Selfie Drone for Beginners With a New Type of Control

Introduction

Eachine’s cat­a­log of bud­get self­ie drones has a new prod­uct with the looks of the pre­mi­um Spark and the com­pact­ness of the Zerotech Dob­by. Unlike the pre­vi­ous mod­els of the fifti­eth series (E5x), the E56 received a new 720p Wi-Fi FPV cam­era with a vari­able angle and a com­plete­ly new type of remote con­trol with a built-in IMU sen­sor. About how much the drone has become bet­ter and more prac­ti­cal than its pre­de­ces­sors thanks to inno­va­tions, we sug­gest that you famil­iar­ize your­self with our detailed review.

Peculiarities

Equipment

About the product

A well-exe­cut­ed bud­get quad­copter, which the devel­op­er posi­tions as a self­ie drone, although it does not have any func­tions and modes with an empha­sis on shoot­ing in the self­ie for­mat. Eachine E56 is made of ordi­nary plas­tic, most like­ly recy­cled.

Thanks to the fold­ing arms, the already com­pact quad is even more portable and fits in almost any pock­et. The fold­ing mech­a­nism of the beams works well, with­out any back­lash, in the extreme flight posi­tion the beams are clear­ly fixed with a char­ac­ter­is­tic click, elim­i­nat­ing any pos­si­bil­i­ty of invol­un­tary fold­ing at the time of a col­li­sion or crash.

On the front of the quad­copter there are two LEDs respon­si­ble for the main light­ing, on the back a pair of LEDs act as sta­tus indi­ca­tors. On the top of the E56, like all mod­ern self­ie drones, is the pow­er but­ton. By hold­ing it down for more than three sec­onds, the quad­copter either turns off or turns on.

The cam­era shoots bet­ter than the pre­de­ces­sors of the fifti­eth series, pro­vides a clear 720p image with good col­or repro­duc­tion for a bud­get quad. In gen­er­al, under the con­di­tion of no wind, the drone real­izes rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble shoot­ing. By tap­ping on the auto-take-off icon in the appli­ca­tion, the E56 takes off to a height of 40–50cm and holds it. The alti­tude hold in this drone is imple­ment­ed using a barom­e­ter, and it should be not­ed that it does this quite effec­tive­ly even in the pres­ence of wind.

Appearance

Specification

Brand:

Eachine

Mod­el:

E56

Mate­r­i­al per­for­mance:

ABS

Col­or:

white

Motors:

col­lec­tor type

Cam­era:

720p WiFi FPV

Food drone:

3.7V 500mAh Lipo (in box)

Food G‑controller:

2 × 1.5V AAA (sold sep­a­rate­ly)

Time flight:

7 min­utes

Time charg­ing bat­tery:

70 min­utes

Dis­tance removal RC/Wifi:

up to 100m / up to 50m

Dimen­sions :

14.6 × 6.7 × 3.2cm (fold­ed) / 17.8 × 18 × 3.2cm (fly­ing)

The weight drone With bat­tery:

85.2 grams

Motors

The Eachine E56 quad­copter is equipped with brushed motors. For the sake of porta­bil­i­ty, the devel­op­er installed the motors them­selves hor­i­zon­tal­ly in the rays of the drone. The torque in this case is trans­mit­ted clas­si­cal­ly for bud­get UAVs through a gear­box.

Camera

Eachine E56 received a mod­i­fied FPV HD cam­era that shoots video in 1280 × 720p res­o­lu­tion at 15 frames per sec­ond. Unlike its pre­de­ces­sors, in addi­tion to the qual­i­ty of shoot­ing, the cam­era has the abil­i­ty to man­u­al­ly change the angle of incli­na­tion. The pho­to mode spec­i­fi­ca­tions are not in the devel­op­er’s spec­i­fi­ca­tion, but the pho­to res­o­lu­tion will most like­ly be no more than 1024 × 768p. In gen­er­al, for a bud­get drone, the pho­to and video qual­i­ty is sat­is­fac­to­ry. But if you are choos­ing a self­ie drone with a pri­or­i­ty on high-qual­i­ty pho­to and video mate­r­i­al, then we rec­om­mend that you pay atten­tion to UAVs from a more expen­sive seg­ment. Recall that this mod­el is more suit­able for begin­ners who are just begin­ning to explore the world of UAVs.

