DJI Mini 4 Pro
dji.comI've had the original Mini since it came out.
Other than damaging a prop from it hitting a blade of grass on landing it is in perfect shape. Yes, they are so fragile I landed very smoothly in the grass and soft grass is enough to damage the props!
I don't fly it as much as I used to. These new ones are certainly an engineering marvel with how much they have added and still kept it under 249g.
The big one to me though is the wind resistance. 10.7m/s is 23mph. The original specs 17mph. It is hard to say at which point it starts having trouble, but 23mph is a non-trivial improvement, it probably means 2x as many days you can actually fly.
Now the things that suck about DJI, and I wonder if they are actually at all improved with a new drone:
- Geofencing sometimes locks you out of legal flights, no way around that unless you can jailbreak
- Some legal flights require you going through an unlock process, and if the DJI web infrastructure is having a bad day you also get locked out of flying in a legal place
I would probably buy from another competitor, especially a US one, just over the unlock experience with DJI.
I'd like to find a good competitor too, and not just because of the geofencing. DJI has been identified as a national security threat by the US DOD, essentially because there's no way to be sure that every second of GPS-tagged video shot by a DJI drone isn't going into a giant server farm owned by the Chinese intelligence service.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/270608...
> there's no way to be sure that every second of GPS-tagged video shot by a DJI drone isn't going into a giant server farm owned by the Chinese intelligence service.
I checked your source and it didn’t back up this claim.
I’m not a networking specialist but isn’t it possible to detect if something is transmitting a massive amount of data (such as video) to an undetermined destination?
seems like this type of blatant data export would be easy to detect and subsequently ban the device doing it.
I’m just a simple software developer, so the network stuff can go over my head sometimes (heh), but the claim that such a large amount of data is being transmitted in a way that couldn’t be confirmed enough to ban the product seems dubious.
You do not need to transmit the video first. But coordinate or interested person. Even a sport watch can be a security threat as demo by some exercise army personnel. They just know who and when and where these places are.
For the transfer part it is much harder as said and easier to detect in peace time.
But then what happen in war or proxy-war time. You have to know how many senior Russians are killed by using a phone …
> Even a sport watch can be a security threat as demo by some exercise army personnel.
In the early days of the Afghan (or was it Iraq?) war, people used Strava to figure out the locations of American bases. They'd see a bunch of smart watches suddenly wake up in the morning and start exercising at the same time, a dead giveaway.
Recently a Russian commander got killed because he shared his daily running route on Strava which was seen by the killer.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/11/europe/russian-submarine-...
I wonder if killing their dumber commanders might inadvertently be helping them…
Even steelmanning the argument, it probably doesn't. For one, commanders need some level of experience and training, you can't replace them for free. But more importantly, having a lower technically skill, which might open one up to inadvertently sharing their running route, probably does not correlate too much with the skills required to be a successful commander. Now, in general (hah), stupid people will probably both be more open to these kind of mistakes and be worse commanders, but being a good commander doesn't mean are not making minor opsec mistakes like this, so in the end you will still loose strategically valuable people.
We disagree on the severity of the mistake, hiding information from adversaries is a core competency and a big part of training. Someone who failed to learn from that training has a low innate intelligence and even if trained is unable to use the training effectively and is a liability.
The CIA for example drills into their people this same information denial training but they appear to neglect randomness so you end up with a bunch of people with the same peculiar behavioral patterns so they’re ironically rather easy to detect if you have access to click stream data. For example, they’re told not to follow each other on social media, but they still interact so you end up with two people who freely follow lots of people who interact with each other frequently but don’t follow each other. It’s weird, I’m not saying everyone who does this is information hiding but you can extract networks of people who behave in this same weird way with each other.
In order to protect the enigma cracking secret the UK randomly allowed themselves to be bombed with a bias towards less strategic targets. That’s the kind of thing you have to do to hide information, letting yourself be bombed should denote just how serious it is.
what a strange argument to make
Yeah, I'm serious, I'm not making a 'if you kill your enemies they win' argument but part of learning by doing is having the people who make poor decisions suffer the consequence of those decisions so that there are fewer people around making poor decisions. Especially in the military where you're spending other peoples money and other people suffer the consequences of your misadventures. Of course there is quite a lot of randomness in outcomes, but a blunder of this magnitude is inexcusable considering their line of work. Because of the corruption in the Russian army I would assume there is only a weak link between competence and rank and having an actual enemy around to punish mistakes would be helpful in winnowing out the morons. I'm pretty sure Russia knows they're corrupt and have deliberately adopted a learn by doing strategy to improve their warfighting capability for this very reason.
A big part of the process in undermining an opposition is promoting the worst aspects in them. Instead of killing off a moron, perhaps secretly encourage them to run for office and donate to their political campaigns, secretly buy media coverage for them, etc.
Arguments based on natural selection are sometimes unintuitive!
It's fair, but they've been working on improving the quality of their officers since 1904.
Don't know if you were attempting to make a joke, but Stalin purged the army of older, most qualified officers in the late 1930s, because they came from the pre-revolution times and were viewed as a loyalty risk. One of his biggest blunders that severely disadvantaged the country when the WW2 started.
Many white-era officers did serve in the Red Army; including Zhukov and his ex-boss Rokossovskij. Being a cadre in pre-revolution times wasn't the issue itself; willingness to sabotage their own country was.
Incidentally, the blunder in the 1941 in the Red Army was an issue of loyalty indeed. Navy didn't experience the same problem.
The short version: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yzGqp3R4Mx4
I mean, I assume it's mostly a joke, but if you assume that their system of selecting high officers isn't merit-based (which you would tend to assume given that it is Putin's Russia) then assassination which preferentially kills off the more incompetent officers would indeed be beneficial to the military as a whole.
Neither. The US’ wars in both places predate general availability “smart” devices by quite some time.
There were devices like black berries and tmobile sidekick, and gps trackers from garmin (etc) but I think the incidents you were referring to happened much later (2018 vs 2001/2002).
but the us only left Afganistan two years ago
The issue with the watch is the data is publicly available (social aspect) and requires no effort on the other side to figure out.
I believe the incident you’re referring to happened in 2018 [1].
Also happened across a few American bases across Syria, Yemen, Niger, Afghanistan, Djibouti and more. Some British and Russian bases were highlighted too.
That happened not that long ago, in 2018 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracki...
Given the volume of data, they can just box up the hard drives and ship via container ships or planes.
I assume he means at the device level.
I did. Thanks!
I don't know how DJI works, but presumably it ships the video out to a service that you then log in to to view?
If so, it's on their servers and there's no "networking" you can do to know whether they forwarded it on from there.
"I don't know" - so why leave a comment?
Because you can doesn't mean you have to, especially when you don't actually have any knowledge on the topic at hand. (And, as people have pointed out, this is both a weird and incorrect assumption, adding nothing to the discussion other than confusion.)
Except that they do offer exactly that. No need to be so condescending.
There's certainly no requirement to use that (it's literally a separate app from the DJIFly app you use the control the drone), and I do know as I fly a DJI mini drone.
What's worse is that I don't think it actually works how you've assumed. The drone has no internet connection itself, the software is instead pulling the files down over wifi, which is something the standard software supports if the drone is close enough. This is the "no need to export from your DJI device" - LightCut can presumably access the drone files directly. None of this requires uploading the videos to anywhere, and doing that wouldn't even make sense - these are large video files, people would notice their data plans being ravaged by multi-gig uploads every time they flew their drone.
As far as being condescending, I think that's less of a negative trait than offering unbacked "I don't know, but" comments which add no value to the discussion.
I did consider the value of my own comment at the time, but I think there is a big problem in tech discussion with people with no actual experience or relevant knowledge feeling that their off-the-cuff suppositions are as welcome and useful as meaningful input from people with direct experience, and highlighting this behaviour as negative and unwelcome is worth risking the inevitable backlash in response.
>What's worse is that I don't think it actually works how you've assumed.
Holy irony man
Yes, based on my experience with the device I can extrapolate how that software could work. What experience did you base your assertions on? Nothing at all? Right.
15 years of working on SaaS products and a "how I would build it" guess. So basically exactly what you're doing.
The DJI Mini Pro 3 works without Wifi and using the expensive controller, without a phone app, so the opportunities to upload captured data to China are very limited.
Unless you use their recommended software. https://www.dji.com/lightcut
What a strange assumption to make. No it doesn't work like this at all. The video is saved to the SD card in the aircraft, which you then remove and insert it into your computer to download the files.
And potentially use their recommended software to work with from there: https://www.dji.com/lightcut
So not that many jumps from what I described.
If that’s true then you’re right but I don’t know if that’s true.
Also a national security threat because they're game changing weapons and they make the most and best of them.
Best because of the price not the performance. Though the outrageousness of the black hornet drone costing 200K is too much. https://flymotionus.com/2021/11/05/flirs-black-hornet-is-the...
> identified as a national security threat by the US DOD, essentially because there's no way to be sure that every second of GPS-tagged video shot by a DJI drone isn't going into a giant server farm owned by the Chinese intelligence service.
There are far more obvious reasons for that. These drones are of enormous military value. By buying them, US consumers are funding an obvious foreign military hardware production. US money may well be funding production of drones which may once be used to correct artillery strikes on Los Angeles.
DJI are particular seem to work in concert with "military civilian fusion," and have hardware, and software to defeat both very serious jamming, and attempts to fry its radio with pulsed microwaves. Military jammers for 2.4g band seemingly have near 0 effect.
>US money may well be funding production ...
This statement would be correct for any product of Chinese origin - no?
Yes, and these drones would be a drop in the bucket compared to everything else bought from China.
Jammers don't have much effect because of the frequency hopping technology of 2.4ghz band used by hobbyist has been improved upon for years. We used to have flags and announce use frequency during the FM days, now we just go out and race without worrying about interference with other users.
That release is about using DJI drones in government and military installations. There is not a suggestion that DJI is being used to do wide spread civilian spying.
Meanwhile in the US...
I had the original mini too. Really fun, but mine is RIP in the water under a waterfall ravine. It's hard to say whether it was a GPS bug, a gust of wind, or just my own fault, but as I was shooting a video next to some rock walls, it went towards the rocks and I couldn't get it back. After the first hit it tumbled and hit some vegetation, and then it went all the way down, no way to recover.
