I bought the first generation Zenmuse h3-2d gimbal when it came out two years ago, paid the full $700 and went through the laborious effort of retrofitting to a V1 Phantom w/o the upgrade board, which of course was not even announced until I had everything bought and installed. I also replaced the stock radio with a Futuba T8J. And bought the GoPro Hero 3 Black, which was the required camera for the Zenmuse.
So I put a lot of work into this, did some custom paint on the propeller guards I added and some other paint work and came out with a pretty nice setup which I had invested almost $2K in. And I didn't fly it that much so the gimbal had probably less than 10 hours on it before the season ended and I put things in storage, in a sealed plastic bin to keep things free of dust, with the plan to resume using this setup the following spring.
Unfortunately, I suffered a sudden and severe illness just as spring was breaking last year and was sidelined from many things, including flying, and I just never got back to it last year. So with renewed interest this year I got things out of storage and was not shocked to find one of my batteries has a cell out, but the real issue is that the gimbal is dead. I have tried everything to get it going and it's just fried like so many others.
And what I find so absurd about this is how DJI took peoples' hard-earned money for a very expensive piece of gear that was complete garbage from day 1 and then utterly failed in supporting people with issues. Trying to find support on this now, it's as if it never existed. And I have read that they now claim it was never designed for the Phantom, and yet whoever the marketing guy who was doing those videos a couple of years ago was absolutely touting this as a solution for the Phantom.
I understand the tech is considered "obsolete" now, but that seems largely predicated on DJI's extremely aggressive product release cycles, which don't offer upgrade or trade-up options for these expensive items. I am a complete realist in terms of how quickly tech ages out, but this was a significant investment and to have virtually no support options literally just two years beyond the purchase is really sticking it to the customer. This is at least the line I was given by my dealer, who is an authorized DJI distributor. And not only that, but my entire investment is negated by this failure. Throwing two thousands dollars at something for which I got as little use out of this as I did is crazy. And if I upgrade to a newer gimbal, then my Hero 3 is essentially useless for this, even though it's still a current model and is still commanding a decent price.
And then they want to you to sink thousands more into their latest platform, and it's like you get the thing and 2 months later they're announcing the next version at the same price with double the features. And TFB if you bought the last version which was junk, and we are "sorry".
Yes DJI. You are very, very "sorry" indeed.
So I put a lot of work into this, did some custom paint on the propeller guards I added and some other paint work and came out with a pretty nice setup which I had invested almost $2K in. And I didn't fly it that much so the gimbal had probably less than 10 hours on it before the season ended and I put things in storage, in a sealed plastic bin to keep things free of dust, with the plan to resume using this setup the following spring.
Unfortunately, I suffered a sudden and severe illness just as spring was breaking last year and was sidelined from many things, including flying, and I just never got back to it last year. So with renewed interest this year I got things out of storage and was not shocked to find one of my batteries has a cell out, but the real issue is that the gimbal is dead. I have tried everything to get it going and it's just fried like so many others.
And what I find so absurd about this is how DJI took peoples' hard-earned money for a very expensive piece of gear that was complete garbage from day 1 and then utterly failed in supporting people with issues. Trying to find support on this now, it's as if it never existed. And I have read that they now claim it was never designed for the Phantom, and yet whoever the marketing guy who was doing those videos a couple of years ago was absolutely touting this as a solution for the Phantom.
I understand the tech is considered "obsolete" now, but that seems largely predicated on DJI's extremely aggressive product release cycles, which don't offer upgrade or trade-up options for these expensive items. I am a complete realist in terms of how quickly tech ages out, but this was a significant investment and to have virtually no support options literally just two years beyond the purchase is really sticking it to the customer. This is at least the line I was given by my dealer, who is an authorized DJI distributor. And not only that, but my entire investment is negated by this failure. Throwing two thousands dollars at something for which I got as little use out of this as I did is crazy. And if I upgrade to a newer gimbal, then my Hero 3 is essentially useless for this, even though it's still a current model and is still commanding a decent price.
And then they want to you to sink thousands more into their latest platform, and it's like you get the thing and 2 months later they're announcing the next version at the same price with double the features. And TFB if you bought the last version which was junk, and we are "sorry".
Yes DJI. You are very, very "sorry" indeed.