Food

The drone is pow­ered by a 500mAh lithi­um-poly­mer sin­gle-cell bat­tery. The bat­tery itself, accord­ing to mod­ern trends, is hid­den in the box, there­by sim­pli­fy­ing the process of installing the bat­tery in the drone. Note that a sim­i­lar 3‑pin con­nec­tor is used on some sim­i­lar bat­ter­ies from Hub­san. Accord­ing to the spec­i­fi­ca­tion, the bat­tery pro­vides a flight time of 7 min­utes. In prac­tice, this time was no more than 5 min­utes.

The box itself, in which the bat­tery is installed, is col­lapsi­ble and, if desired, the user can install any bat­tery that is suit­able in size and weight, which is very good in terms of upgrade.

Note that the drone indi­ca­tion does not give sig­nals about a dis­charged bat­tery. The only indi­ca­tor of a tired bat­tery is insuf­fi­cient trac­tion. This fact is detri­men­tal to the bat­tery. To pro­long bat­tery life as long as pos­si­ble, we rec­om­mend that you stop fly­ing and change the bat­tery at the first sign of loss of pow­er.

Control

Eachine E56 quad­copter can be con­trolled in three ways:

1. Smartphone/Tablet (IOS or Android) via Eachine Fly App
2. G‑controller
3. G‑controller + Smartphone/Tablet

G‑controller

This is a new type of drone con­troller. The con­troller itself is made in the form of a remote con­trol from a mod­ern radio tape recorder, which is based on a built-in IMU sen­sor. It is he who allows the pilot to con­trol the drone with just one hand. The main joy­stick is respon­si­ble for lift­ing and low­er­ing, as well as for the rota­tion of the drone around its axis. Fly­ing for­ward, back­ward and lat­er­al shift is car­ried out by tilt­ing the con­troller itself in the appro­pri­ate direc­tion. The only thing that upsets is that the con­troller does not include in its design a hold­er for a smart­phone with which it can work togeth­er. As a result, the gad­get has to be held in a free hand, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pli­cates the entire pilot­ing process. The con­troller is pow­ered by two AAA bat­ter­ies / accu­mu­la­tors (Ni-Mh). Con­trol via G‑controller is an intu­itive process, it takes no more than 2 min­utes for the user to adapt. Regard­less of what you con­trol, the dis­tance of removal in prac­tice was no more than 30 meters.

It is worth not­ing that the “EACHINE FLY” appli­ca­tion, which you can find on Google Play through a sim­ple search, does not work for some rea­son! To down­load the work­ing ver­sion, you must use the QR code from the instruc­tion man­u­al.

Price

Eachine E56 is sold on almost all online trad­ing plat­forms for an aver­age price of about $50.

By the way, a sim­i­lar drone is also pro­duced by JJRC — mod­el JJRC H47. 100% equiv­a­lent to Eachine E56. The only dif­fer­ence is the col­or scheme of exe­cu­tion — met­al­lized blue and brown col­ors with the com­pa­ny logo.

Conclusion

Eachine E56 $fifty

Func­tion­al­i­ty

6/10

Flight time

5/10

flight qual­i­ties

5/10

com­pact­ness

10/10

Equip­ment

5/10

Reli­a­bil­i­ty

5/10

Price qual­i­ty

10/10

pros

• Price
• Good work­man­ship
• Vari-angle cam­era
• G‑controller (one-hand oper­a­tion)
• Sta­ble
• stack­able beams
• LED back­light
• Emer­gency shut­down but­ton for motors
• Trans­port case

Minuses

• No self­ie modes and fea­tures
• Col­lec­tor motors (ABS bush­ings / short life)
• Nar­row cam­era FOV
• Shoot­ing qual­i­ty

The Eachine E56 is cer­tain­ly an inter­est­ing quad­copter, main­ly because of the unusu­al way the G‑controller is con­trolled. We dare to assume that this method of con­trol in the near future may become fun­da­men­tal, at least for self­ie drones. Oth­er­wise, this is a well-exe­cut­ed drone, both visu­al­ly and tech­ni­cal­ly, with the stan­dard set of fea­tures of a bud­get drone at a very afford­able price. All its advan­tages will be ful­ly appre­ci­at­ed only by novice users. The devel­op­er set the age lim­it from 14+.

A photo

Pho­to with Eachine E56 quad­copter.

Video

Video with Eachine E56 quad­copter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCJ2KSVSuFE