It's a good thing the new ones have collision avoidance, it could likely have saved mine back then. I'll someday get one of the newer ones, it was pretty fun and an impressive piece of engineering. Sometimes I think to myself "this would be a really great shot with the drone", or wish I had it to scout some terrain ahead when hiking or exploring. It's a pretty cool gadget!
My friend was flying his, lost it and asked it to fly back to him and it went absolutely full speed into a waterfall about 10 meters in front of us.
It was hard not to chuckle.
RIP.
I think it's a good thing the props are fragile as the motor would be damaged if the props hit an object without absorbing the force of impact.
haha, check out freestyle fpv. you won't believe what the motors can survive.
Do you have a recommendation of a drone with similar features that doesn't require jailbreaking?
Autel drones tend to fall around a generation behind DJI's in terms of capability, and they don't have geofencing. Unfortunately, they are much more expensive like-for-like and if you are also concerned about China, they share the same China-problems.
There are no US or European drones that really come close, unfortunately. Parrot are 2-3+ generations behind DJI in terms of capability: wireless link, camera, and even basic flight stability are all quite a distance behind. Skydio had unique autonomy capabilities which were really cool but were a long way behind in controller capability, camera, and wireless tech and exited the consumer market.
Honestly, DJI no-fly zones in the US are not too onerous in my opinion - most of the places that are banned probably should be banned. I would recommend a DJI drone with a standalone remote (to avoid needing to install DJI apps on your phone). However, generally speaking in Europe their no fly zones are more restrictive and can be quite frustrating.
I think it's also worth pointing out that DJI's first-party app isn't required to operate many of their drones. Most of their drones, apart from all but the most recent (i.e. the one this announcement is about probably won't have support for a while, but the previous gen will) has support through apps like Litchi and Dronelink via the developer API, which have additional features and don't have the exact same permissions/data requirements as DJI's first-party apps.
TIL. Thanks!
I've heard good things about Skydio.
They have discontinued their consumer products sadly: https://www.skydio.com/blog/skydio-to-sunset-consumer-drone-...
Yup. They could not get competitive so they had some politicos pimping for them and can now feed on taxpayer's money.
The empire is collapsing so might as well rip the last remaining scraps of wealth off the walls before it goes all belly up. I would do the same if I were in their position.
The US isn't an empire and it is not collapsing... Don't believe everything you hear on social media.
> The big one to me though is the wind resistance. 10.7m/s is 23mph. The original specs 17mph. It is hard to say at which point it starts having trouble, but 23mph is a non-trivial improvement, it probably means 2x as many days you can actually fly.
That’s a huge one for me as well (also own a mini). I live near the sea and the number of days you can actually fly is surprisingly low. 23mph is still pretty low, but I understand the weight vs windspeed tradeoff.
I have a race drone. It was fun to fly it through tall grass like a weed whacker.
The first few props were super brittle and shattered at the slightest botched landing. I also think they were poorly designed with no fillets, so the stresses would concentrate at the base of the blades and the plastic would crack.
A bought another couple of bags of props, and they were MUCH higher quality. Often I can just bend a blade back after a rough crash landing.
Are there any good US competitors recommend?
As a consumer, honestly, go for DJI.
A few years ago, assuming you had been willing to pay more for something worse but for ideological reasons (like you would buy a Fairphone, I totally get that), I would have adviced for an Anafi. But now the Anafi AI and Anafi USA are a lot more expensive, that's not for consumers anymore IMHO.
As a company, if you cannot go for DJI, then the alternatives to Mavic are Parrot Anafi and Skydio, I guess. For the bigger drones (like the Matrice series), honestly it's hard. Just be prepared to pay a lot more for a much worse product.
Parrot (Anafi) is French
Yeah, I assumed that the question was about "non-chinese drones".
No because DJI, XPENG, BYD, and a ton of other Chinese companies have this 'move fast and break things' mentality X100 that most American firms don't have. They ran circles around GoPro and their attempts. Closest analog is Tesla/SpaceX but who knows if even those guys last long term when the guy running it is so easily distracted by nonsense (eg. Buying Twitter, starting yet another company, playing hours of Polytopia etc. )
> No because DJI, XPENG, BYD, and a ton of other Chinese companies have this 'move fast and break things' mentality X100 that most American firms don't have.
Respectfully, that's ridiculous. The Silicon Valley has a long tradition of "move fast and break things".
No no no, this time, it's just that the Chinese companies are simply a lot better than the Western drone companies. Yes, there are many excuses to make ("it's cheaper for them"), but even without considering the price, the Western drones mostly feel like DJI 10 years ago.
The Parrot Anafi has been fairly nice for a few years now, but for some reason Parrot struggles to sell them (I suspect that US companies dismiss them because they are not from the US?). Skydio just announced a new drone that seems reasonable. Both quite a lot more expensive than DJI, so here is your excuse.
>Respectfully, that's ridiculous. The Silicon Valley has a long tradition of "move fast and break things".
Some companies do...like Tesla, SpaceX, and Netflix. Their iteration rate is amazing.
>No no no, this time, it's just that the Chinese companies are simply a lot better than the Western drone companies. Yes, there are many excuses to make ("it's cheaper for them"), but even without considering the price, the Western drones mostly feel like DJI 10 years ago.
You haven't explained why? Move fast and break things mean to iterate fast, that includes finding way to cut the cost, improve specs, and just make the overall product better.
>The Parrot Anafi has been fairly nice for a few years now, but for some reason Parrot struggles to sell them (I suspect that US companies dismiss them because they are not from the US?). Skydio just announced a new drone that seems reasonable. Both quite a lot more expensive than DJI, so here is your excuse.
Is it or is it not competitive what what DJI is selling on the market? These drones are a innovation smorgasbord in so many different fields: cameras, weight, embedded electronics, avionics, and not to mention their software is good enough to not make people dismiss all the other things and go elsewhere. The fact they can offer all of that at a lower price point is (in my opinion) a sign of things to come in other industries: electric cars, space travel, renewable energy.
> Their iteration rate is amazing.
Sure, some companies do. Though what I see from the SpaceX launches I don't respect much. They just don't care at all about the impact on biodiversity around the launch site. I would be happier with slower but more sustainable.
> You haven't explained why? Move fast and break things mean to iterate fast, that includes finding way to cut the cost, improve specs, and just make the overall product better.
Difficult to say why. They have really good people and they have built a pretty solid technology, I guess. Their software really sucked in the beginning (10 years ago), but then it got much better.
"Move fast and break things" is also often an excuse to do bad engineering, IMO. "We hacked it because we need to go fast", and then the whole product is a piece of crap and people wonder why.
> Is it or is it not competitive what what DJI is selling on the market?
Nobody can remotely compete with DJI. I just meant "if you are ready to pay for something that is not DJI for ideological reasons".
> The fact they can offer all of that at a lower price point is (in my opinion) a sign of things to come in other industries: electric cars, space travel, renewable energy.
Electric cars and renewable energy are part of a much, much more complicated problem. We just don't have any viable way to replace fossil fuels entirely, so we will have to use less energy (and hence degrow, hopefully in a controlled and smart way).
Space travel is a joke. We need fundamentally new physics if the hope is to go live in another solar system, and I don't understand why people are excited about the idea of surviving in a spaceship. Instead of paying really smart people to work on that useless idea, we should pay them to find clever solutions to degrow. Use less, better, smarter, more sustainable technology everywhere in society.
Why would you single out SpaceX for this? Not only is that argument applicable to every single other launch provider on the planet, it is also applicable to almost every single factory and even city on the planet. How is the biodiversity in Los Angeles? How big are the areas affected by SpaceX launch facilities compared to the area affected by Los Angeles?> They just don't care at all about the impact on biodiversity around the launch site.Furthermore, SpaceX's newest rocket burns methane. That means that it is creating a market for a potent greenhouse gas, that is often otherwise just vented to atmosphere as a byproduct of oil extraction. Burning methane creates carbon dioxide, which has 1/20 the climate impact of methane. That rocket, therefore, actually is a net benefit to reduce greenhouse warming.
> Why would you single out SpaceX for this?
Because I was answering a comment that mentioned specifically Tesla, SpaceX and Netflix?
> That rocket, therefore, actually is a net benefit to reduce greenhouse warming.
Whaaaaat? With that kind of logic, you could breath underwater. I don't even know how to start answering that. As long as you conclude from "manufacturing and launching a rocket" that it is "net benefit for the environment", you should go back to reading about the problem.
>Respectfully, that's ridiculous. The Silicon Valley has a long tradition of "move fast and break things".
The SV doesn't do hardware for the most part, and any companies (SV or not) that do hardware, don't iterate that way and that fast. Watching GoPro evolve is like watching molasses.
Something like Tesla would be one of a few of counter-examples...
I'm not going to argue against the fact that the Chinese firms can't and don't do better than American firms (because they can and do do better in many cases), except that it's impossible to know how much or to what extent Chinese firms have financial (or other) backing from the government there. It's an open secret that many "strategic" industries get varying levels of support, often under the table.
BUT: However they got there, DJI is so far ahead on the consumer/commercial side I can't in good faith recommend any alternatives unless you're doing work for the federal and some sensitive state-level government entities.
Come on. American software startups literally invented that motto. Just because you may be working at a slower paced company doesn't mean America does not have it.
They invented the motto for BS social apps and pivoting until they're bought or IPOed.
Not the same as hardware at all.
American startups are only focused on getting an ipo or exit as soon as possible. Such thing doesnt exist in the mentality of the Chinese.
I did label a few American companies that are operating at that speed. Nevertheless in many different fields China is determined to win and they will move as fast as possible to make that happen. Its a foregone conclusion in Renewable energy, nuclear, a lot of consumer electrics, and soon EVs.
Ah yes, "breaking things" and nuclear are surely what I'd call a winning combination.
If you look at China's innovation in nuclear tech they have soared past the US. That ship is LONG gone.
American companies invented it as a marketing label to sell to VCs. Chinese companies actually do it
I think I paid 300€ for a Mini Fly More Combo slightly used (under 10 hours or flight time according to the drone).
