Never lose your Drone again: A lost model beeper roundup and comparison

[@ibfisher]

Wow, you answered my viewer request!!! Thanks for the round-up!! Cheers!

[@CurryKitten]

You and a few other people - it's been on my to-do list for a while, so you have the rain and 50mph wind to thank for me actually doing it today :)

[@didactylos4diddy474]

Thanks to your original reviews I own 1 of the original metal Micro and 2 of the Mini 2s. All 3 fit in most of my toys and one mini 2 actually runs on my RC truck. Nice round up with good detail on all of the contenders. Even the wacky ones

[@CurryKitten]

Cool, glad they were helpful :)

[@blackers2005]

Great roundup, drone keeper micro has certainly saved my quad several times. Especially useful when learning to fly !!!

[@slicksix8892]

Still use the Dronekeeper i got after watching your video last year. Thanks man👍😃

[@CurryKitten]

Collectors item - keep hold of it :D

[@edfhobbies556]

3 DB increase in volume for the ViFly is a notable increase, every 3db there needs to be a marked increase in power relating to certain frequencies IINM.

[@frasersteen]

I like the vifly too, your recommendation got me that and now I never fly without one. You can pick up the v1 cheap right now too.

[@CurryKitten]

Nice one - the V1 is still a nice loud beeper, and if it's at a cheapo price, then snap them up !

[@MCsCreations]

Fantastic, man! I definitely agree! 😊 I just ordered a ViFly 2 a few days ago. 😃

[@CurryKitten]

Nice going MC :)

[@frankbarajas]

That is quite a collection!

[@CurryKitten]

You should hear the racket when they all go off at once !

[@frankbarajas]

@@CurryKitten Clearly one of the unseen issues of being a fine lost model beeper collector. Who knew? LOL

[@HeathNielsen]

Awesome you are the lost model buzzer man!!! Fling and building super small drones like the Mobula 7. Hoping you can help find nano size lost model gear. simple 5-minute timer with a button to rest the time is good enough. thanks just for reading this. The buzzer on the Mobula 7 does not work if the bat disconnects or the telemetry drops.

[@CurryKitten]

If you are flying the Mobula outside then I think what I would do is replace the buzzer in it with something like the Hellgate buzzer. That is a really compact battery backed buzzer and should fit in without too much trouble.

[@HeathNielsen]

Thanks for the recommendation. Please keep looking for something smaller. Do you not use affiliate links?@@CurryKitten

[@CurryKitten]

I do for some products, but they aren't an option on everything. I didn't want to have a big list of links here, so there's a link to the playlist so you can check out each product in more detail, or there's a link in the description to a "support me" page in case you want to go shopping at the likes of Gearbest or Banggood and want to use a general affiliate link :)

[@lostjohnny9000]

Crashing into heather seems to be a guaranteed cable pull or battery throw. Bramble patches are not fun either. Brilliant review

[@CurryKitten]

Cheers - I don't lose a lipo often. The last one was in brambles though - I came out looking like I'd had a fight with an angry cat

[@scootroter4859]

Great, concise, and thorough review! Nice going Beeper King! Lol 👑😎🤘

[@CurryKitten]

Once again, I thought I was out, but thanks to this video I now know about at least another 2 of them !

[@beison8000]

As always great content. Thanks for putting stuff out for the community!

[@CurryKitten]

Thanks muchly :)

[@angmo8881]

Very detailed explanation 👍👍👍 could not find the drone keeper mini on Banggood, Gearbest n Tomtop. Where can I buy one. Thanks

[@CurryKitten]

If you look at the dedicated review for the Dronekeeper mini, it tells you :) It's sold directly from it's manufacturer here www.nichemall.net/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=79

[@ZenMountain]

Google

[@gerrydixon9984]

Can confirm that the Dronekeeper Mini 2 is being shipped with a battery. Received 2, shipped to the uk, lead time was about 2 weeks

[@CurryKitten]

That's cool - the LIR1254's were a bit of a pain to get originally

[@IanBeaty]

I recently came across a couple more interesting lost model beepers you might want to know about, both on Banggood. The 1st one, LANTIAN 110dBi Finder Buzzer, mounts in a 36x36 stack. The 2nd one, AURORA AR TRACKER 100dB Beeper, has an externally wired button. I am super curious about the one that mounts in the stack - that could make it much easier to mount on some quads and it claims to be one of the loudest. Thanks for the great info!

