In search of perfect water drone so far I've tried Fifish V6 and now Powerdolphin. As I wrote in another forum I returned Fifish V6 and got Powerdolphin because Fifish was difficult for me to manage on my own and my dreams of taking it somewhere like Florida where I can actually use it were shuttered by sheer bulk and weight of the ROV. So instead I got Powervision's Dolphin. I knew I wouldn't be able to use it underwater but I was hoping I can still get some descent videos of nature and even some underwater life, as Dolphin's camera tilts underwater. I even got a Wizard version that includes Fish Finder/Radar. I don't fish at all and have zero interest in it, but I thought it would be neat to detect river floors and schools of fish just for scientific curiosity. My main goal with any kind of drone is photo/videography.
Let me mention cool things about Powerdolphin first. It's very light and easy to carry in the included waterproof softbag (more like a pouch with handles). Even tho it offers no protection, you can still put it in the car if you take care to immobilize it. Because of this I was able to take to small vacation trips and actually launch it. First one was in the Ocean City, MD and second in Maine.
You still need to find a good spot to launch it because it's hard to grab it from the dock. Best place is to launch it where water meets the shore. First voyage was at the big pond in Ocean City. I spent maybe 30 minutes with it, learning how to control the "drone". It's quite simple really and doesn't require any training. Controls are intuitive and boat goes FAST! Sometimes too FAST as you can easily loose track of it if you go too far. I never lost signal.
Well that's where good things end for me. My main problem was that nothing got recording on the micro SD card. That's something I discovered after coming back home from vacation and it was disappointing to say the least. I thought maybe it was because I didn't format card in the drone, so on my next trip to Maine I made sure I formatted it via Vision+ app. And guess what? Still nothing! Card didn't even get formatted, I can see GoPro files still on it! App never gave me any errors or warnings, when I hit record button it showed recording in progress. I tried both video and photo modes. A really dumb move on my end was not testing it while I had it at home, oops
I also didn't spend time contacting tech support about this. I would've if I decided to keep the boat, more on this later...
Second issue is drone's camera. It's completely useless! If you think you can drive it via camera, think again. You can barely see anything as water get's into the lens and since only way to see above the water is to drive boat at it's highest speed (it lifts up when it goes fast) you need really quick reflexes and probably an FPV setup. Image that you do see is often tilted to one or the other side and not stabilized in any way.
I couldn't see ANYTHING under water even with LED on. Sure water wasn't that clear, but I was at very shallow depth and expected to see at least some hints of the floor. Before launching drone you have to decide if you want to see under water or above, because camera has to be manually set into correct position. Yes besides motor driver tilting mechanism, you also have to swivel camera up or down in semi/fixed position.
Third is that water gets where it's not supposed to. Battery has a seal around it that doesn't prevent water from getting under it. I was careful and even bought second battery. No matter you will see a pool of water in the area where contacts are. I imagine they'd get corroded pretty fast in sea water.
The included Powerseeker fishfinder can't even be used with same phone! You have to have another device/phone connected to it directly. What? How am I supposed to hold controller with phone using two hands and than another phone to see fishfinder screen? I only got two hands...
Build quality of the boat is ok. It feels a bit flimsy, especially batter cover that seems like it could fall of at any moment. It has built in GPS and return to home function, but keep in mind that will only work if you have no obstacles between you and boat, otherwise it will happily smash into rocks or anything else that's in it's way. That's because there are no sensors that can detect them. But I do understand it might be extremely difficult to detect obstacles in water.
In my futile attempt to justify keeping Powerdolphin I tried mounting my GoPro 8 camera to it. And it almost worked! I used double sided goPro sticky mounts and despite boats curved surface they were able to stay on pretty securely. However I mounted camera close to the nose to get unobstructed view but it backfired on me. As soon as Powerdolphin starts going, especially in the normal mode, it starts diving nose first into water bringing it's props and water sensors above water and stopping immediately. You can kind of drive it in "underwater mode" that limits the speed, but it has to stop every second or so. Despite all that footage that I got from GoPro camera with build in Hypersmooth stabilization had an amazing potential. It was what I was expecting to get from drone camera in the first place! If only boat didn't stop every second while doing this... And after it stops it starts spinning so you are not going to get any good video... Maybe, just maybe if you mount camera closer to the boat's midsection you can get it work...