It's a fun toy, but can't stand the wind at all, so it's a bit nerve wracking to fly it over open water if it's not completely calm :D
I really do want the Mini 4 Pro, but can't justify the 1000€+ price tag with the proper controller.
I've got the original Mini too, and I had never encountered this before until very recently when I tried to fly it in the US.
What happens if you turn off your cellular data (or are simply out of reception) ? Does it let you fly it anywhere then?
In Australia and the Canadian Arctic I basically never had reception, and it never cared once.
I fly on a cell phone without a SIM card. Basically, if you haven't logged-in in the last 30 days, your flights are limited quite a lot. You can only fly so far (100ft?), and so high. I just make sure to log in and get all firmware/map updates over WiFi before I leave on trips and have been fine.
Another gripe about DJI for video use is that they rip you off for a "license" to use CinemaDNG... which is an open, license-free codec.
Isn’t this because they have to pay Red for their ridiculous patent of compressed raw video?
CinemaDNG is not always compressed. I have a BlackMagic camera that records uncompressed CinemaDNG. Also, DJI has gotten around some of this by putting the recorder in the body of the drone, making it technically not part of the camera.
However, the oft-repeated claim that Red's patent applies only to internal raw recording does not hold up when you consider that Apple and Atomos have to pay extortion for ProRes Raw, which is used in EXTERNAL recorders.
It's also only available bundled with ProRes, although it's almost certain there's also some backroom RED RAW-racket deal going on too.
Well, that's DJI's decision.
I have a friend that builds his own drones (and RC vehicles, like a really big, fast tank). He sneers at DJI, but keeps one to entertain the mensch (that's me).
He also sneers at licensing, jailbreaking, geofencing, etc.
I notice that there aren't any pictures that actually show people in close proximity to the drone. The "drone in hand" picture looks photoshopped, so I assume the drone is actually not-so-mini. I have a teeny-tiny drone, about half the size of a sparrow. It doesn't have cameras, though.
The size of the drone is not some secret... you can search for the Mini 4 Pro on YouTube and find a bunch of hands-on reviews.
The DJI Mini drones are very compact. The DJI Air 3 is arguably the next level up in the lineup, and it weighs 3x as much and is noticeably larger. The "teeny-tiny drone" you're describing just doesn't sound comparable or particularly useful.
It isn’t useful at all.
Quite boring, frankly.
I just realized the DJI that my friend has, is a mini.
It’s small, but some of his hand-built ones are smaller.
> It’s small, but some of his hand-built ones are smaller.
Aside from the size, how do his hand-built ones compare in terms of camera, gimbal, remote controller, radio, battery life, and potentially SDK?
from experience I know that the SDK and battery life are better on the mid-range DIY options/
Aftermarket remotes/radios are arguably better; just not as compact and conveniently set-up.
I can't comment on camera/gimbal.
There are DIY-ish units out there that are entirely controllable via your choice of language; i'm not sure if there is any SDK that rivals that flexibility.
all that said : I understand the DJI value proposition, but the company has practices that I try to avoid entirely in my life, regardless of how nice their drones are.
> from experience I know that the SDK and battery life are better on the mid-range DIY options
SDK in DIY options? Do you have examples?
> I can't comment on camera/gimbal.
Cameras and gimbals become very difficult in DIY, because they required tight integration with the drone.
> The "drone in hand" picture looks photoshopped, so I assume the drone is actually not-so-mini.
Folded (without propellers): 148×94×64 mm (L×W×H)
Unfolded (with propellers): 298×373×101 mm (L×W×H)
would love to get an alternative but it doesn't seem like anyone else is getting anywhere near the flight times that dji has. all the non dji drones I've seen list 8 min while dji is saying 15-20 min.
There are lots of them like the Explorer LR that are under the 250g limit, and get 30-40 minute runtime.
That said in the hobbyist community power is more interesting than range. I have a DJI mini 2 and the technology is impressive but honestly, it puts me to sleep compared to my 100MPH mini quad. Every time I use it (once every few months) I have to update the app, use a trash remote, and install all this spyware on my phone.
That’s almost exactly what my friend says.
He has this tiny little quad, about half the size of the DJI, that does about 90.
He has pretty fancy video gear. He uses a VR-style headset. It’s pretty cool.
Ask him how long it can fly at 90. Few minutes at most.
Why does that matter? Top Fuel dragsters are designed for a quarter mile, you wouldn't use them for a 400 mile round-round.
Different things have different purposes.
> and install all this spyware on my phone.
Now take a step back and think about what most apps on your phones are already doing, or even your OS itself ;-). It's just not Chinese, I guess that's why you don't care?
>"install all this spyware on my phone"
You do not need to install spyware on your phone. It is a spyware on it's own. So are Alexa, "smart" TVs and many other things.
Hmm… it’s interesting, the reaction I got to this personal anecdote.
It is what it is. This chap exists, and I talk to him, almost every day. He has a great deal of enthusiasm, and does interesting work. I am sure his approach is quite common, in the HN crowd.
My friend is not your typical DJI customer, and his approach is no threat to them. People like him have always been around. It’s like people that mod cars. They don’t threaten the mainstream.
But the reaction seems to have been quite defensive.
Beware that DJI's software to control these craft is super sketchy to install and use. It doesn't exist in the Google Play Store, to avoid inspection.
DJI is fully compliant with China's policy of civil-military fusion. Anyone flying anywhere sensitive should not use them. They're beaming back home whatever they want, and China is using both tech and data to give an asymmetric advantage to allies like Russia in the Ukraine war.
Both fronts use DJI drones[0][1], although DJI suspended its activities in both Russia and Ukraine as of April 26, 2022[2] and contractually forbids[3] any sales by dealers to either country and for combat use.
However, other actors are entering the war business, like Parrot[4].
[0]: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NtgseODXGSAomx6G5Efw...
[1]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/16/ukraine-russia-war-dron...
[2]: https://www.dji.com/uk/newsroom/news/dji-statement-on-sales-...
[3]: https://www.dji.com/newsroom/news/dji-statement-on-dji-relat...
[4]: https://www.lesechos.fr/weekend/high-tech-auto/henry-seydoux...
Not so long ago there was a post / comment here that said Ukraine's going through around 10K DJI drones per month
Link?
They still use mostly DJI drones by burning an older firmware and using an anonymizer to hide takeoff and pilot's position from a potential aeroscope. DJI's are pretty cheap and really good at what they are doing.
>They're beaming back home whatever they want
This claim is always thrown out like a life preserver without ever anything to back it up. Do you have anything to support this claim?
They're cloud based, aren't they? So regardless of what they're doing with the data, it's true that they're (figuratively) beaming it back, although parent is admittedly implying more.
I accept that chinese authorities generally have access to anything they want to in the country, so I would buy that they have access to drone data.
They're not cloud based as far as I would define it. I have one and fly mostly on areas where there is no internet signal. The drone beams back video to your phone and unless you're syncing the cache videos with their cloud nothing its stored other than flight meta data. You can avoid even that by using a totally offline controller/phone.
How does the drone communicate with the phone?
Via the remote over RF.
with how they are executing tick tock and making a mockery out of the USDS system, I would not put this past them at all
> I accept that chinese authorities generally have access to anything they want to in the country
So just like the US ?
nope. the US doesn't have the same military-civilian fusion that China has, given the latter is an authoritarian one party state.
Given the history of China and its tech companies, the burden of proof shifted to their shoulders.
So, I turn to them: is there anything that proves its a surveillance-free device? No, they cannot assure that.
Someone may not like it, but China now has a very, very bad reputation among people in the West. Especially after the last pandemic and how they handled it.
Horse shit. If you can’t show specific data traffic flowing from Mavic software back to China that could conceivably be drone footage, this claim is bogus and borderline libelous.
It would be trivial to prove this to be true, and there is zero of that proof. Hell, at this point it would be valuable to even see small phone homes by Mavic software from the last year, but I doubt you even have that.
There are plenty of other reasons not to buy this drone, so the lies are completely uncalled for.
You are looking at a simplistic perspective.
Surveillance doesn't always run 24/7 for every device. The signal/noise ratio would be extremely low.
To keep a high ratio, it's selectively switched on for high interest targets.
There's no reason for a drone flying on my backyard to send any data to China. Their privacy protection is inexistent. You can ask it to be conceivably whatever horse shit you like, I don't care. I don't want any bytes sent there.
Nothing simplistic about asking for evidence that this is occurring. Yes it’s not easy, but without evidence you’re spewing speculation, and when you claim speculation as certainty it ventures into the realm of bull shit.
There's plenty of evidence that the CCP forces Chinese tech businesses to do surveillance:
1. https://www.google.com/search?q=ccp+chinese+tech+surveillanc...
The word you're trying to find is not "speculation", but "suspicion":
1. a feeling or thought that something is possible, likely, or true.
2. cautious distrust.
You may like China or think there's no difference between the US and China. But saying there's no reason to be suspicious of a Chinese device is putting you in the realm of unreasonable...
That’s too broad. The claim is specific, so the evidence needs to be specific.
I never claimed I “liked” China or equated China to the US at all, nor did I say suspicion of Chinese made electronics was without merit. What I said was the specific claim being made was unsupported by evidence that would be trivially collectable if the claim were true.
And no, my word choice was intentional. You seem to be arguing against the common criticisms of your position, but you are ignoring my actual issues. I recommend rereading what I wrote and trying again.
> So, I turn to them: is there anything that proves its a surveillance-free device? No, they cannot assure that.
Can Google and Apple prove that their stuff is surveillance-free, though?
No, but US reputation is way better than China's.
In the absence of a surveillance-free device, people prefer the one with the better rep.
>us reputation is way better
Where? Maybe in the west, certainly not in the rest of the world. China didn't start a war that killed 1million people not even 20 years ago. Westerners don't care about that but that's to be expected.
You are right, Chinese govt didn't kill only 1 million.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
The US military complex is beyond dirty and its grip on govt power makes everyone sick in the West and the East.