[@CurryKitten]

Oh, look at that, two comments about the same one. I just looked at the Lantian one and noticed they don't specify how far away you should get 110dB, but the idea is interesting. My only worry is fitting it into my existing stacks. I generally don't have much vertical space to add things ! I'd seen the Aurora one, but I hadn't noticed the external button - both interest me, I'll have to see if I can take a look at them :)

[@IanBeaty]

@@CurryKitten Good point on the 110dBi... I forgot how important the distance of measurement is. I often have really low stacks so sticking it in the stack sounds great if that's an option. If you get the opportunity to check out that one, that would be wonderful - I might already have one by then to test myself since I have a quad begging to test it. Thanks for all of the great work you do.

[@mayberrywj]

I wonder why the makers of the LANTIAN removed most of the board material near the mounting holes? It looks like a spot for breakage to happen easily.

[@IanBeaty]

@@mayberrywj You are right. Looking at it again, I noticed they also have another set of holes for a smaller size stack. It looks like the bigger ones are designed to snap off if you want to use the inner holes. That's my guess. I agree though, it looks like it may also break off accidentally.

[@normanboyes4983]

Are there any god trackers small enough to fit on a drone?

[@d3c0deFPV]

I've been caught flying near sunset and gave up on looking for my quad in the dark. A 24 hour beeper would have saved me a lot of time looking for it in treetops the next day.

[@CurryKitten]

...and/or one that flashes int he dark !

[@Jamesn-js1zp]

If you want an accurate dB sound meter use SPLnFFT (Apple app), it's recorded by sound engineers for being the most accurate available. However, as will all phone measuring apps they are meant to be used without phone protective cases.

[@CurryKitten]

That costs money - so rules it out, that's how cheap I am :) Yes the case was on, but the mic wasn't obscured. As mentioned, the idea of this was to get a rough level of noise and be able to record the noise levels well enough to compare them all

[@stevefox3763]

had a look on BG for the standalone jobs and nether are sold on there, do you have a BG bleeper you can recommend? Im looking for standalone, pwm would be useful but not essential as i have to loose signal before i can turn my radio off, it wont let me if it is still connected to the model lol. i do have APM based planes but they are the least likely ones to get lost as they don't get flown aggressively or near obstructions, twice ive spent around an hour searching farmers fields from wing loss and 3 times ive searched from hitting power lines, ive not lost a model in the fields yet but its dam hard finding them in 4-5ft high rapeseed crops, even 3ft wheat is a challenge lol so far, ive tracked them using signal strength on the tx and then wiggled the servos and listened for it once ive got close, a bleeper would have saved me a lot of time ha ha

[@CurryKitten]

The standalone unit is a bit of a rare beast, so only a few people trying those so far, but if you want to go the BG route have a look at the ViFly 2. If you look at my review on it (at around 5m24s) I show how you'd hook it up to a normal receiver and as well as beeping if it loses power, I found you can activate it with a switch connected to whatever channel you use and you actually get two different tones out of it this way.

[@stevefox3763]

@@CurryKitten thankyou!, I'll be checking it out in just a sec, As cool as my fully loaded planes are, I prefer the raw flying experience and my daily flyer has nothing but an rx and voltage osd :)

[@stevefox3763]

@@CurryKitten thankyou, ive had a look at that and i like the look of it. its able to operate as a stand alone running on pwm on a rx or can be used with the buzzer output on a filght controller, best of both worlds :)

[@stevefox3763]

Been looking at bleepers for my planes , found this helpful :) One note about lipos, do you know BG are shipping lipos again?, dont know how long it will be before they suspend it again but ive grabbed all the packs i think ill need to get me though the next lipo shipping problem lol.

[@CurryKitten]

BG don't seem to be shipping lipos at all to the UK, but I do notice that they will ship them if they are in a lost model beeper or part of a RTF package. Gearbest aren't even able to ship some of these lost model finders to the UK now. Yay for Russia :)

[@stevefox3763]

@@CurryKitten BG are shipping lipos to me, ive just double checked and i can still order them, i couldn't order till about 5 days ago but the restriction has been lifted for me and i jumped on it and ordered lipos like they were free lol

[@CurryKitten]

Well bugger me - so they are, I might need to get an order in ! I do notice there aren't any free shipping options, so maybe they've worked out a way of legally getting them into air freight by putting a little tariff on each one. I'll ask my Banggood lady the next time I talk to her

[@stevefox3763]

@@CurryKitten i did think the way you spoke about lipos in the video suggested you hadn't realized BG were shipping again, watch that add to cart finger get happy now, mine did lol

[@920fpv]

Vifly 2 downside #2. It has a light sensor where it stops beeping at night time, cuz I know we all love out neighbors...lol. So if you fly thru super dark buildings your screwed, except for led light. I contacted vifly they still have a few original in stock.

[@CurryKitten]

Have a look at my review and you'll see that it didn't stop beeping when I took it out in the dark. I checked with ViFly about why this was and what the sensor actually looks for is the light disappearing over time. So if you crash in daylight and then it turns dark as night falls - it should stop beeping. If you are already in the dark then it doesn't dim further and so just carries on beeping away.

