Comprehensive Manuals

Discussion in 'Drone Dreaming' started by fxdeuce, Mar 8, 2016.

  1. fxdeuce

    fxdeuce Member

    I've purchased 3 quads in the last month; Horizon Inductrix, XK-X250, and Chroma. All 3 have manuals that are skimpy at best and wholly inadequate. The XK250's technical writer barely knew English and the manual was functionally useless. After spending over $800 for the Chroma I should have received a much better manual.

    I play a PC game called Company of Heroes, and like every other PC game I ever purchased it comes with a detailed manual. This manual explains in detail every feature in the program and how to apply them. Along with the manuals you can get guides written by users on strategy, tactics...etc. Of course, there are lots of resources online, but I like having a real book for on hand quick reference.

    So far, the best online resource is YouTube, the company's websites are nearly as useless as their so called manuals. I don't consider instructions printed on one side of one sheet of paper a manual. I bought a Canon printer with the same type of skimpy manual. When I was trying to set up my wireless connection I got hung up when I got to an instruction that said "press the WPS button". I looked all over the included documentation and couldn't find the location of this button. I logged onto to Canons website and couldn't find it anywhere there. So I called tech support and they told me to refer to the freakin manual. My printer is now connected with a USB cable.

    In the into to this the Drone Dreaming section a question is asked "can it be done?". With manuals, the question should be; why haven't you done it yet? I think the least Chroma could do would be to detail every hardware and software feature of their quad, controller and camera. You have to go to YouTube to find out about Agility and Stabilization mode. What really inspired this post was the lack of information on my camera settings. Come on Yuneec, you sell very advanced quads with a lot of features and for the price we pay for them we deserve all the possible information on your products.
     
  2. RGJameson

    RGJameson Active Member

    The WPS button will be on your router/modem.

    Here's mine.
     

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  3. Jimmy Blade Chroma

    Jimmy Blade Chroma New Member

     
  4. Jimmy Blade Chroma

    Jimmy Blade Chroma New Member

    I totally agree with your criticisms of drone instruction manuals. However, you have to remember that most drone manufacturers are Chinese based. The people who write these manuals don't have the grasp of English that other Western countries have. What these companies need are westerners on their development teams to assist them.

    Jimmy Blade Chroma
     
  5. webman

    webman Administrator Staff Member

    When I first started reviewing drones I actually rewrote (or wrote) some manuals for a few.....I had done some technical writing in the past, so it was easy for me.

    If there was $$ in it I'd probably do more complex ones!

    There is no excuse for the lack of documentation for some of these models. It would take a decent technical writer perhaps 3 weeks to write a very complete manual for a modern GPS camera drone. They would also need a couple days work out of an illustrator - but considering the tens of millions these companies have invested in their marketing, R&D and production, spending 10K or so on a manual should be a no-brainer.

    The bigger Chinese drone companies already employ quite a few westerners in consulting and other jobs...so it's not like they don't have the capabilities.
     

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