But reducing the US to that and then doing a comparison with the Chinese government and ideology is unfair, in my opinion.
bit of a random comparison. You're comparing one country's propensity to invade/ bomb other countries and kill their citizens to another country's internal famine. You could say the Chinese gov was incompetent then, but that famine isn't an example of foreign interference, like the US wars etc. dont think the comparison here holds
> occurred between 1959 and 1961
This doesn't qualify for "not even 20 years ago".
No, because it isn't.
Replace 'China' with 'USA' in your post, and for most of the world both would be identically true.
The thing is: a lot of people want to live in the US. That's not true for China.
Have you ever been to China and the US?
You may think they're equally awful, but a LOT of people disagree.
China's reputation is in really bad shape among people in the West. Despite also being under surveillance, that's why many prefer American or European tech.
Not saying it's all of it, but could some of this reputation be from propaganda and attempts to smear chinese tech? Seems like a pretty common MO from the USA
After Snowden, can you affirm that any US tech company is safe to use as a non us citizen? Or even one in some cases.
I'm not saying US tech companies are surveillance-free.
What I'm saying is China's reputation is way, waaaaay worse than the US' among people in the West, in general.
That's why they prefer American or European technologies and products.
Does the app function without an encrypted connection to DJI controlled servers?
If so, then there is nothing else needed. People forget how sketchy closed source software is.
You can turn off all the phone radios or you can block all network traffic and the app still works fine. You only need a connection to get an unlock code in certain airspace.
While I myself still wouldn't ever use DJI because of this reason, no can ever provide any concrete claim. Quite hilarious.
What concrete claim are you looking for? Is it not enough that Huawei was banned by the US? Do you know the reason why it was banned? The same reason could broadly apply to every Chinese company. TikTok is the software counterpart that isn’t allowed on any government phone.
DJI does not produce infrastructure pieces so it hasn’t reached the same urgency to the US, so it’s still allowed.
> Is it not enough that Huawei was banned by the US?
They are in an economic war and are competing about whose spyware people use. I dont see how given that you can take this as a sensible metric.
Not arguing against your main point though, your line of reasoning is just flawed. The US would have reason to behave like this even if Chinese spyware wasnt a threat.
Huawei was starting to be a serious player in 5G, and their handsets were eating Apple's lunch.
US understandably wants their spyware in the world's infra. The rest of the planet might not see it that black and white.
at this point then NULL hypothesis should be that China is using consumer grades products to spy on its perceived enemies including the USA.
Since Snowden it's pretty clear that the USA is spying on even its citizen. I don't see how it would be surprising that China does something similar.
> Do you know the reason why it was banned?
For the infrastructure, for legit strategic reasons (without even considering they are abusing it, you generally don't want to rely on foreign infrastructure on your territory).
For the smartphones, that's pure commercial war. Huawei was a big competitor.
> For the smartphones, that's pure commercial war. Huawei was a big competitor.
Big competitor of what? There’s no popular Android phone OEM in the US. Sounds like you’re making stuff up.
To... Apple. First time I heard about a Huawei ban of smartphones was also the year where I heard that Huawei was about to sell more than Apple in the US, if I remember correctly.
Many people around me liked Huawei because they were seeing it as the Android brand that "is closest to Apple".
> Sounds like you’re making stuff up.
Don't get me wrong: I am not part of the US government and I was not part of the official decision. I'm just sharing my opinion :-).
US vendors slept on 5G, and Huawei prepared end-to-end gear, from backend systems through antennas to handsets. This resulted in Huawei getting a lot more deployment in 5G, and triggered less than open retaliation. The handsets themselves were minor issue compared to possibility of China eating US' lunch on 5G.
Huawei was on a trajectory to become the biggest smartphone vendor in the world, when they were kneecapped in 2019, mostly by blocking their access to Google services (which cratered their sales outside of China).
https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/canalys-global-smartphone-m...
How do Ukrainian operators avoid exposing their own positions? Do they install custom firmware on their drone?
You can operate the drones without a connected device. Operator location is done by locating the radio source. It would be better to have repeaters and cable transmitter to them to avoid direct strike.
Tech people are usually paranoid by the most unlikely scenarios. A soldier with an antenna can pinpoint the operator location much easier than trying to get this kind of info from china without leaks.
Yes they root the device and set operator coordinates to 0,0 so they are not picked up by aeroscope, etc
Its not impossible that DJI could have failsafe phone home systems in there that'll still send info back home after rooting. My guess is that the products they produced before the Ukraine war were more naive and now that they've learnt consumer drones will be used in warzones no matter what, I'll bet they have started incorporating such failsafes. Imagine being able to know where every mavic in the frontlines are and selling that info to the Russians.
jailbreaks.
Good luck using my backyard data to fight in Ukraine…
But yet it exists on the Apple App store where I am sure Apple has inspected it.
I guess the Android version could be a lot different, but why?
Why wouldn't apple let software just work as a proxy between the drone and dji?
You don't need camera access, location services, etc when the drone does all of it onboard.
I got a mavic early on and sent it back because you needed the app and an account to activate it and fly it, even manually.
iOS does not allow sideloading. Android does. That would be enough difference. You can still enforce app permissions on apps outside the store on Android, like location and cameras etc only when using the app and so on.
I'm not sure if you're joking. Apple's business depends on them bending the rules for China.
I’m not sure how that is any more true for Apple vs Google? Every tech company relies heavily on China for business.
Google Search, Alphabet's main business, doesn't exist in China.
Google has famously made a stand and fussily exited China. Since then its stock underperformed competitors that didn’t.
Google is banned in China while Apple is not (because they bend their own rules to get that sweet Chinese cash).
Is there actual evidence that Apple is bending the rules for them? If true, that would be quite a scoop!
Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36882467
Of course there is no smoking gun but you'd have to be dumb to believe it's not happening. Apple want to make phones in China and sell phones to China Wechat (China) is allowed a free pass on the app store.
Yes, the CCP published on their website that Apple is collaborating with them.
Of course there wouldn't be any evidence.
What people allege is that Apple being successful in China is suspicious.
Is this a new thing?
I had the original Mavic Mini and installed the DJI Fly App (v1.2.1 on my phone now) from the Play Store.
edit: here's the listing: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dji.go.v5
Though it doesn't show up in search from the web.
edit 2: The Android download on their site is definitely an APK and not a Play Store link: https://www.dji.com/downloads/djiapp/dji-fly
Why in the world would they need to do this?
Even their play store app downloads a bundle of files to run after you launch it for the first time, which is against Google ToS.
Is it? Pretty much any serious game on Android does this.
>>It doesn't exist in the Google Play Store, to avoid inspection.
I think the real issue is more complicated than that, but, whatever.
I use their software only for administrative tasks - updates, etc. For routine use I would recommend something like Litchi.
Fwiw, Litchi is based on their SDK, so you're not really avoiding their software by using it.
True, but you ARE getting a google play store app for those that find that comforting.
Good point that I hadn't thought about in the situation.
https://flylitchi.com/help is only available for older models, not for the Mini 3/4 models.
One easy (albeit a little costly) solution here is to use the DJI Android-tablet remote (DJI RC / RC 2).
If you use their controller, you no longer need the app on a phone (e.g. to fly in restricted locations)? That would be nice.
Honestly if I was as large as DJI I would avoid publishing in the play (and Apple app if it were possible) store as well and save the wasted time of the constant pointless review rejections.
>It doesn't exist in the Google Play Store, to avoid inspection.
I thought that was because the company was sanctioned by the US, and therefore google can't work with them?
investment exclusion list. DJI is not a publicly-traded company.
I downloaded the apk file and installed it, but for some reason I can't fly app to work on the S20. It just says can't connect to controller.
Huh, they used to exist.. It's almost as if some OS SDK changed that restricted what hardware could do.. weird.
I don’t have any of these, but is the software some apk you download, and at that point can’t that be inspected?
Who inspects APKs?
The Play Store has all kind of automated and manual processes to detect malware and vulnerabilities. It's why I don't enable side-loading on my phone.
Please tell me you're joking or missing the sarcasm tag.
The Play Store is notorious for allowing absolute garbage apps in, regardless of the "risks" of sideloading.
That's not incompatible. They do a lot for security, even if malware still manages to get there. One would assume that the most popular apps get more attention.
The APK is a thin shell that downloads even more code to execute, from the internet. So, what you download and inspect isn't what's executed, and what you execute now might be different in 5 minutes.
Ok understood. That was the context I was missing. Thanks
Not surprising from a Chinese company
also, the software will run fine w/o internet...
Streaming 1080p/60fps up to 20km wirelessly is mind boggling to me. What kind of tech is used to make that happen? seems like it'd require a lot of power.
The video quality degrades at longer distances. You can't get the full bandwidth at the maximum distance, but you might see enough to navigate.
Communicating with a drone up in the sky is easier than something like your WiFi or your cell phone because you have a nice, clear line of sight to the drone. Fly behind a hill, building, or some trees at distance and the drone will lose connection and go into safety mode.
The free space path loss at 20kM is 126dB at 2.4GHz in perfect conditions, or 134dB at 5.8GHz. If you start with the 1 Watt nominally allowed by regulations, that's +30dBm. Subtract 126dB and you're left with -96dBm. That's a weak signal, but it's actually close to the receive sensitivity of the WiFi card in your laptop, believe it or not. I would guess the DJI gear uses narrower channels than WiFi to achieve a better noise floor than the 20MHz (or wider) channels you get with WiFi.
The 20km figure is really an extreme upper limit. Realistically you'd probably need a high-gain antenna pointed in the direction of the drone to achieve it.
That's super interesting! Would you have resources to recommend to learn about that?
For instance: where do you get that "the free space path loss at 20kM is 126dB at 2.4GHz in perfect conditions, or 134dB at 5.8GHz"? And why does 1 Watt translate to +30dBm?
https://www.antenna-theory.com/ is a good starter for apprentice-level RF voodoo.
30 dBm = 30 decibels wrt to 1 milliwatt. 10 decibels = 1 bel = 10-fold increase of the base quantity, so 30 decibels = 10 x 10 x 10 = 1000x increase, so 30 dBm = 1000x 1 mW = 1 W.
Oh nice, thanks!
I don't know enough to offer any real sources, but I'll share that I've found ChatGPT very useful for learning stuff like this - really solidly documented and established science/engineering.
