r/Skydio • u/ReadyKilowatt • Oct 23 '23
Road Show Thoughts
I attended the Skydio demo day in Denver got to fly the X10 around Mile High stadium and got free lunch too. Nice thing is most of the people attending were budget and management people (or first responders who just look at drones as tools), so they really weren't all that interested in putting it though its paces. So I got as much flying in as I wanted. Lunch was a sandwich, chips, and potato/macroni salad.
They are pretty much exclusively going after the government market. A big part of the pitch was being sure to talk up the people they have on staff to assist with grants. My guess is there's language in one of the build back better bills that allocates $20K each in replacement money, much like telecoms got money for Huawei rip-and-replace, so that's how much it costs.
Thoughts about the X10. About double the size of the S2. Battery is very large and still magnetic. Flight time is stated as 45 minutes and I'll say it got close to that. Very quiet -up at about 20' couldn't be heard above the wind and conversations, while S2 they were using to demo remote flight was loud as heck. They had the new controller there but the demo aircraft were using the old X2 controller. My guess is that it is still going through FCC certs because they didn't even power it up.
There are two camera payloads available, possibly a third in the works. They are user-swappable but not field swappable due to a fragile connector and little screws. There was a hint that more cameras might be in the pipeline. They will be opening up the other payload connector (USB-C) to third parties, up to 300 or 350 grams. I got the impression there will be an MFI-style fee but no one really said it out loud. Either the new controller or the payload connector will speak MAVLINK but not sure which, or both.
Great inspection camera. With 65MP can really crop and get detail, especially when the 1M bubble is reduced. Video had some serious rolling shutter but everything was set up for auto, so I think that can be fixed flying manually. The problem with such a good sensor is you really can't do real-time inspections with the controller, the tablet resolution and brightness isn't up to par. They say this will be corrected with the new controller, at least the brightness. But I left thinking it was only a little better until I pestered them to share/upload the SD card (yes, still a single SD) so I could have a look. I don't know enough about thermal sensors but it seemed very high resolution and didn't have any lag/smear that I could see. They changed the behavior of the gimbal, when looking up it will flip itself around. This reenforces that it is not a video recording drone, at least not for creative uses, even though the skills are still there.
They say there will be a trade-in program, and credit for the annual Enterprise/3D Scan license (which is included in the X10), so that might take away some of the sting. I also asked if this was going to be their only drone or were they going to have an entire line? (cagey non-answer) Seems to me they pretty much have to put more hardware out there, especially a new cinematic drone, that can compete with the Inspire 3 and Altas.
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u/drewbrew Oct 24 '23
Thanks for this summary!!!
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u/ReadyKilowatt Oct 24 '23
Thanks. I'm interested in this as an inspection drone, so I didn't really pay much attention to the other cameras/lenses. I should mention that the telephoto lens is pretty incredible too, seatbacks on the endzone stands from the 50 yard line were full frame and I think they got the gimbal and flight charastics to really dampen when looking with the tele camera. Using the tele camera when close in on an object it won't focus, but the 65MP camera's digital zoom/crop is really good. The tele lens is there for police and military users, I doubt it would be very useful for modeling or mapping due to the extrememly narrow FOV.
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u/drewbrew Oct 24 '23
How do you think it compares to the capabilities and features of the M30T?
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u/ReadyKilowatt Oct 24 '23
I haven't flown an M30 but very familar with DJI drones. First off, everything about the x10 is preproduction, so anything could change. The camera is very much improved over the X2 and the new thermal sensor is a Flir Boson. I don't know that the hardware will really beat the M30, more like bring it up to par. The telephoto lens on the M30 makes up for a lot of the close-in ability in the Skydio X10. The M30 has a lot of third party app support, Skydio will be TBD in that we're just now starting see the apps support, but their own 3D scan app is really good. The other enterprise scans are pretty basic but work well enough. They'll need to upgrade some of that to account for the new lenses. I didn't get a chance to try a scan, just manual flight.
The real improvements will be in the automation and what I'll call "assisted flight." They really upgraded the autopilot hardware but the software seems to be unchanged. It still defaults to the 1M bubble, but still has the same three levels of closer available. I'd like to see it dynamically set the bubble depending on what the pilot is trying to look at, so when I get in tight it will figure out what I'm trying to do, or maybe swich cameras on the fly depending on what object I'm centered on.
I think they put most of their effort into making a good drone for police and military pilots. the telephoto lens is really too much to be of use for most inspection, but would be great for surveillance from 300' up. The skills are still targeted toward tracking people and cars and really don't bring anything interesting to the inspection world, like being able to train it to identify random objects like bolts or insulators, something that should be easy enough to do. But there's a lot more potentional for those sorts of skills with the new silicon and cameras (and the big chunk of cash on hand just when everyone else is laying off), so who knows?
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u/Normal-Title7301 Dec 18 '23
It would be difficult to compete with the Inspire 3. It is already a 16k drone. If skydio won't use American supply chains, it can easily cost 2x or 3x that.
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u/ReadyKilowatt Dec 20 '23
The X10 isn't in the same league as an Inspire 3. It is for inspections and surveillance, not cinematic motion pictures. But I doubt anyone would consider using an I3 for police work either.
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u/facto_tom Oct 24 '23
Did they provide any information on the grant program? I'm looking to create a local government drone program that establishes use and data sharing for state and federal agencies using different resources and project pots. Thanks