Finally, there was always a worry in mind that I will lose this $1K if it flips, especially with GoPro mounted on top. You see, Powerdolphin has water sensor on the bottom. When it doesn't detect water it locks it's props. I don't know why, probably a safety feature, but it doesn't make much sense to me. So if you boat flips upside-down guess what happens. Right, you won't be able to retrieve it unless you can swim after it. If that happens and you have no other ways of retrieving it, you just lose a drone and a GoPro camera...
So what you have is a very cool RC boat, that costs $1k. I decided to return it before return window expired and try something else...
Let me mention cool things about Powerdolphin first. It's very light and easy to carry in the included waterproof softbag (more like a pouch with handles). Even tho it offers no protection, you can still put it in the car if you take care to immobilize it. Because of this I was able to take to small vacation trips and actually launch it. First one was in the Ocean City, MD and second in Maine.
You still need to find a good spot to launch it because it's hard to grab it from the dock. Best place is to launch it where water meets the shore. First voyage was at the big pond in Ocean City. I spent maybe 30 minutes with it, learning how to control the "drone". It's quite simple really and doesn't require any training. Controls are intuitive and boat goes FAST! Sometimes too FAST as you can easily loose track of it if you go too far. I never lost signal.
Well that's where good things end for me. My main problem was that nothing got recording on the micro SD card. That's something I discovered after coming back home from vacation and it was disappointing to say the least. I thought maybe it was because I didn't format card in the drone, so on my next trip to Maine I made sure I formatted it via Vision+ app. And guess what? Still nothing! Card didn't even get formatted, I can see GoPro files still on it! App never gave me any errors or warnings, when I hit record button it showed recording in progress. I tried both video and photo modes. A really dumb move on my end was not testing it while I had it at home, oops
I also didn't spend time contacting tech support about this. I would've if I decided to keep the boat, more on this later...Second issue is drone's camera. It's completely useless! If you think you can drive it via camera, think again. You can barely see anything as water get's into the lens and since only way to see above the water is to drive boat at it's highest speed (it lifts up when it goes fast) you need really quick reflexes and probably an FPV setup. Image that you do see is often tilted to one or the other side and not stabilized in any way.
I couldn't see ANYTHING under water even with LED on. Sure water wasn't that clear, but I was at very shallow depth and expected to see at least some hints of the floor. Before launching drone you have to decide if you want to see under water or above, because camera has to be manually set into correct position. Yes besides motor driver tilting mechanism, you also have to swivel camera up or down in semi/fixed position.
Third is that water gets where it's not supposed to. Battery has a seal around it that doesn't prevent water from getting under it. I was careful and even bought second battery. No matter you will see a pool of water in the area where contacts are. I imagine they'd get corroded pretty fast in sea water.
The included Powerseeker fishfinder can't even be used with same phone! You have to have another device/phone connected to it directly. What? How am I supposed to hold controller with phone using two hands and than another phone to see fishfinder screen? I only got two hands...
Build quality of the boat is ok. It feels a bit flimsy, especially batter cover that seems like it could fall of at any moment. It has built in GPS and return to home function, but keep in mind that will only work if you have no obstacles between you and boat, otherwise it will happily smash into rocks or anything else that's in it's way. That's because there are no sensors that can detect them. But I do understand it might be extremely difficult to detect obstacles in water.
In my futile attempt to justify keeping Powerdolphin I tried mounting my GoPro 8 camera to it. And it almost worked! I used double sided goPro sticky mounts and despite boats curved surface they were able to stay on pretty securely. However I mounted camera close to the nose to get unobstructed view but it backfired on me. As soon as Powerdolphin starts going, especially in the normal mode, it starts diving nose first into water bringing it's props and water sensors above water and stopping immediately. You can kind of drive it in "underwater mode" that limits the speed, but it has to stop every second or so. Despite all that footage that I got from GoPro camera with build in Hypersmooth stabilization had an amazing potential. It was what I was expecting to get from drone camera in the first place! If only boat didn't stop every second while doing this... And after it stops it starts spinning so you are not going to get any good video... Maybe, just maybe if you mount camera closer to the boat's midsection you can get it work...
Finally, there was always a worry in mind that I will lose this $1K if it flips, especially with GoPro mounted on top. You see, Powerdolphin has water sensor on the bottom. When it doesn't detect water it locks it's props. I don't know why, probably a safety feature, but it doesn't make much sense to me. So if you boat flips upside-down guess what happens. Right, you won't be able to retrieve it unless you can swim after it. If that happens and you have no other ways of retrieving it, you just lose a drone and a GoPro camera...
So what you have is a very cool RC boat, that costs $1k. I decided to return it before return window expired and try something else...
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