I asked* "When making a wireless transmission what is the signal loss at 20km for 2.4Ghz?" and it gave an excellent explanation of free space path loss, stepped through the calculations, and gave the correct answer.
I've had it explain various kinds of first-order filters, especially for electric guitar circuits too. And asking follow up questions works well with how my brain works.
*Link in case you are curious: https://chat.openai.com/share/d0fcf90e-9d2e-4078-9bb4-60717f...
> but I'll share that I've found ChatGPT very useful for learning stuff like this
I get your point, but no way I use ChatGPT. Other than all the ideological issues I have with it, I just can't trust it.
> and gave the correct answer.
Are you saying that because you believe it did, or because you already knew the answer? I don't trust ChatGPT, so I don't want to learn anything it says. And I don't need it for stuff I already know.
It's not that different to Wikipdia. Trust, but verify. It's usually correct, but regardless it's a useful starting point for a topic.
Wikipedia shows sources, does not hallucinate, and shows the same content to all the users (meaning that if there is a mistake, someone else can actually report it).
That is very different to me.
Those are accurate details, but if you zoom out they're still contextually very similar - a swathe of text on a subject written by someone (or something) you have no veritable trust in but is usually fairly accurate.
You should independently fact check either source. Wikipedia is slightly easier, but after you have a base subject matter understanding you should have the terminology to validate anyway.
I suspect you just don't like it, which is perfectly fine.
> Those are accurate details, but if you zoom out they're still contextually very similar
I cannot go against that. To me, the points I listed make them fundamentally different.
> I suspect you just don't like it, which is perfectly fine.
Because you don't understand why I see it as a problem that people don't make the difference between Wikipedia and ChatGPT does not necessarily mean that I am just making up arguments because I don't like it...
That's fair. I think we're arguing semantics here. Expanding my "you just don't like it" would be "you have immovable philosophical issues with one, ergo you won't pick it regardless of its accuracy". I didn't mean to imply you were just trying to be contrary - apologies if it came across that way.
I do like the ideals you have there, but I think for most people a tool is just a tool, and if it ms mostly accurate they're happy.
Because there are other ways (simple Google search, asking an EE friend, etc) of validating the answer. Often I'm looking to learn a concept so it isn't like I'm using it to solve a bunch of things. Just validate my learning. It is easily as good as having one of my EE friends explain the concept to me.
Cool stuff.
I suspect military communications uses wattage MUCH stronger than what's allowed by regulation in the battle space, correct?
Lower Frequencies, More power, more directionality, more digital signal Processing are the four ways to increase range.
Each has their own disadvantages and advantages, so it's always a tradeoff.
The channels can't be too narrow bandwidth and still fit any sort of 1080p video feed in them. If I'm remembering my signals courses right, raw 1080p at 60fps would need something like 6GHz, so even at 100:1 compression they'd still need 60MHz channels.
DJI OcuSync is based on LTE: https://www.suasnews.com/2022/05/the-dji-p1-and-s1-fpv-chips... is an example of more information.
This is a major advantage DJI and other Chinese drone makers have over US based ones. Technically acquiring an SDR/DSP implemented LTE baseband is not a major difficulty. Getting Qualcomm to let you is quite a challenge.
Looking at FCC listings and product pages you can tell that DJI are also throwing power at the problem. The EIRP on DJI devices is very high. They go up to 33dBm (2W EIRP) on the most modern devices like the Mini 4 Pro.
> DJI OcuSync is based on LTE: https://www.suasnews.com/2022/05/the-dji-p1-and-s1-fpv-chips... is an example of more information.
Is it using LTE bands? Or just LTE technology on non-licensed bands?
Keep in mind that this only applies to the FCC regulations. In Europe (CE regulations) the claimed range is 10 km.
The mini 3 pro has a CE regulations claimed range of 8 km, but after 2.5 km I pretty much loose connection. If I turn the drone to face my direction, I might be able to fly it a bit further, but at this point it is so hard to control it, that there is no point.
Btw, according to regulations, you can not fly it without line of sight. So, in practice the "legal" range is a few hundrend meters. I have yet to see an observer with binoculars. :)
You're not allowed to use binoculars.
If I claim to see the drone even if it's very far away, can anyone dispute that?
Hand me the controls and tell me if I'm steering it left, right, up, or down. If you can, congrats! You can see it. If not...
Oh damn, when I took my eye off the drone I lost it!
I had the original mini with at most 800m range in CE regulations in the middle of nowhere. Pretty dissappointing. I lost it to the sea anyways.
Hmm, 2.5km?
I've flown the original DJI Mavic Pro to about 4-5km multiple times and never had any real issue with the video feed.
I'd be surprised if this much newer gen is worse.
Which country was that? The drone detects the country through GPS upon startup and limits its transmission power according to the local laws.
In the US, the drone can use way higher transmission power (~ 4-20 times more, depending on the drone) .
I've done it in the US and Brazil and the Carribbean.
US and Brazil follow the FCC rules. I would guess most of the Carribbean would follow FCC as well.
Transmitting long distances lives on a kind of spectrum. On the one end you have MOAR PWER and on the other end you have signals analysis and robust codecs (? I'm not sure "codec" is right. Maybe encoding? Can someone answer this?) that allow for lost information. The signals analysis will clean the incoming signal and the codec/encoding will allow for robust recreation of the captured data.
Most wireless transmission technology lives somewhere in-between the extremes of the above spectrum. Signals analysis is quite advanced and codecs/encodings are also quite advanced at this point.
My RF knowledge is hobbyist only but I think the word you're looking for is "modulation", e.g. LoRa is able to work over significant distances at low power because of its clever chirp spread spectrum modulation method.
The longest range drone control channel, ELRS, is basically LoRa.
> I'm not sure "codec" is right. Maybe encoding?
Numerology
First off, those numbers are a huge asterisk for perfect atmospheric conditions.
In reality you will see about a 2km max in relatively clear conditions, and as few as half a km in even normal suburban/urban conditions.
This is my experience with the mini 3. It’s incredible for sure, but once some trees and/or structures are in the way, it falls apart in a hurry.
Is there any system that works for at least 10-20km without line of sight, supporting a video feed usable for guidance, without cell phone network coverage?
Maybe something where there are two drones, and one flies high with line of sight to both the user and the low-flying drone so that it can act as a relay like a satellite would?
Or something that uses radio frequencies that bounce over the atmosphere, and if bandwidth is not enough uses an automated pilot plus the ability to send photos every few seconds so the user can tell it in which general direction it should fly?
Or something that uses Starlink/Iridium/etc. to relay data?
Those things are all possible, but you’re not going to find it in a COTS product.
The key terms in the link budget is directionality. If you use a phased array (like Starlink) or a parabolic dish, you can boost your range tremendously. This is how 4x4 MIMO WiFi can achieve gigabit speeds with the same power limit.
why does this read like tech that should not be reasonably legalized for civilian use
I think it would be very useful for scouting in woodland/backcountry use including search&rescue.
At 50 km/h, it moves 10-20 times faster than a hiker, and at <1000$ it's more than 100x cheaper than a plane or helicopter.
But requiring line of sight is a strong limitation because it means that you need to fly over the tree canopy and might not see under it, and you need to fly really high if target is on the other side of a mountain or hill and again you might not see well.
And of course cell phone coverage is not guaranteed so you can't use the easiest solution of putting a cell modem on it.
Don't know about anywhere else but my local laws says you need to see the drone to operate it and you aren't allowed to control it in FPV mode.
Local law also say there are very little places I could really use it in 50km radius from home.
Light drones are great, but how far away are we from quiet consumer drones? I'd love to not have every hike ruined by some wannabe videographer.
The mini is pretty damn quiet. At 50ft of altitude people don't hear it. AT 100ft of altitude people don't even see it.
I've flown one hundreds of times and other than other drone owners no one has ever said a thing or noticed. The drone owners notice and come over to talk drones.
I've been annoyed by drones lots of times and never talked to the operators. It's not because I didn't notice.
Perhaps but I fly my Mini 2 regularly, and people have a hard time finding it in the sky even when I point it out to them at 100ft. At 200ft it might as well not exist. They are so small and light, they just don't put out the dBs like bigger drones.
Being able to spot a small white object in the sky and hearing it are very different things.
I put drone operators on the same level as those who hike with speakers blaring. No one is being hurt, no laws being broken. Just inconsiderate considering a large part of the experience for most in nature is the serenity.
People who hike with speakers blaring are a strange breed that I’m likely to never understand.
Like, why listen to music in the first place while hiking? I’m out here in the woods to get as far away from civilization as I can. I don’t need $latest_popstar dragging me back.
I use headphones to listen to music or audio books while hiking, walking or exercising. I enjoy it, and also a useful tool to stop mental self-talk while being able to enjoy the surrounds.
But playing music over speakers that would interrupt the tranquillity of other people trying to enjoy the quiet and space is very not cool.
I've never done this, but if I was trying to be charitable; in bear country, I assume making noise to avoid startling the animals is best practice.
I have worn a bear bell on my backpack when I’m far out but that’s a bit different than a speaker as you could imagine.
Parks Canada says bear bells are not an effective deterrent against bears.
https://parks.canada.ca/pn-np/mtn/ours-bears/securite-safety...
I'm not in favour of speakers but it would be effective while a bear bell certainly won't.
People listen to music while hiking for the same reason they listen to music anywhere. They like it.
Bears
>Being able to spot a small white object in the sky and hearing it are very different things.
They are but not the way you suggest, you stop hearing it long before you stop seeing it. :)
The mini is undetectable over 100ft or so. other drones will interrupt the peace, but this one is far less likely to.
Nah they definitely aren't as bad. People using speakers in public are actively choosing to annoy people when they could have used headphones. There's no headphone equivalent for drones.
Drones are also way way less common than shitty music players.
Almost everyone I encounter who is carrying a speaker is not hiking by themselves. That is why they are not wearing headphones.
So what you’re saying is we just need a way to make the takeoff and landing quiet. Slingshot…?
It's a question of what you got annoyed by, the point was a 100mph home built FPV drone is dramatically louder, and the way they get flown makes a lot more noise.
I've been annoyed and not talked to people too, but it was never the noise, it was blatant violation of the law flying over crowds, etc..
