with the equip­ment. The mode is real­ized by means of GPS.
3. Dronie — This mode is suit­able for cap­tur­ing beau­ti­ful self­ies, cre­at­ing a wide per­spec­tive. After acti­vat­ing the mode, the drone will rapid­ly move away from the pilot in an upward direc­tion (∠45°), there­by reveal­ing the entire atmos­phere around you.
4. Cable Cam - set the flight points (up to 10 points) between which you want the drone to move, then the pilot’s atten­tion is focused only on shoot­ing, choos­ing his best angle over and over again.
5. Orbit - by acti­vat­ing this mode, the drone will fly around the object for shoot­ing in a cir­cle, keep­ing it in the cen­ter of the frame.
6. Reveal - This is the best mode to start shoot­ing. The drone moves in a straight line, while the cam­era slow­ly changes its angle: first look­ing down, and then smooth­ly ris­es and opens a view of the hori­zon, just like in Hol­ly­wood films.

To get a new per­spec­tive on shoot­ing, the drone cam­era can now take a ver­ti­cal posi­tion with the lens up, with­out cap­tur­ing the drone’s main rotors in the frame.

Accord­ing to the devel­op­ers them­selves, the own­er of the drone should not think about whether to take the drone with him or not, the drone will always be there wait­ing for new shots. The quad is equipped with the most nec­es­sary equip­ment for high-qual­i­ty shoot­ing, both in the air and on the ground.

Equipment

• Drone Kar­ma
• Con­trol equip­ment
• 3‑axis gyro-sta­bi­lized gim­bal
• Bat­tery
• Charg­er
• 6 × rotors
• Kar­ma Grip (for shoot­ing on the ground)
• mount­ing ring
• Kar­ma case (for trans­port­ing the drone and acces­sories)

Appearance

*cam­era not includ­ed.

Karma controller

The remote con­trol has opti­mal dimen­sions with a min­i­mum set of con­trol but­tons. There is noth­ing super­flu­ous, every­thing is intu­itive and log­i­cal, it does not require soft­ware pre­sets. The remote con­trol is equipped with a high-res­o­lu­tion (720p) mul­ti-func­tion­al touch screen. In appear­ance, the con­trol equip­ment is sim­i­lar to a mini Lap­Top. The con­sole has a sim­u­la­tor for pre-flight train­ing, begin­ners will appre­ci­ate it.

Karma Grip

When com­bin­ing a GoPro cam­era with this acces­so­ry, the own­er will always be able to shoot high-qual­i­ty pho­to and video mate­r­i­al from the ground.

Specification

GPS:

Yes

FPV:

Yes

Flight time:

up to 20 min (in prac­tice 17 min)

Drone weight:

1952gr

Drone bat­tery:

4S 14.8V 5100mAh 75.4Wh LiPo

Drone bat­tery weight:

545 gr

Oper­at­ing fre­quen­cy con­trol:

2.4 GHz.

Flight modes:

Follow/Watch/Dronie/Cable Cam/Reveal/Orbit

Max­i­mum ceil­ing above sea lev­el:

4500 m

Max wind resis­tance:

10 m/s

Max­i­mum flight speed:

57 km/h

Max dis­tance:

3 km

Drone bat­tery charg­ing time:

1 hour

Trans­mit­ter screen size:

12.7 cm

Trans­mit­ter screen res­o­lu­tion:

720p

Trans­mit­ter bat­tery life:

4 h

Trans­mit­ter weight:

625 gr

Trans­mit­ter Screen Bright­ness:

900 nits

Trans­mit­ter bat­tery charg­ing time:

2.5 h

Rat­ed charge volt­age:

16.8V 5A

Kar­ma Grip Charg­ing Time:

2 h

Kar­ma Grip Weight:

244.6 gr

Sus­pen­sion weight:

230 gr

Gim­bal move­ment range:

-90° to 0° (down/up)

Cam­era Com­pat­i­bil­i­ty:

HERO6 Black, HERO5 Black, HERO5 Ses­sion, HERO4

Drone light­ing:

LED

Fly­ing envi­ron­ment:

out­doors

Device Com­pat­i­bil­i­ty:

iOS 9 and ear­li­er Android 5.0 and ear­li­er

Price

The GoPro drone has offi­cial­ly been dis­con­tin­ued, but it con­tin­ues to be sold by online retail­ers at the fol­low­ing prices:

1. Drone Kar­ma (with­out cam­era) — 400$
2. Kar­ma + HERO6 Black Cam­era - 600$

Conclusion

GoPro Kar­ma from $400

Func­tion­al­i­ty

10/10

Flight time

9/10

flight qual­i­ties

10/10

com­pact­ness

10/10

Equip­ment

10/10

Reli­a­bil­i­ty

10/10

Price qual­i­ty

10/10

pros

• Design
• Qual­i­ty
• Pro­grammed Modes
• Cam­era posi­tion option
• 3‑axis gim­bal oper­a­tion
• Kar­ma Grip (Includ­ed)
• Con­trol equip­ment (does not require the use of mobile devices)
• Drone trans­port case

Minuses

• No cam­era includ­ed (total price)
• No obsta­cle detec­tion sen­sors
• Flight time
• Flight range (in prac­tice in the city about 700 meters)

Accord­ing to new trends, a mod­ern drone should not only fly well, shoot well and have autonomous qual­i­ties, but now, with all this, it must be com­pact. GoPro pre­sent­ed its first drone in accor­dance with the require­ments and it should be not­ed that the “first pan­cake” came out very even noth­ing. Kar­ma is suit­able for any pilot with­out ref­er­ence to the expe­ri­ence of own­ing a UAV for high-qual­i­ty pho­to / video shoot­ing any­where and at any time.

A photo

Pho­to with Kar­ma drone.

Video

Video with Kar­ma drone.

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