[@920fpv]

@@CurryKitten I was emailing with "Tim" from vifly, and didn't mention this to me, just said this product probably isn't for you we still have a couple version ones left if you want them...haha. nice.

[@MrJarrod]

I am really looking for a lost model alarm that is controlled by your phone ie. on off settings via bluetooth control.

[@CurryKitten]

There are plenty of Blutooth based finders, but the range is really quite poor - as for settings and things, I guess the idea is to make things as simple as possible so there's less to possibly go wrong. Out of all of them, the BuzzyBo seems to have more scope for extra function. Like powering off by taping your quads frame.

[@scootroter4859]

You don't want one of those! Trust me... They're made to find your pet or your keys because the range sucks! Bluetooth is NOT the way to go! Plus, you'll spend more money on something that works crappy. Get anyone off the other beepers he's showing here, but the loc8tor. That's crap too!

[@randomdudefpv4927]

More like, some 3dprinted case, GSM module, Arduino/AtMega + GPS (optional), small lipo, then just call that number and it beeps.

[@choppergirl]

I just want a damn simple thing with a physical switch on it with some cheap replaceable common as dirt hearing aid batteries it, and it will start periodically beeping when switched on, and stop when switched off.

[@Autocharge1]

I would like to see a lost beeper and a gopro mount you can use together in case your gopro pops off your Quad and you loose it.

[@CurryKitten]

What I tend to do is put my GoPro in a silicon case and then tether that to the quad, which allows it to pop off but not go anywhere - I'd be tempted to do something to tether the model finder to the GoPro if I didn't have a silicon jacket on it

[@paulphillips9667]

I just when into the system and found that Nichemall.net is not working ????. I do have a couple of them and will get then up and running in the spring and see how they work.

[@CurryKitten]

Just had a go and the website seemed to be up and responding. Perhaps just down for some weird reason - maintenance/broke/cleaner unplugged the server/etc ?

[@paulphillips9667]

yes , it does work correctly now. I see it has a new pricing for the dronekeeper 2....includes a battery now.

[@JB-cq2wo]

what happens when the batter dies completely ? How to recharge ? I'm getting a fait steady beep ?

[@CurryKitten]

On which beeper? On the ones that wire into the FC, they charge all the time your quad is powered on. The standalone ones will use a charge cable of somesort

[@JB-cq2wo]

@@CurryKitten I have V finder one wired to FC. So it will charge one day I hope. Thanks

[@MindRiderFPV]

Thanks! Including the weight would have been perfect :-)

[@CurryKitten]

In retrospect that would have been quite useful ! The quick and glib answer is "not much" aside from that big thing with leds

[@MindRiderFPV]

CurryKitten That helps too. Thanks!

[@zbluga4418]

Iam using this one KROAK Mini GPS Tracker Positioner Module GPS+AGPS+LBS Multiple Locator SOS Alarm Web APP Tracking High Integration PCBA For Kids Children Pets Car. You can even see on map where your quad is

[@CurryKitten]

Just things that beep in this video. I've looked at one GPS tracker before which included "lifetime" data so no sim was needed. It might be interesting to take a look at a cheaper alternative in the future, but of course you'll need to provide you own data sim to use it

[@firstpersonq2346]

🐝

[@Rich-TeaFPV]

That's a lot of beeping, can we have some quiet time now 😁

[@CurryKitten]

non-stop beeping party in my house :D

[@stuartmccloud307]

Somebody please just make a beeper that works sort of like the drone keeper, but plugs into the balance charge lead on the battery and velcros down with the battery. Then you can swap between quads and it has a primary power source.

[@CurryKitten]

Most of the time I use a DroneKeeper held on with a rubber band around the lipo. I can go for weeks and weeks without every worrying about charging (unless I do need it and it has to beep for hours on end) but I like the idea :)

[@keymaster2108]

Every beeper I have ever installed on drones always fail after a few hours flight time and thats maybe a week

[@CurryKitten]

One of these ones I use, or a regular beeper ?

[@keymaster2108]

@@CurryKitten Regular beeper

[@AndrewHyams]

Finally! XD

[@CurryKitten]

Take note Frank !

[@pixelcomet]

without one of those, my kwad would be gone at least 3 times

[@CurryKitten]

They really do work - everyone should have something !

[@OffsetFPV]

you mean only "poison" is called medicine, or the pharmaceutical companies only what medicine to be "poison" awful world we live in.

[@CurryKitten]

Well there's a can of worms - sure, big pharma does many bad things, but there's plenty of actual wonder life saving medicines out there that work and shouldn't be devalued because of them