Lots of people avoid confrontation
Definitely this. This summer a guy was flying a drone over a popular park area where lots of people were swimming in the river; it was extremely annoying. I'm pretty sure the drone was above the legal weight limit too, and as I have a UAV license, I'm well aware that it's illegal to operate a drone directly above other people. I spotted the guy with the drone controls but decided not to talk to him about it, because I couldn't be certain that someone as inconsiderate as that wouldn't necessarily react violently.
There's the "if you're breaking this social convention, I'm not willing to figure out how many others you'll break" problem.
I like this one. Thanks.
Of course! Only drone owners have working ears. Could it be that everyone notices but they just don't want to speak with some rude drone dude.
I have noticed that it really depends on the wind direction. If the wind blows from the drone towards the people, you could hear it at 50 meters. Plus, when there is a lot of wind it makes much more noise in its struggle to fight it. Otherwise, unless it is directly next to you, you can hardly hear anything.
My biggest crowd are children and pets. They always seem to be amused by the drone.
The others do not say a thing because they are polite probably :)
I got a proper bollocking when checking out some newly built houses with my drone, one of which I was thinking about buying. The lady thought I was trying to film her garden, probably warranted since I took off not far from her residential house. I've learned to stay further away from people while flying since, which the rules dictate anyway.
I had the same thought seeing the hero videos on this page displaying beautiful mountain scapes and vistas - I wouldn't want to be the person disturbing this space with an intrusive drone.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this.
I read over their product page and, like always, I'm absolutely amazed that these things exist now and can capture such amazing video and photography at their price point. I'd love to get one to use.
But I won't buy one, because every time I go out now to the beach or on a hike, I see people with things like these and I just cannot stand them. I hate the ridiculous noise, I hate the fact that these people are filming things in the middle of streets and sidewalks and trails and generally putting themselves in the center of everything and inconveniencing everyone else just to 'get their shot'. I hate the idea that I am potentially being filmed by some random kids with a high speed camera on the drone hovering out over the park bench I'm resting on.
And because I hate these things, I will not buy one, because I do not want to turn into the annoyances that I feel, no matter how cool the tech looks.
That... or... I'm secretly afraid that I'd buy it and not actually have anything cool to film and it'd sit in a closet and be another $800 paperweight device.
But let's go with not wanting to be an another annoying 'Main Character Syndrome' person and just be quiet and peaceful when out and about.
Walked down the edge of canyon in Jasper National Park today and you had to wade through people taking pictures (admittedly, myself among them). What is the difference between someone taking a selfie with a phone and photos at 50 spots along the edge of the canyon, and someone flying a drone at that point?
You can compare it to people breathing and someone lighting a cigar in a crowded restaurant. Both inhale and exhale, but it is not the same.
The phone doesn't make noise, and cannot fly everywhere around in a 2km radius. The phone owner has to walk there. So if you go hiking in places where fewer people go, then you get fewer tourists. Probably you don't want to get drones there (I don't).
The noise.
Others might say that drones are a sensible and respectful way to honor a beautiful landscape.
Mini 2's are quiet enough and much of the hostility against their use is rooted in prejudice and a little bit of hysteria.
From a human's perspective maybe, from bird's though, not.
Are the hikers considered intrusive, or just the drones?
You'll hear plenty of hikers complain about hikers if they are also creating unwanted noise (usually from portable bluetooth speaker).
Even sometimes it's annoying to be near hikers who just speak loudly. Sometimes you just want to be in the nature and enjoy it quietly :-).
Some places you have to apply for a permit (few of which are issued) to make sure there aren't too many hikers at once. So I think it's both.
screw the drone, anybody know what the motorized surfboard things are?
Called an efoil, they also have non electric versions that are much cheaper
The ones in the video don't seem to have a foil and look more like electric jetboards.
do they have ICE versions of these or do you mean towed only or the wind powered ones?
I do not think that there are ICE versions. But there are many different versions by now, including pump foil (just up-and-down body motion), SUP foil (with paddel), surf foil (wave), wake foil (towed behind boat, but able to let go and just surfing on the boats wave), wing foil (inflatable sail that you hold in your hand, the most popular version) and versions for kite and wind surfers. All are currently significantly cheaper than eFoil (starting around 1k compared to 5k for eFoil) but mostly more challenging, in good sense and bad sense. Some people have said that you learn how to eFoil in 30min. Then the battery is empty. But that is okay as by that time it becomes boring. Which is different to all the other foil sports (exept maybe wake) were most need ~10h to even achive small steps forward. But once you manage, basically every body of water becomes a surf spot.
A very few very selected nature parks with no-fly zones aside, most suffer more from GA with engine, cell, wing and prop designs literally dating back to 1955 (Cessna 172), than they'd ever from drones operated by responsible people.
Should't be too far away, the commercial drones of Zipline are supposed to be super quiet. Here is video demonstrating the tech: https://youtu.be/DOWDNBu9DkU?si=_x9vSAygUSHq4ZQw&t=832
Even if they are 10x more quiet, then if there are 10 of these drones flying around we're back at square one.
Both fortunately and unfortunately that's not how sound works. If the drones are far enough away from each other that you don't get interference between them soundwise it doesn't matter if there are more of them. But if they do then two quiet ones may re-inforce to the point that they sound much worse than a single larger one.
Are you saying that sound conduction doesn't behave linearly?
It depends on: the medium, the frequency, the shape of the soundwave, how it is generated (in this case: fast rotating props) the degree to which the frequencies line up (or not) which will result in beats, the phase in case that they do line up, reflections, the distance to the source(s) from the position of the receiver, the air pressure, the direction of the wind and a ton of other factors that result in more or less noise at the receiver.
To say it doesn't behave linearly would be too nice. It's not quite random, but systems quickly become so complex (2 drones: 8 rotors!) that modeling them is non-trivial. Look at the way a steady wind blowing on water can perturb it and how complex the resulting waves are. Sound is similar, you can start off with a 'clean' source (say, an electrostatic speaker) and then you place it in a room and suddenly there are all kinds of places in the room where the sound is louder or where it almost completely disappears. Then you add a second speaker, at a little distance to the first. Put them in parallel to make it simple. Now where you place your speakers relative to each other is almost as important as the distance between the two of them. If you place both speakers so far away that the sound of an individual speaker is below the noise floor of the receiver you can usually manipulate things such that the two signals crest right at the receiver. Alternatively, you can place them so close that either one of them individually is clearly above the noise floor but placing the second one strategically to cancel out the sound of the other (besides those pesky reflections) is a possibility as well.
Sound in free space is complex, and with multiple sound sources and a complex environment it quickly gets up to a level that is probably best described as 'chaotic'.
Wikipedia is actually a pretty good source for this [0]. tl;dr it's not as simple as one drone makes X noise, so 2 drones make 2x noise. For that to happen, the drones need to be making noise at the same frequency and be perfectly in phase. Also, if they were perfectly out of phase, they could cancel the noise from each other out (this is how noise cancelling headphones work).
That's a long article. My intuition says that if a sound source produces a number of Watts per square meter, then those numbers should add up.
In fact that's what it says here:
https://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/richard.baker/B...
Of course assuming uncorrelated noise, as a crude approximation.
Yes, but it isn't uncorrelated noise. That's the whole problem here. Long articles are long for a reason, in this case that this is a complex issue. And prop noise is an ideal candidate for such interference.
At least then you know that you are being watched and recorded by some creep with a drone. It is disturbing how society tolerates these pretty-secret surveillance devices just because they can take videos that look like those documentaries on TV, yay...
I'd love to have my photoshoot not ruined by some wannabe hiker.
it plays both ways
Actually, we're authentic hikers. We're wannabe drone hunters.
If you’re looking for somewhere outdoors without people may I suggest you not choose a hiking trail…
I always look at these and think I want one but also can't think of what i'd actually use it for. I just picture it sitting in a closet next to my GoPro and Oculus after about 3 days of messing around.
Anyone own one? What do you use it for?
I bought a Mini 2 about two years ago while arguing with my insurance about storm damage and roof repairs. Close up, high quality, multi-angle stills and video made it a lot harder for them to argue that their inspectors had done a good job. Their inspectors had, in fact, done a shit job, but it was my word against theirs until I had video proof of my claims. Paid for itself many times over.
The trick is you have to find a way to take it places that satisfy:
- It's OK to fly there and you're not going to annoy anyone
- You can get some interesting photos.
Having previously flow R/C airplanes and aircraft drones like DJI makes are not actually that entertaining to fly, they are too easy and not that engaging.
So it's all about the photos. You'll see new people flying at a park or something, but after a while you're basically thinking the park is not a very interesting thing to take pictures of.
Fellow R/C pilot and DJI operator here, and I very much agree. On the surface it may appear to be similar, but R/C flying and drone operation are two completely separate hobbies. One may prepare you a bit for the other, but they are fun for different reasons, and mostly separate skills to develop.
> Having previously flow R/C airplanes and aircraft drones like DJI makes are not actually that entertaining to fly, they are too easy and not that engaging.
This is very much an opinion. I have way more fun with my Air 2 than with any RC plane I've had.
I feel the same about the SteamDeck. It's really cool, and I kind of wish I had a use for one. But I don't really play games, so...
If you never really cared about RC planes and don't do photography/videography fairly seriously, I guess you won't suddenly find a new passion in drones.
I've had a Mini V1 since 2020 and here are my uses:
* Fun Flights * Aerial photography of yard projects * Towing fishing lures way beyond furthest castable distance * Fireworks videos * Hiking Scouting * Surveillance drone ( Caught some motorbikers trespassing on property and tracked them back to house ) * Firewatch * Pester folks safely from patio
I am pretty sure you broke some laws in the process.
How fun would life be if you didn't break some laws sometimes?
Only two rules:
A) don't be mean to or hurt others (humans or animals)
B) only commit one crime at a time
Following these rules, even lawbreaking can be made into a fun past time without losing out morally :)
I don't think I broke a single law in these examples.
All flights were in legal airspace.
No flights resulted in injury or property damage.
How do you drop the lure?
I put a small metal 'basket' that I put the float into. It's a fine-tuning thing to allow the line to tow, but 'pop out' with a bit of extra tension.
