Make no mistake, the UVify OOri is not the camera drone you might be looking for. OOri is a mini-drone with a pedigree in racing, it’s safe to fly indoors, but it has a need for speed. Before we get to our full review, which we’re almost done working on now, we wanted to share a quick unboxing and setup.
If you are interested in what’s in the box, or are doing some research before your own UVify OOri arrives, we’ve got some tips and tricks for you. Let me say, however, this is a fun drone, we are having a blast with our UVify OOri.
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What’s in the box?
UVify doesn’t mess with any fluff. The contents of the OOri box are all important tools and accessories for your flight. No point dragging out this conversation, you get the drone, with propeller guards attached, you get the remote, with antennas detached, and you get a pouch with tools, screws and extra props. Plus a battery.
There will be some documentation in the box as well, pretty standard stuff.
Please keep those tools and screws safe. You will need the screws if you ever wish to remove the propeller guards; The long screws holding the prop guards will damage your motor if you put them on without the guards in place.
You’ll need to supply your own micro USB cable and charger to charge up the drone and the remote, each separately.
There is an optional battery charging dock, and extra batteries are very affordable, so consider that for your flying needs.
OOri is small and easy to transport, but you may find that the box itself, or at least the form-fit foam inserts, are your ideal carrying case.
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First impressions of the UVify OOri
I didn’t say anything in the video, mostly because OOri is a simple drone and I want to save opinions for my review. In a few short words: The UVify OOri is a fun drone to fly. It is not hard to fly, but if you are dependent on GPS lock and an absolute stable hover, OOri will be a challenge for you.
The UVify OOri operates in ATTI mode by default, and it has an Optiflow sensor on the bottom that automatically kicks the drone into OPTI mode when conditions are right. OPTI mode on the OOri does not keep the drone perfectly still in the air, this drone is too powerful and geared for speed — the result is that the OOri tends to drift forward and upward slowly. Like a sports car taking a rolling start.
The thing about the UVify OOri that appeals to us is the size and its abilities at slow speeds and in tight spaces. I am practicing my ability to fly under chairs in the dining room, dip up and down around the couch in the living room, and of course, crash into my desk in front of the camera.
OOri performs quite well inside the house. Do be careful to not unleash the beast by stomping on the throttle, and be aware of prop wash in surprising places, but flying indoors is very safe.
I played down the importance of watching your battery level in the video. In your living room it is of no concern, just let the drone land softly wherever it runs out of juice. In the great outdoors, however, the far side of the field is a nuisance to retrieve your drone if that’s where the battery drops.
We’re doing some more advanced battery tests for our full review, but our rough average is 4 minutes per charge. You camera drone enthusiasts will be upset with this, but the racing crowd knows four minutes is on par with most racing drones. More to the point, most drone races are only a couple minutes long, giving you a minute to fly home after the final buzzer.
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If you are flying for pay, or any other form of compensation, you must operate under a different set of rules and possess a commercial drone license. We call it the Part 107, it’s not too hard to get, but it will take some time to learn all the rules. We want to help you learn the rules and get your commercial license, check out our drone pilot training material.
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Setting up your UVify OOri
Setup of your new mini racing drone is fairly easy. Of course, the first thing you will want to do is charge all the batteries. Then we look at booting on.
With most drones, the idea is to turn on the remote first, then the drone, this is true with the OOri as well.
Power on the remote – Tap once, then quickly tap and hold the power button in the center bottom front of the remote. It’s the Power button, you can’t miss it. The lights around the joysticks will spin on, similar to how the drone will do it. Release the power button when the ring of lights is complete. There is a noise to help verify the process.
Power on the drone – Tap once, then quickly tap and hold the power button on top of the drone. The ring of LED lights will spin on, release the button once the ring is complete. If you keep holding, the ring will turn orange, and when the orange ring is complete, the drone will boot into pairing mode.
Pairing – The team at UVify binds your OOri to its remote before they shipped it to you. Once the drone and remote are powered on, it should take just a few seconds before you see the data from the drone, plus the live video feed, on the display on the remote. If this does not happen, try tapping the Bind/CH button to see if the remote is bound, but not looking at the right video channel.
