Chasing M2: INSANE Underwater Drone (Setup, Abrüsten, and Experience)

This is paul with make yousef and today we’re talking about a really heavy but interesting and fun and potentially useful underwater submarine. This is the chasing m2 Music as i’ll share throughout this review and in more detail on my written article. If you want to check that out, this has a lot of unique features that help it stand out from its competitors, but it’s kind of pricey. So is this actually going to be a good fit for you, and what do you plan to use it for, depending on your application, your budget and what you expect from it? This could potentially be a good choice for you keep those things in mind before purchasing this. I think you might be really happy with the results you can get out of it it’s one thing to find a place to use your new drone it’s. Another thing to actually lug it and bring it to said location. The one thing i’m noticing with this system is yes, the drone is big and, Ja, it needs to be protected, but unless you’re actually carrying all those additional accessories like the charger for it, i think they could have perhaps come up with a smaller, more compact solution To actually carry this because all in all i mean yes, the drone is relatively heavy, but this is the heaviest portion of it. The controller doesn’t add that much weight, the winch and the line does add some extra weight, but in total i think perhaps if they came up with a smaller solution, it would have been a little bit nicer and more convenient, especially when you’re doing smaller and more Casual trips, like this so i’m, just going to set up the little shamwow a little drone.

I think it’s awkward, how you then have to close it flip it over to the other side to access the other portions in here. The other thing i noticed that is a little bit tricky with this, especially compared to like a drone where it’s a little bit more streamlined. As far as the whole process, you really do need a place to set up everything. This kind of reminds me of the old days when you had the old dji phantom drones, where they were bigger and they typically had larger cases like this as well, especially the controller here. The controller definitely takes up a lot of space and if they had a controller similar to the new mavic series, i think that would have been a much appreciated addition to this whole setup here. This is your phone stand. It is not removable which actually, Ich denke, is a little bit of a downside, especially if you don’t plan on using a phone with it, but instead you’re using a larger tablet or any other external screen, because you actually do have an hdmi port out on the Back there so you’re not always going to need this on the back here. This just initiates your photo or recording modes, although because you don’t have a display on here, it’s actually kind of hard to tell if the drone itself is recording anything, und aus diesem Grund, i think you really need a smartphone or tablet connected to this.

In order to take advantage of the full feature set that this drone offers, this is its 97.5 watt battery, which is rated to last for about two hours. The controller is rated to last about two and a half hours and both of them charge in about two and a half hours and it’s supposed to turn to solid green when everything is charged what’s interesting about that, aber, you can’t see the individual charging levels of The controller or the drone, without actually connecting the app. We have your 100 meter tether and you could probably see a lot of sand and dirt falling off of this and that’s going to be a recurring theme. With this whole package. It can dive down to 328 Füße, Was ist 100 meters realistically, if you only had 100 meter tether cable here, if you’re going further out, especially when you consider that you have to actually throw it out and reach locations, that can actually go that deep, du bist, probably Going to want a longer tether, Kabel, some other main specs include that it can operate at temperatures from 14 degrees to 113 degrees and that’s fahrenheit or negative 10 degrees celsius to 45 Grad Celsius. One of the things that’s really cool about this, aber, and i did a lot of research just seeing what’s the market like on these in comparison to some of those competitors. This actually has some of the most precise controls because of those eight thrusters, Ich denke, is the only one that actually was able to find that has the ability to have attachments like arms in order to actually grab and interact with your environment, so that’s really cool Too, with everything being larger and taking up more space, especially in more awkward situations like this, where you’re on a slope it’s a little harder to keep track of all your things and kind of have them in a contained environment.

So i kind of recommend getting a larger tarp so now i’ll take you through the setup process and it’s pretty straightforward once you’ve done it once it’s, um relatively intuitive here, the one cord that has the loop at the end here. This is the one that’s actually going to be plugging into the drone here. The actual cable management system on here isn’t the best when it comes to actually looping these two very long ends and keeping track of which end is which and kind of preventing the wires from looping over each other when you’re wrapping them up not really the best, Because you can see here, i’ve got a bit of a knot that i now need to work on unlooping from the other end, you don’t really need the longest link from here to the controller. Tatsächlich, i would probably keep this relatively short and keep this next to the controller just for additional safety. This is the most tedious process really in terms of the overall setup. They do offer an additional accessory, which is an e reel for 5.99. So if you plan on using this a lot and you plan on using a lot of its length, it might be beneficial for your setup and tear down times for having that e reel. I in general just get enough cable to get going and to safely shoot it off into the water, Und dann, if i feel that i need the additional length it’s, not that much harder to unravel a little bit more so now, you’ve got the cable end.