So we fly it out 200m and then lock the line and it pops out of basket.
Risky, but very fun
Thanks. I'm going to try it
Pro-tip, fly up and out to keep the line safely below the propellors.
There is a huge risk of the propellors grabbing the line and losing the drone far from shore, but in our outing we did a dozen casts with out issue
I use a mini 3 with my son. He likes to edit together footage and make little movies, I like to explore new areas. It’s tough if you can’t go to relatively private areas; it’s not cool to annoy people with these things. We typically get it high enough not to hear it as quickly as possible in case anyone is around, which can be a bit limiting.
Even so, it’s incredible to get so much perspective. I’ve learned so much about the places we visit from the aerial footage. The videos my son makes are pretty cool, too. Overall I wouldn’t expect one to be life changingly awesome, but I’m glad we got it.
I'm building a house, I'm planning to buy one to video the process periodically to create a really long time lapse of the build.
I am not yet sure if this one has the appropriate way-point features, I think I am going to go with the Air 3 despite the higher price tag because it's more robust and I need a license to operate a drone for this purpose anyway in my jurisdiction (Thailand).
Most owners buy one then realize: - they can't legally use them wherever they want them and there are finally very little areas you can really use them - they can't use them in FPV mode or without seeing the drone.
Then decide if they want to break or follow the law. Most people not wanting to break the law will let the drone collect dust after a handful of use, those that break the law will eventually lost it at some point or get bored.
I think the only people who really keep using them are travel vloggers and they have sometimes issues at border control and usually need to ask permissions and pay taxes to be able to fly and record stuff near a particular place. Usually they only get permission because they are well known and would boost tourism.
I really wish the tiny whoop scene would take off more to lower the barrier to entry.
It's for extremely small drones (65-85mm from diagonal motor posts) which are great for flying indoors or in small areas.
The main issues being:
1. It's still very much a "hobby" hobby. You can get some ready to fly kits, but even then it can wind up more technical than you expect.
2. They're spec'd for the niche market, meaning quite powerful and very short fly times, which is a shame. One of my favorite drones is the Potensic A 20. A durdly little thing that can fly easily for 10 minutes on brushed motors, but it's not really built to last (or god forbid crash). I'd KILL for a "A20+" which is just low power brushed motors and nicer controls. It's on my todo list to see if i can cobble something together whenever I have real life time again.
To be clear, it's still pretty easy to get into. I have the beta cestus as a decent rtf kit, although beta has some battery connectors that sorta lock you in (they are supposedly better than others though and you can convert things...but there's the hobby part again), and there's been other half decent ready to fly kits over the years.
I recently got a BetaFPV Cetus X Pro. I was considering a DJI Mini, but FPV seemed like a lot more fun than the well-engineered computer controlled flight. And the vehicle costs much less to crash and destroy.
Agriculture, perhaps? I always imagine that these things are for people with lots of their own real estate to take care of.
I have a Mini 3 Pro, and I’m quite happy with some of the videos I’ve made with it.
Here’s my latest video:
And a couple more that I’m happy with:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CsMqtYXICju/?igshid=MWZjMTM2O...
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Crss_afoG0a/?igshid=MWZjMTM2O...
Those are very nice shots, but... did you considered the local laws before flying them in city centers? From where I am (Spain) it's a big no no to fly one over any even sparsely populated area. It's forbidden (AKA requiring lots of permits) even if you are not flying over people (like in the Thames) or the drone is less than 250g.
Yes, I think it's important to consider and understand the laws wherever you happen to be flying. More importantly, one should fly responsibly regardless of the details of the law. Which is a bit like driving a car, or doing anything really.
In London, you need to have a drone license and be registered as a drone operator. I have both of those. You're meant to ask permission from the port authority to fly over the Thames, but I think more importantly, you're not allowed to fly drones west of Tower Bridge, which is why that video is shot from the east.
I don't think the rules of sensible drone operation are yet (if they ever can be) neatly codified as law, and I have also observed a significant mismatch between what's written and how those rules are enforced. Fortunately, laws written by governments aren't quite as black and white as laws in programming.
I got a 20eur knock off to check whether the gutters are full of leaves without getting the ladder. It kinda works.
The roof is at the 3rd floor and the ground is a bit uneven there so it's not just that I'm lazy ok?
I've used it to inspect fence holes in my property, to show some technical maneuvering while 4x4ing, showing my family camping spots I stayed in, etc. It's a cool way to gather scenery.
Got a used mini 2 a few months ago and know what you mean. Thing is for the $200 I paid it's ok. I likely would feel bad with a $1000 machine.
It's picture quality is amazing and it's fun to check caves in the mountains and possible paths before going them. Also more advanced travel selfies are fun.
I don't use it when many people are around, so that would highly limit it in some places for me.
>I always look at these and think I want one but also can't think of what i'd actually use it for.
Because they're tools for filming. I don't think people need to buy these as a toy.
Yeah videos on the page look stunning but visiting those locations would be enough for me.
On the other hand I can imagine using drone with Lidar mapping (on private property).
Same and everytime I see someone using one, its generally hiking or in a nature area, and its really annoying
Having spent the last two years reading news about Russian-Ukrainian war it's pretty refreshing to see how many people still associate DJI drones with peaceful life and entertainment. And seeing a drone flying in the mountains my first thought was about Karabakh.
Genuine question: what kind of smartphone do you think the soldiers use? Do you associate Android/iOS to war? Pretty sure terrorists use Android/iOS, too.
Soldiers typically use tablets, to have larger screens. With Google Meet or Discord for real time streaming to battalion/brigade command.
$759 for those wondering.
And if anyone is curious about getting into the hobby, I just picked up my first drone for quite cheap.
The DJI Mini 2 SE is $339 at most stores.
The DJI Mini 3 is also pretty reasonable at $419
Got a used one for $200. Many people just have it collect dust at home :)
As someone who is not familiar with drones, it's this a good bang for they buck deal?
For the tech you are getting yes. Phantom 4 was $1700 3 years ago. You get more tech in a very tiny package and especially at toy class which is under 250 grams. This it 249 so you can fly nearly everywhere as long as you don't bug people with it.
I was, thanks.
Whoever developed this website was probably told "We want it to look like Apple.com" and didn't veer one inch from that request. Not to say it looks bad, but it does feel unoriginal to me.
DJI is absolutely the Apple of the drone world
It might look like Apple but their product demo in pages are extremely well thought. Especially video intros blending with mid-page areas. I am always excited to see their new product pages because they are one-upping every time they release a new one.
I came here and hit command-f "Apple" to see if others had the same opinion.
Funny, I hit /apple for the same reason.
This looks just like my Mavic Mini (similar weight/size) which is no longer in production. I do like how the new DJI drones have their own integrated controller/screen. One of the biggest pain points with my Mavic is using my phone.
Yeah, my phone is too big to fit in the little holster so it's always haphazardly put together.
it would be neat to mount some sort of weather proof container on a tree with a solar panel that it could go into, so then it's like a bird. could imagine some shared spec and network of these so they can charge, lying in wait.
Then it can disturb the birds around. Doesn't sound that great to me, we are already pretty good at removing their trees.
> lying in wait
What are they waiting for?
Sounds like the setup for a Scifi novel.
"The drones lie in wait silently. The sun dips over the horizon. A lone IR led comes to life on the robots face. It is done waiting. It's prey is beckoning."
Take a look at the Ukraine conflict to see the future of adversarial drone tech. Most of the public stuff is FPV but I think it's extremely likely that there's also semi- or fully-autonomous units flying too.
For the stationary cameras to sense persistent movement that wants another camera angle on it. Skydio's focusing on the security/surveillance market and sells docking stations like GP is thinking.
Perhaps they could substitute for stationary security cameras. When incidents occur, you could track the target. Entertaining sci-fi.
to be activated by a user
They have industrial models for that. It is so futuristic.
I've been looking forward to the release of the Mini 4 Pro so I can hopefully get a Mini 3 Pro on the cheap.
I want something that can autonomously follow me on my mountain bike or follow my RC car as it goes over jumps for under $500.
If you want the drone to autonomously track you, then the mini 4 pro is the only realistic choice since it has obstacle detection at all directions. The mini 3 pro does not have obstacle detection at the sides.
In a mountain bike scenario, the drone is mostly capturing you on the side and it is moving sideways itself. So, unless you want to fly it next to the sea, you want to have sideways obstacle detection. Or, just have a friend control it. :)
My mountain biking is done at a mountain biking park with no trees on the tracks I ride. As long as it maintains at least 10 feet of altitude over me, there's no risk for it hitting something.
That said, I'm starting to lean towards spending the extra money to pick up the Mini 4 Pro, especially if Costco runs a good bundle deal. Like right now, they sell a Mini 3 Pro bundle for $839 that includes the drone and RC-N1 controller, 2 extra batteries, charging hub, and a 128 GB SD card. All that would be $1,063 if bought from DJI directly.
Wouldn't it be better to get a (helium) ballon and attach i.e a go-pro that with a rope tied to you. I mean, you need a bit of volume that will have a bit of drag, but it will always follow you, be quiet and mostly cheaper.
Cheaper != better
The rope breaks and now your go-pro is in the sky.
Looking for the same. I remember skydio being a good option a couple years ago before their pivot to enterprise and military. Is there a DIY option with open source autopilot?
DJI doesn't sell their latest drones directly in India so out of options here.
I read the article and watched the video, I'm not sure that the Mini Pro 4 or 3 have true "follow me" ability.
I saw the Mini Pro 4 has "Active Track 360", but I think that is just going to fly a 360 around whatever you choose and follow it as it goes.
I have the OG mini, and it certainly can't just "follow me" as I ride my mountain bike wherever. It's purely a software limitation to offer segmentation for their more expensive drones
The Mini 3 does not have "follow me", but the Mini 3 Pro does.
I'm glad I caught that earlier, at one point the Mini 3 went on a good sale and I almost picked it up. Glad I didn't waste the money.
My mini 3 pro follows me… I’m not sure what you what you mean
ah, nice, I didn't know they had added a true "follow me" function to the mini line. Thanks.
