Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “GoPro’s new $400 camera has no battery, screen, or gps”.
All right, i know you see a girl print, a thumbnail. You click on a video. You expect to see becca, but you don’t you see me. That’S because becca’s off doing becca things talking about me, so you’re gon na be stuck with me for a little bit, because this gopro video is actually a little bit different.
This is gopro bones. It is a gopro made specifically for fpv drones. You see for some time now.
Gopro has been the camera of choice for f3 pilots due to its size, solid image, quality, great built-in stabilization and even better post stabilization in real study, which is also getting an upgrade. But for some pilots the one key element missing from the hero 10 was what was not missing, specifically about hundred grams of weight. My name is reza kerny allen. I am a drone pilot here in the san francisco bay area. Today, we’re going to tear apart some gopro, hero, 10s decasing them and turning them into naked gopros. Here’S the thing fpv pilots, like reza, have been modifying their gopros now.
Gopro, obviously, isn’t the heaviest camera to begin with, but when attached to an f3 drones, especially like a cine whip which already have very limiting batteries, every gram is super valuable and it’s also important that the pilots keep their drones under 250 grams, which is the way Cutoff that the faa said before you have to register your drought, so i reached out to reza i’ve been following him on instagram for a while now, and it was also the first place when i saw someone just cut gopros in half, so we’re making them naked. Gopros to make them ultra light, to put them on some micro drones and to go under that sub 250 standard by the faa to fly over people and crowds and get really cool indoor shots for the past year. Sireza has been doing this to his gopros full invasive gopro surgery, every unnecessary bit, every additional gram, each element that is non-essential to making the gopro operate winds up on the cutting room floor or workshop tray.
I find that attention to detail fascinating. They even use mavic 1 nd filters, because the gopro ones are just that much more heavier. So first thing is the battery that saves the most weight.
Then we take out the enclosure, the heat sinks, microphone and we basically just keep the main board and the image sensor we’ve been able to shave it down all the way to 36 grams at its lightest. You know it’s gotten faster over time, but now i’ve gotten down to about an hour hour and a half with some stress testing. So if you wanted the latest gopro that would one fit on a micro drone and two meet the faa requirements doing this was pretty much your only option or hiring people like reza to do it for you, since he does this as part of his business.
That’S why i wanted him to be the first person we asked to try out the new bones. Okay, so i left the bones with reza for a few days to go capture, footage and we’ll check back with him a little bit later for now, let’s just go through what you actually get with this camera, starting with. What’S in the box, which, unsurprisingly, isn’t much phones bare bones, bare bones, get it get it? Okay, so here’s the box that it comes in and you get the camera these uh fingers as they’re called and a three-pin cable.
That’S about it! Okay! Now, internally, it is the exact same gopro as the gopro hero 10.. You get the exact same image sensor, the latest gp2 chip, and it can shoot 5.3 k60 video and 4k 120 video. You still have multiple options to control your camera through the quick app or the gopro remote or the qr codes, even a couple of physical buttons. Lastly, this is obvious, but still worth mentioning. This gopro, probably like your drone, is not waterproof, and it also has gopro’s latest in body stabilization in smooth 4, which not everyone uses for fpv. Most people tend to just go with real steady, which has now been renamed to gopro player plus real steady.
It’S also just faster with few more editing options, including more precise horizon lock, which you’re looking at right now and here it is wooded off, there’s a little bit more shake and a bit more cropping, but it still works very well, of course, with a device like This it’s more about what you don’t have. Obviously, there’s no display or speaker there’s these two physical buttons. We mentioned an led indicator and a microphone, but there’s no battery. It draws power directly from the drone. It is connected to and yeah. You do need to solder.
It onto it yourself, there’s no door, no gps or metal enclosure. It essentially does away with all the same things that reza stripped from his hero 10 and in some cases, even more. For example, there is no fan in here. Gopro instead says that the camera has a well vented enclosure that promotes airflow cooling.
So it is not exactly the same teardown not that we would expect it to be, but is it close enough to win over fpv pilots like reza and save them hours spent in the workshop going full-on dexter on their cameras? I thought it felt pretty good yeah. When i took off it was noticeably a little bit heavier. Of course we pre-measured it and determined it was about 21 grams heavier taking off. You can feel it, but it’s not much. Today we were flying with a micro, drone or cinewook. I didn’t really notice any changes in flight time, but if i were to pay attention to it hard enough and actually clock times, it’d probably be a slight flight reduction due to the 21 grams with the off center mount. I anticipated feeling something but actually didn’t. I think there’s still definitely a market for d casing gopro hero 10s because they are 21 grams, lighter doing it ourselves, that’s a very niche market.
I would say i’ll keep doing it. I think i’ll have to buy one. Yes, if you’re going to buy one here’s. What you’re, looking at, if you’re an existing or a new gopro plus subscriber you, can get the device and real steady for 400 bucks and if you just want the camera without the subscription, then you’re looking at 500 bucks, if that sounds similar to the hero. 10, pricing – that’s because it is which is sort of interesting sure it is a niche product, but you’re getting less stuff and maybe not as much less as you think. Gopro list bones is 54 grams, which is insanely light for a camera that can do all this, but if you’re paying attention to her b-roll, you might have noticed that ours, weighed in at 60.6 grams, which again is a big difference when working with tiny drones.
It did still work for our tender purposes, but just a reminder to weigh your gear yourself if you think you’re pushing onto that 250 gram limit. All in all, it is an interesting first entry into gopro’s new strategy of creating what they call derivative or specialized cameras. Now, i’m not sure how much mileage they will get by simply repackaging existing cameras to satisfy specific markets. Sure we see that with smartphones all the time, but gopro isn’t even selling this directly to retailers. You buy it directly from their website. It’S actually not even featured on the homepage, but making action cameras is what gopro does best and after trying to expand into making other products like drones, hi karma it just makes more sense for them to create a camera, that’s better for drones.
Instead of doing things. The other way around listen, learn, gopro. Thank you so much for watching the video and a special shout out to reza for making this video possible. We couldn’t have done it without him for disassembling the gopros for putting gopros back onto drones for flying the drones, providing all the footage that you’ve seen in this article give them a follow on instagram.
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