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Lights for Karma

Phobos

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Hi there!

As you may already noticed, I am really addicted to the Karma drone. I own several drones but the Karma is my favourite drone by far because of it's outstanding flight abilities. It's the perfect drone.
So I am always excited to test new gadgets for the Karma. I was looking for a way to add some lights to the drone for night flights.
First I tested some bike lights, mounted to the gear. Looked nice but was pretty useless.
1D2CA744-41F4-42A1-891F-9CB516E911E3.jpeg

So I looked for something more serious and came to the Lume Cubes. Lume Cubes are small LED spotlights with an alloy body and build in battery, that are used for outdoor photography. They are bright as hell and very lightweight. You can adjust brightness and other parameters via bluetooth and your smartphone. The good thing: you can easily attach them to drones with a 3D-printed mounting kit, provided by the manufacturer.
I bought a complete set for my Karma and started some testing.

Lume Cubes with Karma mounts:
143F1921-34A2-4DA4-A1CA-E22DF2280D68.jpeg
Attached to the Karma:
E51D355F-E93C-4695-8041-61E1B2663932.jpeg
Looks already nice...
8866E7B1-FFFB-461B-BE70-66FD6FA76940.jpeg
...and is really bright...
3E7FEEEE-9F7E-4C24-9217-74306A30AD93.jpeg
...really, really bright!
F52914DA-BC67-4260-B245-A6A2C8F88BBC.jpeg
You can even take photos at night.
81FCAC7C-B476-4DAE-A207-194673BF1FEA.jpeg
Or light up things from above.
335C073B-A440-410C-81AB-30D4335F07F1.jpeg

The Lumes Cubes do a good job. There a pros and cons so here is my conclusion:

"Can you take great footage at night with the Lume Cubes and the GoPro?"
-No, not really. GoPro's low light performance is not good enough yet.

"Can you use them for search an rescue operations like the new DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise?"
-No, same reason as mentioned above: bad low light performance in video mode and poor video downlink resolution.

"Do the Lume Cubes affect the Karma's flight behaviour in a negativ way?"
-No, Karma can easily handle the extra weight.

"If they are not good for shooting video at night - how can you use them instead?
-Lume Cubes and Karma are a great flying lightsource to light up things at the ground! You can use your flying lightsource to recover lost things at night on the ground. You will be impressed how much better you see on the ground.

"What else can you use it for?"
-If you like taking photos an night with DSLR, a flying light will give you possibilities you never had before. Light up a single tree at night from up above and take a photo with long exposure times of that lonely tree. Mind blowing!

"Does a Karma in the sky with lights look cool?"
-Yeah, absolutely!

"Can you impress other drone pilots with your flying torch?"
-Hell, YES!!! :)

"How often do I use the lights?"
-Unfortunately almost never.

"Would I buy them again?"
-Probably not. Too much money for too less use.


I hope I can give you some information and inspiration with my report.
 
Last edited:
Very cool! Thanks for the write up!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
Would you happen to know the final weight of the lumencube set up? I am working on a project like this myself.

Thanks!
 
Would you happen to know the final weight of the lumencube set up? I am working on a project like this myself.

Thanks!

Hello!

Yes, total weight with lumecubes is a few grams above the 2 kilo limit. For me in Germany/EU this is in fact an issue as the Karma changes the weight class just by adding the lumecubes. We need special proof of knowledge in Germany if drone is above 2 Kilogramms. Not a big deal but you can run into trouble if you don’t know.
 
Awesome, I love the image you got of the car. Ive been thinking of using the lume cubes for my karma as well. Did you try the pro tools to get better night shots?
 

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