I’ve been testing the new Watts Innovations Prism Lite multicopter and am absolutely delighted with it. Watts offered to send one to an ArduPilot dev team member and I jumped at the chance to try it out. Watts has a great reputation for producing very high quality aircraft so I was interested to see just how it was setup.
The copter comes with ArduPilot 4.3, and the video above is the first test flight with a 4.4.x build, it is just a short test to ensure that everything looks good with 4.4.x, and as expected there were no issues.
Frame Design
The frame is a coaxial octo-quad with a very nice folding arm design to keep it compact.
There has been a lot of thought put into the folding design, with connector covers and nice prop covers to minimise bumps and scratches.
You can see it folded up here in the back of my car, with the arms folded but the landing gear still attached:
the two high quality GPS modules also fold down for transport.
In that photo you can also see the battery rails. The batteries are attached to rail guides, and then click in place neatly making for very easy but secure setup. There is also a nice carry handle to make moving the copter around easier:
Underneath there are a pair of payload mounting rails. In this photo you can see a SIYI ZT30 thermal camera attached:
RemoteID Support
The Prism Lite comes pre-configured for FAA RemoteID with the CubeID remote ID module. While I don’t need to use RemoteID in Australia I have been flying with RemoteID enabled just to try things out. One very nice feature is the GPS built into the telemetry radio. The USB cable connects to a USB hub, so both the RFD900x ground radio and the u-blox GPS is exposed to your GCS. This makes it easy to comply with the RemoteID requirements for pilot position reporting.
Flying the Prism Lite
Flying the Prism Lite is a real pleasure, with a great tune and stability. I’ve only been flying it line of sight so far, but I would be very confident flying this copter BVLOS.
There is a nice payload versus flight time tool on the Watts Innovations website:
Overall this is a great copter and I’m sure it will do well. Congratulations to Watts Innovations on the design and build!