That’S going to go into the drone, you have the one rubber port cover. This doesn’t really have anywhere to go right. Now i mean chances. Are i’m gon na be putting it in my case, but if i’m being honest, es gibt, also a good chance that i could easily lose this or it could drop, but for right now, ich bin, just gon na put it in my pocket and hopefully, by the end of This video – i still have it on me, and both the ends of your cable – are identical with the exception again of this loop system here so that’s how you’ll know this is the one that needs to go in the drone. It has a small little incision and you just need to match it up on the drone there and then it twists, as you can see twist, that tightly and that’s going to help prevent any water from seeping in and then i just loop this around this hook. Here so having this loop over here friends there from being any tension on some important parts over here and similar process, for attaching it to the controller on the back here. You’Ll notice that this end of the wire also has that same incision, so you’re just going to line it up with your controller. An dieser Stelle, you can turn on your controller and you’ll, see your battery level indicated by the one indicator there. This is not the most reliable system, because you can only really tell if it’s charged or low battery.

You can’t really see like a percentage on there without actually attaching to your phone, but for right now we have it powered on. So we know that everything is working we’re not going to actually arm it yet we’re going to do that after we toss it into the water which is going to be our next step. This is where it gets a little bit tricky when you’re a one man team doing this. As far as keeping everything securely located, you don’t want to trip on your wires and you want to keep everything dry and out of the way that’s not going in the water and honestly, this is the part that’s going to take a little bit getting used to Actually, throwing in your relatively expensive drone and feeling comfortable with it, i mean this is a little bit heavy, so you need to kind of get used to that that throwing motion with this heavier weight here – environments like this, where you can’t really just lightly put it In or if it’s more shallow over here and you want to have enough reach with the drone and at the same time you don’t want to fall in that’s, where tossing it becomes a little bit more practical but i’m just going to lightly put it in and You’Ll see, even though it is shallow, you don’t need that much clearance with it. It has a natural tendency to just float on its own until you actually arm it.

Auf dem Controller, there i’m just kind of clearing my cable just a little bit, laying it in there just so when i do get it started. I know it just has enough clearance and it’s not going to get snagged on anything and before you actually turn it on i’m, just going to be a little careful. This is again why you want to have a little bit more clearance i’m, just going to give it a little bit of a kick just to send it out there, because when i start it up, i want to make sure that there aren’t any other obstacles that Might be interfering with our motors and again i just have enough length on my controller that just gives me a couple feet of distance between myself and the rest of the cable i’m now going to arm the drone or turn it on there. You go the body of water that we’ve picked here is relatively clear, and that is going to be a huge recommendation of mine, especially when you’re learning, if you’ve just barely, got it under water. Wieder, you’re not going to hear it’s, not until you actually get some of the motors above water that you’re actually going to hear them start to spin. And so who is this drone, for it can be anyone from hobbyists who are just looking to take cool photos and videos to people who are looking for fishing sites to surveyors inspectors and even people who just kind of want more of a like cool rc boat.

You know that can actually go into water and it’s fun it’s. This is actually like a fun thing to use. The controls are very intuitive, very similar to using other drones if you’ve had experience with those, but the ability to have a clear body of water and actually see where the drone is going in relation to your movements gives you a very good idea as to what You’Re doing a couple things i want to show you right now. The first is how you can just delicately move, the controls and it’s very precise. This is something i was actually really surprised about with something that’s moving through the water i feel like. I can get it pretty precise as far as like. If there was a red marker or somewhere specific, i wanted to go, i could easily get there with no issues. Obviously this becomes a little bit more difficult with the stronger currents. The other thing is when i first began at first, i was concerned with potentially getting this tangled and it going over its cables or whatnot. You can see even with it above water, like this it’s, pretty difficult, with the exception of right here, where you can see where i’ve done that loop, that i showed you earlier, where it’s going to pull my cable a little bit so long as you’re, just going Underwater a little bit below it, you’re not going to be tangling yourself very easily. Now these dials on the back here are unique to the drone and even if you’ve flown aerial drones before this is probably going to be new to you.

