DJI 04 Air Unit Lite Update and Stabilization Issues

To sum up really quickly the difference between the  DJI 04 Air Unit (Lite), and the DJI 04 Air Unit Pro systems, the Lite is a little more than half the price of the Pro system at around $99 US versus $229 US so it does not have all the features or quality of the Pro, but the Lite version does offer a supper compact size perfect for smaller drones which is exactly what I am into.

I have 4 drones that had older DJI Vista Air Units in them, which allowed me the ability to use my DJI Goggles 2 Integras to view camera video in digital 720p which is leaps and bounds over what an analog VTX system looks like. The Vista system "cased" and "de-cased" fits in smaller FPV drones very well and overall I was happy with this setup. That is until DJI came out with the DJI 04 Air Units.

One of my biggest problems is that I had to keep my DJI Goggle 2 Integras in order to use my DJI Vista VTX and cameras. I was not able to use my newer DJI Goggle 3's, so I had to have two sets of rather expensive Goggles on hand to fly all my FPV drones. The logical solution was and is to swap out the Vista setup with the newer DJI 04 Air Units and get rid of my Goggles 2 Integras completely. The sale of my Goggles 2 Integras at around $350 along with the selling of my older DJI Vista Air Units will more than offset the price I pay for the newer DJI 04 Air Units, and I will get a significant upgrade in video quality in not only my Goggles but also the ability to record 4k 60 frame per second video on board the DJI 04 Air Units VTX.

There is one problem with all of this... The DJI 04 Air Unit Lite system has a bit of a flaw in that when you try and use stabilization to the record video, it actually makes the vide worse. I have a few ideas about this I talk about in this video and I am hoping that DJI will implement a firmware update soon and or that the addition of a proper camera mount that insulates the camera from the vibrations of the FPV drone will fix this problem...

What Was I Thinking - Think Twice Who You Talk To

I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year and as is typical with the New Year, we seem to want to have some sort of resolution to go along with the beginning of a new part of our life. There is nothing wrong with wanting to do this, but there is often a lot of pressure we put on ourselves by doing this. Especially if we ultimately end up failing in it...

This year my New Year Resolution is not even health and fitness related for myself. To be honest I am happy with my overall health and fitness goals and how I achieve them year to year. My health and fitness at this point in time for me is kind of on auto pilot. Can I do better? Sure. The bigger question is do I need or want to do better in this area? I am good right now...

For me there are other non health and fitness goals I probably need to work on more, at least at this point in time and for me I have decided to look at how I spend my time and energy when having conversations with people. The reality when we talk with another person, is we are giving a piece of ourselves to them. We are offering information and experiences we have collected over our life time, usually freely and hopefully without strings, with perhaps the only expatiation to be heard and understood. Unfortunately I often find myself inverting my ideas and opinions with people that at the end of the day do not appreciate it or even want it.

My goal for this year is to really think about who I am going to invest my time and energy in when it comes to having conversations and sharing information and ideas. That is going to be a challenge for me as I can be a bit of an open book, so I need to keep my book closed more often and let people come to me if they want me to open it or not.

What Was I Thinking - Dangers of AI Not What You Think

If you are a Terminator fan, then you may believe that someday AI may overtake humanity, and we all may find ourselves in a post apocalyptic war with AI robots. That may happen one day, but I think the biggest problem with AI, at least right now is that we just don't know what is real anymore and I am not as concerned that we are being fooled into believing an AI created video, but rather that we now disbelieve the actual truth right before us. This is very dangerous as even with actual proof in the from of a video, a person can now say it is AI and not real. What do you think is the most dangerous part of AI?

SLY-08 Electric Mountainboard Major Upgrades

I made a quick video a bit ago about my SLY-08 Electric Mountainboard I bought used to add to my fleet of PEV (Personal Electric Vehicles). I have had Electric skateboards in the past and really enjoyed them but when I bought my EUC and OneWheel I felt like the eSkateboard was a bit redundant and so I sold it.

The I went for a vacation to Oceanside California and bought an eSkateboard to get around on and remembered how fun they where. So when I got back I headed over to Facebook Marketplace and found a god deal on an Electric Mountainboard which is basically an eSkateboard Longboard but with bigger tires and wider trucks to handle more road conditions.

As is usually the case, I was not 100% satisfied with the overall power and speed so I installed a higher power battery which kind of worked but the motor control unit (ESC) was not able to utilize all the power and so the battery would only work when partially charged. OK, so more upgrades where needed to get all the juice out of the new battery! That meant a new motor controller and remote which unfortunately my first unit I bought was defective, unit number two was not defective but as is often the case the firmware did not match my remote firmware so this has complicated things as the new firmware download for my new motor controller was not downloading. I am still waiting for this firmware download from the company but I have managed to get the board working for the most part using a computer to program the old firmware.

I also got new tires and grip tape for the board along with the addition of lighting all around. It is not 100% complete but I am getting pretty close now!