Hey there, today we’re going to be looking at the new DJI Air Unit System; the DJI O3 Air Unit. It’s got some killer new features, and it’s finally going to give you a way to fly custom built drones, with the new DJI goggles.
What was a bummer is that, when the new DJI FPV Goggles V2 first came out, you could only use them with the DJI FPV Drone or the DJI Avata.
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The new DJI FPV goggles V2 are pretty impressive, and if you want to learn more about them, Go Here.
The other thing the DJI O3 Air Unit opens up in terms of compatibility, is the ability to use your custom-built drone with the New DJI Radio Controller V2.
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DJI released a spreadsheet to show which drone will work with which controller and/or goggles.
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In short, if you started with an Avata or the DJI FPV Drone, this Air Unit is going to work for you.
Setting up the radio is pretty cool. You just go into Beta Flight, and all the switches at the back of the controller are pre-assigned channels. It’s also really cool that all buttons are customizable. The only button that you cannot customize is the record button. The new DJI O3 Air Unit has an action camera built in, and that’s what you use the record button for. (More about the camera below)
DJI O3 Air Unit Review
Build Quality
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The O3 Air Unit feels more polished of a product than its predecessors. I especially like the braided cables as they will provide a bit more protection to the wires when you’re building you drones. They’re not necessarily solder iron proof, but they’ll definitely be a bit more resilient.
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The only screws on this system are holding the unit together. There are no mounting provisions to secure the unit on your drone. You have to tape or even double tape it to the drone.
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There’s a warning label on the drone that tell you to make sure that you install the O3 Air Unit in a position that is well ventilated.
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This is to avoid damage that would be caused by overheating as the unit gets really hot. When it’s too hot, it just shuts itself down automatically and goes into some sort of thermal protection mode.
This is not a complete product as DJI usually makes. This is a component product. You need to put it onto a drone to fly it. If you’re not comfortable with making your drone, Rotor Riot has tons of pre-built drones with the DJI O3 Air Unit. Check them out Here.
Camera
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One of the most compelling things about this new air unit, is that, DJI wants you to be able to use this as your recording camera, not just your FPV camera. The FPV camera doubles as the recording camera. It has its own built-in storage (22GB), but you can also mount an SD card and record to that.
It can shoot up to 4K at 60fps, same as most top-notch action cameras out there. The biggest drawback being that you can’t go lower than 50fps. You can record at 60fps and export at 30fps but it’ll never look the same.
DJI built image stabilization into the camera. You can turn it on in the goggles, and the recorded image that you pull right out the O3 will have some sort of image stabilization. To get even more stabilization, it has built-in gyro data, so can plug it into Gyro-Flow and get real steady video that you want for cinematic shots. You’ll need to be working with some specific settings, but it works really well with Gyro-Flow.
Watch the Video Above (top of this article) to view our flight test and get to know more about the DJI O3 Air Unit.
Conclusion
This is a solid Air Unit. The camera on this beats the DJI Air 2. However, it’s not quite up too the latest GoPros. It might not be your go-to recording camera but it is perfect for freestyling.
One major drawback is that it is quite expensive ($249) considering that you will have to mount it on a drone. Other than that, it is a pretty solid product that you can have lots of fun with.
For the best pre-built drones Check Out RotorRiot.com
I hope you found this article and video useful. Let me know what you like most about the DJI O3 Air Unit, and I’ll see you on the Next One. Peace.
Attribution Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X3aO… Created By: https://www.youtube.com/c/RotorRiot under the CC BY License.
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