These adjust your roll and your tilt, allowing you to get far more unique angles with this, and i found it especially useful when you’re actually trying to look down at something you actually need to physically move the submarine to face downwards. Unlike a gimbal on a drone which can actually pan and tilt, you don’t have the ability to do that, because it’s fixed to the submarine and so you’re going to have to use these dials a lot in order to manipulate what your camera is. Looking at the camera on the front here, this is a one over two thirds inch sony cmos sensor and this actually is f 1.8, so it’s supposed to be relatively good in low light, but with a smaller sensor you can’t let in that much light. So don’t expect too much, but it does have a wide degree, 152 degree to the exact lens. These two lights, which are actually 2000 lumens each are going to really help and be very useful as soon as you start to get into those darker areas down below. But i think some of the tools that are designed and only for the chasing m2 pro are almost necessary for certain applications to really make the most of this drone sonar. Zum Beispiel, i need to know where other objects are in relation to this. I need to know if i’m going to hit anything there were so many times using that that i didn’t know what objects were nearby and so, especially if you’re using this in waters that you’re not familiar with and you’re using it in applications as they describe search And rescue chances, are you don’t really know where the specific thing you’re trying to rescue is it can record up to 4k 30 Bilder pro Sekunde, but i wish it could actually record at 24 frames per second to match the more cinematic.

Look that i record with on most of my other cameras and devices. Auf der anderen Seite, aber, it is nice that you do have the ability using the smartphone app with this, to get additional settings tweaked, including your iso. Your white balance so i’m now going to show you how to use the phone app to get the additional functionality. Like actually controlling your video settings, recording and viewing your videos live, so their app is called chasing 101 or chasing go01 found. The drone gon na hit start. I have the iphone 12 Mini. I would not trust this holder at all if you’ve got any sort of case on your phone there’s, a good chance, it’s a little too big or just awkwardly shaped for this honestly. This is one of the least positive aspects of this whole controller system. The actual controller holder for your phone is a little awkward. I would definitely keep your distance away from any bodies of water and make sure you don’t slip chip or anything. So you don’t accidentally drop your phone in the water to actually start and stop the recording, which is going to be one of the main things that you want to do with this app you’ve got the start and stop button there, or you can actually take a Photo with the smaller white circle above it, you have your settings here to adjust your color balance. You can have it set to auto manual.

You can mirror your image. You can flip your image image. Optimization denoising, for the most part, just been keeping this all at their standard settings all right, so let’s go ahead and bring it in so a couple things to note when it comes to returning the drone safely and actually bringing it up. The first thing is, if you do have the ability to work with a second person, so i’ve got me here, helping me out hand the controller and your phone over to them. So you can just focus on the retrieval process, bring it close, but don’t get especially if you’re in a body of water like this, where it’s quite shallow over here and this doesn’t have enough clearance or depth. I just fished it in pulled it in a little closer to me like that we turned it off on the controller itself. I just slowly brought it up here and you can maintain a little bit of tension on this end, which again is why we snag it to the back there, and i can kind of pull it up. I'M, not going to pull it up fully. So i don’t have too much weight and pressure on this cable but i’m just pulling it up enough that it allows me to grab the handle i’m going to lay it down to rest and you’ll, probably notice that it’s picked up a little bit of dirt and Its own debris on there in our case earlier, we noticed that we got a pebble lodged into it.

This would be where i’d also recommend, having a second or maybe even third, towel to clean it off help dry it off and remove some of these external fragments that you don’t really want. Das ist, Ich denke, one of the biggest downfalls, perhaps to a system like this and where it might not be as appealing to the hobbyist and it’s, probably going to be a little bit better for the industrial folk is because the setup time isn’t that bad. But the tear down process is going to be more time consuming because you have to again do an inspection on it. Remove the debris and actually have it dry off as far as actually tearing this down it’s, not hard you’re, going to loosen the one, cable and my hands are pretty cold here from pulling it out so i’m, going a little slower, i’m gon na loosen. This i’ll note a couple things: this doesn’t have any kind of protector on it, preventing you know, debris, water or other elements from going into it. The only protector we have is for that port there and if you recall, i have it in my pocket here, ich bin. Just a one man team, with the exception of me, helping me on the camera there, my hands are full of sand. I’M gon na probably still get some sand on this cap. I’Ve done my best to hold the cap from the outside there, so i don’t get anything on the inside, but there’s a good chance.

I still got some stuff there, so i’m just gon na blow on it. We can already see where this is not a perfect system here, as far as protecting this port and potentially it might still lead to debris in there, and i can already see that even on the top here, we’ve got some sand in the area that you would Actually screw this port in so this would be probably the first area i’d. Imagine issues arising down the road just having the one included. Towel is great for laying it out or drying it off, but doing both it’s, nicht sehr gut. For and again you don’t want to use the same one for cleaning out this kind of debris on the remote itself, isn’t the cable from there fold this down – and this is the first thing that i can safely pack away into the box and not actually need To worry about any additional steps for it, i then do the cable, i’m gon na do the long end first, which went into the drone and so with future setups i’m, hoping when it comes to me setting it up again. If i do the controller end. First it’s a little bit easier and prevents me from tangling it up. Would it perhaps have been better to have some kind of enclosure for this so that, when it comes to me being done with all these cables, i can contain the dirt to here and it’s, Nicht wirklich, unless i now have a separate towel or something to wipe Down this wire, i now have all this dirt and loose debris on here as well.

