Personally, i think the grappler is just gimmicky, the odds of you finding something worth picking up are extremely slim, unless you like to just grab random stuff.
Ever hear the phrase one man's trash is another man's treasure? This being the Great Lakes State where I'm at and Michigan having lake's like Lake St. Clair which are heavily pressured with fishermen and are littered with fishing lures across the bottom. I've lost numerous "giant" musky lures just casting, they snap break off casting lots of times. Lots of these lures that are snagged, the hooks rust out and are just waiting to be plucked. If I can find bass baits, lead, and other musky lures, just use the claw for that purpose would be totally worth it for me. Lead I can melt down again to make other lures(recyclable purposes). I'm not really looking to find anything that valuable, if I do, awesome. But just doing cleanup with trash for the environment, amongst tackle and other things, I think it'll be lots of fun and teaching newer generation about respecting the environment on my youtube channel. Which I think the American culture is lacking!
We all have our uses for these underwater drones and look at them differently, I could totally see where you think the claw is gimmicky.. I think for the first generation consumer drones like the Geneinno T1, yes it is gimmicky and help sell a lot of T1s, but because that drone isn't stable enough to pickup a lot of things, along with the claw being too heavy and making the T1 lean forward when attached, yes gimmicky... But what do you expect, this is the first generation of consumer drones? Now with these next generation of consumer underwater drones like the V6s and M2, they're much more stable and picking up items with a lot more ease. Have you seen what Robert Zollna and Austin Vibert have picked up? Pretty darn impressive, the technology can only improve from here out...
They waste battery power and Gladius cant afford to lose any battery life as it is...and now they are adding more crap on the M2, things gonna last 15 minutes with all the accessories on it.
Maybe i can let you demo a pro sometime. Do you use your drone to scout fishing spots?
I'm sure just like electric cars, the battery technology will improve and last longer as each year passes. But you don't stop working on a technology just because it's lacking battery life. But yeah, you make a great point if you buy one of these underwater drones just for filming purposes, a claw is kind of useless, I totally see where you're coming from.
and now they are adding more crap on the M2, things gonna last 15 minutes with all the accessories on it.
You're probably right, too much accessories too fast on the Pro version, some of that stuff probably be gimmicky and will only be allowed to used in a short period of time.
Maybe i can let you demo a pro sometime.
That would be cool!
I'm very surprised after talking to some of the management from both QYSEA and Chasing, that they didn't offer me demo some of their model drones... I think I even mentioned it to Navatics... Ya know owning this forum and all, along with my youtube channel that has around 1.5k views, I thought they'd be interested. Hey times are tight, maybe in the futre they'll reach out, but they do give me bits and pieces of information here and there. I suspect a lot of these companies don't want to give out an underwater drone, then have a youtuber do a review that turns out to be negative, which could possibly ruin sales.
I mean I had a french fishing lure company Suissex kind of sponsor me, give me around $500 worth of fishing lures. The 4.5" version worked incredibly well on bass, their 7" version on the other hand which I used on musky, broke only after a few musky at St. Clair. Worked quite effectively on musky, but after a couple strikes the musky were breaking the wire and ripping the willow blade right off. The company might like the one review, but might not care for the other review.
Like I told some of these underwater drone companies, I won't even do reviews, but just filming of the fish and let the youtube viewers decide what they think of the footage. Didn't get much of an interest...
I can't decide if I'm going to open up a separate youtube channel for this forum or just stick with my standard fishing channel. I think I'll probably just stick with my single solo channel, I ran two other channels once, a gaming channel, as well al channel on UFOs/Paranormal, lol, along with my fishing channel and it got to be way too much. Along with work, then my other websites, one only can do so much in a days time... Safe to say I enjoy I lot of different hobbies!
Do you use your drone to scout fishing spots?
I wouldn't go that far yet, lol, I just love filming wildlife. I mean don't get me wrong, maybe with time, as the technology improves I could see that being a possible use. As I've heard how the underwater drone companies are working on sonar, 3d mapping and such. But way too soon for any of that I think...
On my old fishing channel I'd drop my gopro down in the water and film all sorts of species of fish swimming by, I loved watching and editing the content, and so did my subscribers. This is a video I did this past spring with blue gill on their beds with the
GoPro 5.
Last January I had bought a Geneinno T1 and dropped it down in my marina, had some people say I wouldn't be able to see much with it being winter and water being murky from snow and rain, what ya know I still got some cool footage of bluegill, sunfish, crappie, and even bass. Even though the footage was kind of pixely and not the best of quality, lot of my subscribers still loved the video.
As one my fellow bass fishermen had pointed out, he was surprised to see largemouth school up like smallies right in the middle of winter. So right there, we've noticed and learned something.
lol I've met some fishermen that think underwater drones still seem gimmicky because their attached to a tether. To me, I think that's a benefit, you're not able to lose the drone, but hey, that's just what some people think. I think it's kind of crazy how advanced these underwater drones are in the consumer sector, yet no one knows... I have a recent story for ya, I came across another pilot flying his DJI Spark drone when I was musky fishing at my local metro park. I start talking about a lot of things surrounding the drone company DJI and how I'm pretty happy with my Mavic Mini, he tells me how he's happy with his
DJI Spark he bought used on Ebay. Along with other things like fishing, before he leaves the pier, I go you do know there's underwater drones now in the consumer sector don't you? I explain to him they're a lot of fun to use, he hadn't a clue... I'm like yeah man, just look up the Gladius Mini, pretty stable and easy to use, only around $1k, you could find it even cheap used on ebay since there's new improved models out now.
Amazes me how this hobby has sort of had a really slow start... For myself, I just knew the technology was just around the corner in the consumer sector. At one point after I sold my 2004 Cobra Mustang, I was going to use some of that money to buy the TTRobotix Seawolf, but then thought, well I just wait it out...
Kind of funny, when I did decide to buy the Geneinno T1, I get a few of these hobbyists that get on my youtube channel start slamming me and saying they could build a ROV for half the price. You got those people out there as well, lol. I'm like yeah, I'm not that tech savy where I'm going to make my own software(app), make my own claw, figure out how to connect everything up, camera etc... Sorry, I do like working on cars at times, but I don't have that amount of time nor intelligence to do that sort of thing.
Then I go do a
first test video with the T1 on my youtube channel, everyone claims in the comment section I'm doing a review, meanwhile it's just a first test in extremely murky water conditions in the middle of winter, my hands are freezing. I mean I get it, suspect a lot of people are just looking for some sort of information to go on before buying something like the T1 since there's very little video footage or reviews on this drone other than Dustin Dunnill. And since they didn't find what they're looking for, they're extremely pissed off, lol, lucky me!
To be honest with you, while Dustin Dunnill does a great job with his one day reviews, my person opinion is an underwater drone should go through at least a month of testing before giving solid honest review, not a day, kind of think that's ridiculous. I mean you do get the just on how stable it moves through the water, how easy the controls are to navigate and such. But I honestly wanted to do a first test of the T1 and tell my "fishing" subscribers how I plan on using the T1... The hobbyists looking to purchase this drone didn't care and were having a hissy fit I wasn't giving a more in-depth review. lol
It's been an interesting seeing how people respond when seeing this technology, people from the fishing community, veteran hobbyists from the RC community that make their own subs and ROVs, along with the average YouTuber... I've done my best trying to expand the hobby, but it still seem to moving at a snail pace, dunno, maybe things are moving faster than I think behind the scenes. I still think a lot of hobbyists aren't aware, I mean some hobbyists don't care for water in general. To me, I think it's even cooler, considering it's a lot more unknown territory than the sky.