[quotenew qtext=”You should not need to pair your OOri and remote, it should be ready to fly!” qposition=”right” qcolor=”color1″]
If you do need to bind the drone and remote. Turn everything off first, then double tap and hold the power button on the drone until the second circle of lights turns on. Allow the drone to initialize and beep to verify it’s ready. Now hold the Bind/CH button on the remote as you power on the remote as above.
The process is automated. Your OOri and remote will find each other and link together. Please note, if you need to bind, be sure that only one OOri is in the area and binding at one time. Crossed channels can be a pain.
Camera angle – Your UVify OOri has an adjustable camera on the front. This is entirely for your preference. There are three main positions that you can lock the camera into, straight ahead, angled up and angled down. For high-speed operation, angle the camera up so that it is more level when you are on the fly. For playing around in the loving room, leave the camera pointing straight ahead. Finally, I don’t think the downward angle is an official locking point, it just happens to go there. Giving you a view of the ground if you are flying high in the air.
Arm your drone for flight – Now that you are ready to fly, how the heck do you start this thing?!? Easy, pull all the way on the left joystick, then tap the L button on the top left of the remote. It is important that the joystick is all the way down, as this calibrates your throttle.
Critical battery – you will see lights, hear noises and have an on-screen message when you have exhausted your battery. Note that this is measured by your current Volt measurement of your battery. Drone racers and RC airplane pilots know all about this. I haven’t identified the exact number that OOri considers critical, but I assume 3.4 volts. (Bad things happen to single cell batteries like this when they get to 3.3 volts.)
[quotenew qtext=”OOri lands almost immediately when battery drops to critical level. Know where you’re flying.” qposition=”right” qcolor=”color1″]
Note that your volt reading from the drone is an instant measure, so if you are at, say, 3.6 volts and you perform a hard throttle, the instant measure may drop to 3.4 and trigger the critical battery warning. Once landed and settled, it may raise back up to 3.6 volts again and you can enjoy another minute of flight.
When the critical battery level is reached, OOri will automatically reduce your input and slowly reduce throttle until your drone lands on the ground.
Disarm your drone – At any time you get into trouble, or when you are landing your drone, pull the throttle joystick back to the bottom and tap that top left button on the remote again. Truth told, all you need to do is tap the top left button to cut all power to the motors, but I think it’s good practice to throttle out while you’re at it.
Power down – When it’s time to call it a day, or swap batteries, repeat the button pattern of tap then hold the power button on both the drone and remote. You’ll see lights and hear tones to verify that your machines are turning off. Once the lights are out, you’re all done.
Prop guards – OOri comes with the prop guards installed. At least ours did. If you are ready to remove them, please, please read your instruction manual to identify the proper screw replacements to go back on the drone. The screws holding the prop guards are also holding your motors in place, and they are extra long screws, which will damage your motor if installed incorrectly.
Change props – Follow the instructions in the manual, or, really, just gently unscrew the existing props, slide on your new 2540 sized props. UVify sells replacements, and will have new colors eventually, but for now, a Gemfan 2540 (4-sets for $9.49) works great.
Change the color – One of my favorite features of the UVify OOri is the ability to change the color of the LED lights on the drone and the remote together. Preference is one thing, but this allows an easy way for multiple OOri’s to fly together, without mixing things up too bad. Simply press and hold the LED button on the bottom right of the front of the remote control. The lights will cycle through the available colors, release the button when you are happy with the color. You can also tap the button for more fine-tuned color selection.
Fly safe and have fun!
For those of you new to the world of racing drones and other FPV systems, your UVify OOri operates on the 5.8GHz band. This means that it is an open video signal you can view with any receiver. I am using an Eachine receiver monitor with DVR ($125) to record the video stream from the drone. You may opt for an FPV headset instead.
If you wish to go FPV, the OOri remote has an A/V output jack, you can pump out the video signal to an external monitor, recorder and/or VR headset directly. We’ll be testing latency for our full review.
There is not much else to it, we have plenty of great things to say when we lay out our full UVify OOri review for you soon, but setup and operation is really quite simple.
You can get your hands on the UVify OOri for $349 at Adorama now, a little more expensive directly from UVify.com.
If you’ll excuse us, the sun is shining and we would like to get outside to fly. While we’re out, feel free to drop your questions about the UVify OOri below and we’ll do our best to answer them in the full review.
What’s next?
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