So when i put it into the case, am i potentially getting all those elements to move around onto the charger and potentially the controller there? Ja, i understand what this is folded. es ist, perhaps a little contained, Aber es ist, not the best and chances are when you open it up and you’re moving everything around a lot of that stuff is going to end up into the other compartments too, and i place that back in there. So we are done with this side of the case and i’m going to go ahead and close it off and lock the size and now i’m going to flip. It we’ve left the drone out to dry for a bit, aber, Wie Sie sehen können, there’s still a lot of water on it still a lot of dirt on it. I don’t like the idea really of just putting this wet drone back into the case right here. You can even see from my previous uses using this from a couple days ago. It’S still wet i’ve only had this for a couple weeks now, but this case has never been dry, since a lot of additional time goes into maintaining a drone like this because of how wet it continues to be, then you’ll give it a couple shakes and because It’S got so many crevices because um it has all these nooks and crannies. There is inevitably still going to be some water left over, and i can just see all the various got like some seaweed got.

A couple twigs got a lot of other debris that i had missed in my initial wipe down of this, give yourself plenty of time for both the setup and the teardown. So i mean we’ve been at the park, shooting for maybe 40 Minuten, but it almost feels like you’d need at least that much time, wenn nicht mehr, for the tear down process alone, but for now i’ve done the best that i can do with drying it. For the time that we have because let’s be honest, we don’t really want to be here that long as the sun has already gone down and we’re getting a little chilly we’re, not at the mercy of this. But it feels like it sometimes, and so the best thing that i would recommend is, if you are going to be putting this in with it still being a little damp, is to, wenn möglich, once you bring it back home or to your office. To then take it out of the box again and leave it out to dry leave a case top open as well to also let that air out and when possible, i would actually probably recommend, also washing and then drying the included towel. That comes with it. So it’s clean and ready to use at the start of each additional shoot that you go on with this. So now we’ve got our case all packed up stone to dry later, but we’re good to go for now, so we’ll catch you in the studio.

To finish this up, and so that’s been my experience and some of my main thoughts using this drone, this rov, this submarine it’s fun and i think in the right kinds of water. You can get a lot of value out of it. You can still get a lot of value out of it in more murky waters and even if you’re, a hobbyist that doesn’t really know where they’re going to be using it for. Jedoch, some of the things that i think that are kind of holding it back are the fact that you’re so reliant on a smartphone app. I think the main thing that might turn some people off from this and potentially might make the experience of using a drone like this a little bit more difficult and potentially might steer some people away from getting this as well as maybe making it a little harder To justify getting is the fact that, in order to really get the best results, either with its camera or in terms of navigating with this reliably, you really do need to have ultra clear water i’m talking like the mediterranean sea somewhere in australia. You know the places that you basically see in diving magazines. Those are the kind of waters that i think something like this would be absolutely perfect for, but even when i’m finding clear lakes, you know i can see the drone and up until a certain depth i mean i can see what’s directly in front of the drone.

But it’s very difficult to tell what’s in the vicinity of the drone and where the drone is in relation to the rest of the lake. Even less than perfect water is going to make this extremely hard to tell where the drone is in relation to its surroundings. As well as the camera’s not really going to be able to pick up that much a lot of the examples of people using this drone and getting results with it are in pools, which i don’t really think is a practical use for this you’re. Not taking this to use in the pool and that’s not to say if you throw any other camera in the water it’s going to give you instantly better footage. Nein, what i’m saying is the fact that you really do have to have the best kinds of water, for this can dramatically impact your experience, so i think that’s, one of the main points you should be aware of before getting this, jedoch, past, just that and looking At this as a product, beyond just the hobbies, as this is also more of a professional tool too for surveyors inspectors and other applications that would require the ability to see underwater they’re, gon na still be struggling with the fact that the camera can’t see everything. Und ja, you can attach other cameras on there, but chances are again if the water is not as great as you want it to be. You still can’t see very much, but the next point is not knowing where the drone is in relation to other things and where other things are in relation to the drone, Ich denke, is perhaps one of the bigger issues, and so there you have it.

This should hopefully have given you a pretty good understanding as to how to set this drone up, tear it down as well as the overall experience using it.