Halo Stealth Pro. the First Drone From the Best Hoverboard Developer

Introduction

The Amer­i­can com­pa­ny Haloboard, the world famous devel­op­er of hov­er­boards, has announced its first drone. Halo Stealth Pro is a new take on unmanned aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy through tech­nol­o­gy imple­ment­ed in accor­dance with mod­ern trends and pre­mi­um qual­i­ty. Let’s hope the Phan­tom 5 devel­op­ers are look­ing in the same direc­tion as they run the risk of fac­ing seri­ous com­pe­ti­tion in the future. We offer you to famil­iar­ize your­self with the capa­bil­i­ties of the nov­el­ty in detail and look­ing ahead, we note that it’s worth it.

Peculiarities

• Futur­is­tic design
• Fold­able frame design
• GPS posi­tion­ing
• Ver­sa­tile 3‑axis high-pre­ci­sion mechan­i­cal gim­bal
• Unique vibra­tion damp­ing sys­tem
• High-speed 4K cam­era with 6‑axis EIS
• Dis­tance FPV removal up to 800 meters (with a delay of up to 0.2 sec­onds)
• Max speed up to 72km/h
• Flight time up to 22 min­utes
• Water­proof remote wrist­band
• Fol­low me mod­ule
• 7 × track­er fol­low modes
• Up to 30 auto­mat­ed flight points
• 3 × way­point flight exe­cu­tion modes
• Auto takeoff/landing
• Auto return (RTH)

Equipment

The devel­op­er offers the drone in two trim lev­els:

Halo Stealth

1. Quad­copter Halo Stealth
2. Halo Drone 4K action cam­era
3. Con­trol equip­ment
4. Halo Flight Bat­tery
5. Charg­er
6. 4 × rotors (2CW/2CCW)
7. 2 × spare rotors (1CW/1CCW)
8. User man­u­al with safe­ty rec­om­men­da­tions

Halo Stealth Pro

1. Quad­copter Halo Stealth
2. Halo Drone 4K action cam­era
3. Con­trol equip­ment
4. Halo Flight Bat­tery
5. Charg­er
6. 4 × rotors (2CW/2CCW)
7. 2 × spare rotors (1CW/1CCW)
8. Water­proof remote wrist­band
9. Fol­low mod­ule
10. Case bracelet for Fol­low mod­ule
11. Charg­er (module/bracelet)
12. Hard case for trans­port­ing the kit
13. User man­u­al with safe­ty rec­om­men­da­tions

Unboxing video

The only com­plete series of reviews for today from unbox­ing to a dif­fer­ent series of test flights from the pop­u­lar vlog­ger Dustin Dun­nill.

Specification

Drone

The weight:

1370gr

Frame size:

430mm

Smart bat­tery capac­i­ty:

11.1V 6000mAh 66.6Wh LiPo

Smart bat­tery oper­at­ing tem­per­a­ture range:

0° to 40°C

Flight time:

up to 22 min

Max. hor­i­zon­tal flight speed:

72km/h

FPV:

WiFi 5.8GHz

FPV Removal Dis­tance:

up to 800 meters (with a delay of no more than 0.2 sec­onds)

Fol­low Me Mode:

7 × fol­low modes

Way­point flight:

up to 30 points

Way­point flight exe­cu­tion modes:

Tap Nav­i/­Mul­ti-Point Nav­i/S­in­gle-Point Orbit

RTH func­tion:

Yes

Auto takeoff/landing:

Yes

Camera

Matrix:

Sony IMX 377

Lens:

f/2.4 FOV 115°

Image Sta­bi­liza­tion:

elec­tron­ic 6‑axis EIS

Video codec:

H.265

Aber­ra­tion Cor­rec­tion:

Yes

Max. pho­to qual­i­ty:

12MP

Video modes:

4K: 3840 × 2160 at 30 fps
1440p: 2560 × 1440 at 60fps
FHD: 1920 × 1080 at 120fps
HD: 1280×720@240fps

Control equipment

Work­ing fre­quen­cy:

2.4GHz

Bat­tery capac­i­ty:

6000mAh

Removal dis­tance:

1km

watch controller

Con­trolled dis­tance:

400m

Avail­able fea­tures:

Drone Control/Return Home/Return Point/Auto Take­off and Land­ing

Sim­i­lar solu­tions have already been used in such unmanned projects as Lily and Air­Dog, and this is not the first time we have stat­ed that in the future it is this con­trol option that will receive wide­spread recog­ni­tion among ordi­nary UAV users.

Follow Module

Con­trolled dis­tance:

400m

Fol­low modes:

7 intel­li­gent modes

Sen­sors:

GPS/GLONASS/Barometer/Gyroscope/Accelerometer/Magnetic com­pass

Appearance

Motors

The Halo Stealth quad­copter is equipped with brush­less motors. The devel­op­er does not pro­vide any oth­er infor­ma­tion. Sim­i­lar in size to the Phan­tom 3 series motors. Despite the dimen­sions of the quad and its flight weight, the pow­er plant pro­vides exem­plary dynam­ics at a max­i­mum hor­i­zon­tal flight speed of up to 72 km/h.

Camera

By default, both kits include a high-speed 4K Wi-Fi Halo Cam action cam­era. The cam­era is built on a Sony IMX 377 sen­sor with a 115° FOV and f/2.4 aper­ture. 6‑axis EIS is respon­si­ble for image sta­bi­liza­tion. Pro­vides exem­plary shoot­ing qual­i­ty, both in pho­to and video mode. Pho­to: 12MP. Avail­able video modes: fourK: 3840 × 2160 at 30 fps; 1440p: 2560 × 1440 at 60fps; FHD: 1920 × 1080 at 120 fps; HD: 1280 × 720 at 240 fps.

suspension

Halo Stealth is equipped with a ver­sa­tile 3‑axis high-pre­ci­sion brush­less gim­bal with a unique vibra­tion damp­en­ing sys­tem. Three-axis mechan­i­cal sta­bi­liza­tion cou­pled with six-axis elec­tron­ic sta­bi­liza­tion of the Halo Cam cam­era in prac­tice showed high-qual­i­ty aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy of DJI lev­el. The gim­bal is adapt­ed to a wide range of GoPro action cam­eras.

Food

The Halo Stealth is pow­ered by a 3‑cell 6000mAh 66.6Wh lithi­um poly­mer bat­tery. Accord­ing to the spec­i­fi­ca­tion, it pro­vides a flight time of up to 22 min­utes. In prac­tice, with a mixed style of pilot­ing, this time was at least 15.5 min­utes.

Control

For a sim­ple con­fig­u­ra­tion, con­trol of the drone will be pos­si­ble clas­si­cal­ly using a remote con­trol that works in close con­nec­tion with smart devices (from smart­phone to tablet) on IOS / Android through the Halo Drone mobile appli­ca­tion. The con­trol is car­ried out at a fre­quen­cy of 2.4GHz. Accord­ing to the man­u­fac­tur­er’s spec­i­fi­ca­tion, stock equip­ment pro­vides a con­trolled dis­tance of up to 1 km.

In FPV mode, the quad can fly up to 800 meters with a Wi-Fi min­i­mum laten­cy of 0.2 sec­onds. To pro­vide such char­ac­ter­is­tics via Wi-Fi, two exter­nal video mod­ules oper­at­ing in the 5.8 GHz band are pro­vid­ed. One is installed on the drone right behind the cam­era, the oth­er on the con­trol equip­ment, in its low­er part.

For the Pro con­fig­u­ra­tion, in addi­tion to the clas­sic remote con­trol, it becomes pos­si­ble to con­trol the drone using a com­pact bracelet remote con­trol — Watch Con­troller. The remote con­trol bracelet is pro­tect­ed from water and dust with a degree of IP67. This con­trol option becomes rel­e­vant when bulky equip­ment is not appro­pri­ate, but con­trol over the con­trol of the drone remains a pri­or­i­ty (cycling, board­ing, raft­ing on a boat, etc.).

Follow Module

The Halo Stealth drone can track with pre­ci­sion any object on which the Fol­low (Fol­low Mod­ule) com­ing in the Pro pack­age will be fixed. The built-in sen­sors GPS/Glonass/Barometer/Gyroscope/Accelerometer/Magnetic com­pass are respon­si­ble for the accu­ra­cy of posi­tion­ing the mod­ule in space. You can check out his work and the Halo Drone Pro in gen­er­al by watch­ing Dustin Dun­nil­l’s in-depth review series below.

Follow modes

Halo Stealth Pro has sev­en fol­low modes that become avail­able when you acti­vate the Fol­low mod­ule:

Waypoint flight

Halo Stealth sup­ports three modes of exe­cu­tion of auto­mat­ed flight by way­points (up to 30 way­points in one route):

For the Fol­low mod­ule, the issue of water resis­tance remains open, since the devel­op­er does not spec­i­fy this fact, but at the same time, the pho­tos on the offi­cial web­site focus the user’s atten­tion on the use of the Fol­low Mod­ule when surf­ing.

Vlog­ger Dustin Dun­nill reviews Halo Stealth test flights.

It is not entire­ly clear why Dustin Dun­nill ignored the audio warn­ing of the equip­ment about the low bat­tery of the drone (in the first video). The appli­ca­tion shows that the resid­ual pow­er was only enough for 4 min­utes of flight, and he launched the drone again. As a result, the emer­gency land­ing turned out to be hard, and by that time the indi­ca­tion of the flight time was equal to zero on the dis­play.

Price

So far, the quad is sold exclu­sive­ly through the Haloboard brand­ed store. Depend­ing on the con­fig­u­ra­tion, Halo Stealth will cost the con­sumer:

1. Halo Stealth Bun­dle — $495
2. Halo Stealth Pro Bun­dle — $695

Conclusion

Based on the reviews of unpack­ing and test flights, we can say that the first drone of the devel­op­er was a suc­cess with­out exag­ger­a­tion, even despite the iden­ti­fied bug asso­ci­at­ed with the exe­cu­tion of one of the flight modes by way­points. We think every­thing can be fixed pro­gram­mat­i­cal­ly. Obvi­ous­ly, the Haloboard team has spent a huge amount of time to offer the con­sumer a super ergonom­ic inter­face. There is no doubt that Halo Stealth has a great future. Already today, the Pro ver­sion is a seri­ous com­peti­tor for the GoPro Kar­ma drone. And when retro­fit­ted with a prop­er­ly func­tion­ing visu­al posi­tion­ing sys­tem, the quad can eas­i­ly com­pete for the title of “Best of the Best” UAVs with an empha­sis on aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy.

A photo

Pho­to with Halo Stealth quad­copter.

Video

Video guide from the devel­op­er.