They added it starting the Mini 3 Pro, but it is possible to have tracking in the older Mini drones thanks to third-party apps.
One of the more popular ones is Litchi.
Omg, finally, waypoints in an entry level drone! Shooting smooth footage by hand is hard, especially if you're planning to speed it up in editing. The camera improvements look nice too.
I have an Osmo action camera. Good camera and solid UX, but it forces you to make an account, install an app, and pair with your phone, only to lead you to an app that doesn't seem to do much of anything useful. A mountain of dark patterns, and a huge turn-off that will prevent me from buying another DJI product.
The account activation requirement sucks. It's of no benefit to users. Other companies have copied, such as the Insta360 products like their new gimbal. Fortunately I found a better gimbal without that requirement, the Hohem iSteady MT2, which does not come "pre-bricked" demanding account sign-up.
>Take off whenever inspiration strikes. Weighing less than 249 g, Mini 4 Pro was designed for convenience on the go, [1] and the drone's weight means there's no need for training or examinations in most countries and regions.
Wasn't this loophole basically closed by the US FAA a couple years back?
https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/register_drone still says "except those that weigh 0.55 pounds or less (less than 250 grams)".
It's not a loophole, it's a deliberate exemption!
Makes enough sense to me but curious why specifically? Are they quieter or less dangerous below that size / weight?
> Are they quieter or less dangerous below that size / weight?
F = m*v^2
Not F (force, which is m*a), but Ki (kinetic energy):
Ki = mv²/2
>F = mv^2*
F is some number of joules equal to twice E_k?
The FAA Part 107 examination claims this is because lightweight drones pose less harm to life (when accompanied by rotor guards.)
There isn’t much of an actual reason, the FAA has been all over the place without much logic when it comes to drone regulations.
UK and other countries have relaxed rules for drones under 250g, see here[0] as well as the FAA link.
[0] https://www.caa.co.uk/drones/rules-and-categories-of-drone-f...
Yesterdays compromise is today's loophole.
Was just telling my friend I was a bit surprised at how rapidly consumer drones advanced in the late 2010's and have slowed down ever since. Seems like a lot of these features haven't really improved all that much in the past 5 years.
Most aspects have seen good improvements, in particular range, flight time and the camera. The Mini 4 Pro also has the 360° sensors that previously only were on the larger drones.
The Mini (2019) was a big step up compared to the Spark (2017) with merely a 2-axis gimbal and the Mini 2 (2020) brought very welcome range and camera improvements. I don't have first hand experience with anything more recent but it looks like both the range and the camera keep improving in those. The flight time, top speed and wind resistance are also increasing.
So i'm not sure what in particular you feel hasn't improved significantly.
True, I suppose I was referring to rate of change during those early years.
The product they make, that I think is a lot cooler than their drones (but probably was inspired by them), is their Osmo Pocket minicam[0].
It seems like the Osmo Pocket line has stagnated a bit. I bought a Pocket 2 in the summer of 2021, and more than two years later, it still is the current model. That's a shame because while it's a good idea, the camera has some problems. Video quality is not great, especially in low light. It does not work well for creating vertical format (TikTok-style) videos. The screen on the camera is smaller than a postage stamp and is pretty much unusable -- you really need to pair the camera with your phone. ...which then leads to the question, why not just use DJI's excellent Osmo Mobile gimble and record footage using the much better camera that your phone has.
I have a Pocket and used it a few times but it's sat idle for a while now. For general casual filming, the workflow on a good phone is better. For anything the phone won't do well enough, use a proper camera.
Main remaining use of the Pocket is having rotating timelapses. That's the only reason I still pack it, and even then only use it on 1/10 trips.
The Pocket 3 has been rumored to be coming out any day for like a year now... the camera tech in the Pocket 2 is just not that great anymore, even if the gimbal is fine. I want to see what kind of improvements DJI has made over the last 3 years.
I have DJI drone. It's very easy to fly, however there are all sorts of restrictions that exist in the software which are not in sync with local laws (which may be more liberal than what the software thinks), so your only option is to use sketchy means to actually use the drone.
I've got the Mavic 3, and while it's an awesome piece of Hardware all around, I am royally fucking pissed about DJI retracting on their promise to release an SDK for them, which stops me from using litchi with it.
Where is the US or EU competitor to DJI? They are running away with it. Oh right, we instead pioneered regulation and legislation, all those deaths from drones falling down and drones hitting planes.
Do it before someone dies: "Regulation out of control!"
Do it after someone dies: "Why didn't you do anything?!"
It's not insane to get out in front of drone regulation; their numbers are likely to continue to increase. Lack of regulation certainly isn't DJI's advantage; they still have to comply with it to sell their product in a whole bunch of major markets. That's the exact reason this drone weighs 249 grams.
> It's not insane to get out in front of drone regulation
Nor is it surprising. There are a lot of regulations around aviation (though perhaps not as many as there are in other places) and safety is the reason. Every flying object in the sky is sharing the space with commercial airliners, hobbyist pilots, logistics companies, government aircraft, etc. All of which share the same regulations or have specific ones depending on the industry. It makes sense that drones would be regulated as well.
Solution: stop saying "why didn't you do anything", righteously slap people who do.
No. Sometimes "you should have anticipated this would be a problem" is the appropriate response. I don't subscribe to the idea that government should be exclusively reactive to things.
The problem isn't that, it's governments being excessively reactive to things. In their view few people dying of random mishaps is always an excuse for more government. In my view everybody dies of something and faced with the threat of a 251g drone to the skull vs the horror of everyone pickled in aspic under maximum government insanity just to preserve me long enough enough into decrepitude that the medics get to torment me properly before death, bring on the drone. A society where people aren't free to die of ordinary mishaps is a sick society.
I mean, it's not free, but flying a drone under 55 pounds for personal use requires a $5 registration fee in the US. I'm pretty comfortable with that level of "pickling".
And anyway, I get the impression the real reason we went so hard on drone regulation was that it thought it'd be easier to make unlicensed drones illegal than it was to investigate every time somebody shot a drone out of the sky. That violations of the anti-anti-aircraft-artillery laws haven't risen commensurate with drone usage really speaks highly of the general populace (although there are a fair number of news stories surrounding incredibly dumb people shooting down drones)
I think there's plenty of room to criticize the degree of regulation, while accepting the need for baseline rules.
See the other reply upthread with respect to line of sight ("You're not allowed to use binoculars.") If true, that's stupid and unnecessary.
Why is it stupid and unnecessary? Binoculars give you a very narrow view, limiting situational awareness; the whole point of the line-of-sight rule is so you know what obstacles are near it.
Same reason sniper teams like to have someone on overwatch who isn’t zoomed into a target.
I either trust the judgement of someone who's out there flying a drone with binoculars, or I don't. If I do, I DGAF if they're using binoculars. If I don't, it's my opinion that they have no business flying a drone to begin with. But it's also safe to say that someone who is reckless with a drone and a pair of binoculars doesn't GAF about my opinion... or the FAA's.
In reality, rules this stupid simply get ignored with impunity. Which is fine by me.
"Under" 249g. They never say how much it actually weighs, like they do for the larger model.
US competitor to DJI in what? Consumer marker or technology?
If it's consumer marker where less cost matters a lot, there won't be a US competitor. DJI has home-turf, scale, and first mover advantage there, and a US competitor can maaybe match DJI in price.
In technology/autonomy? Skydio beat them years ago (https://www.skydio.com/). They launched as a consumer drone but I guess recently realized how consumer market in west isn't as profitable as enterprise/defense market so they shut down their consumer division. Skydio founders were pioneers in autonomous aerial vehicles, and it's not surprising they beat everyone else in autonomy. When they launched their first drone a few years ago, they were doing outdoor vision based autonomy for drone using on board compute only - it's an insanely hard problem, especially when you want to do in reliably in a product and not in a lab setting for nice videos. They did it and blew everyone away. DJI fan boys will say 'oh but DJI had autonomy too'. No they didn't, at best they had feedback based obstacle avoidance.
I often tell my friends, one of my biggest regret was not signing up for an internship at Skydio back in 2018. They came to UIUC for recruiting, and they didn't realize their product yet. Back then I was a dumb first year grad student, I didn't check the founders background, and naively thought it was yet another dumb drone company trying to get some VC money by pitching something they'd obviously fail it. I've never been so wrong.
> In technology/autonomy? Skydio beat them years ago (https://www.skydio.com/).
In technology, hell no.
Admittedly, Skydio had this pretty good VSLAM a few years ago. Still their drone was pretty useless in most use-cases where you would have taken a DJI. In many situations you don't really need more than "sense-and-avoid". Don't under-estimate DJI. The day VSLAM is important, they may have it much faster than you think.
It's a common mistake in the West to think that "we are better at technology than China". In the drone industry, we are years behind. And because of the technology, not because of the production cost.
> I've never been so wrong.
Well they have been struggling like the rest of the Western drone industry, it's not exactly a serious competitor to DJI. I would say that back in the days, Parrot was more successful than Skydio ever was. Since then I would think that the Anafi competes with Skydio (again they don't have the Skydio VSLAM, but who most use-cases don't need that).
> I guess recently realized how consumer market in west isn't as profitable as enterprise/defense market so they shut down their consumer division.
Subsidies and regulation played a major role here, although probably not the same kinds the parent post is whining about.
The US government and enterprise market requires drones which are compatible with US Federal requirements ("Blue UAS") as well as state-by-state bans on DJI drones. It's a lot easier to compete in a space where your primary competition is being made illegal.
Fwiw, Skydio is failing in Ukraine, where Russia's electronic warfare downs its drones. Their "vision-based autonomy" has severe limits, because GPS jamming can fell them.
You can replace DJI with any other consumer electronics manufacturer. It's hard to compete with China's vertical integration + cheaper labor. Skydio (Californian startup) used to manufacture consumer drones but recently exited that business to focus on enterprise, probably because of the higher margins.
DJI is particularly hard to compete with, because it is a very reputable and highly sought after company to work for and thus gets the brightest Chinese engineers on top of everything else you mentioned
GoPro tried and failed, but I don't think regulation and legislation were the reason.
GoPro has never had the hard core engineering culture/background to compete with a company like DJI.
GoPro started IIRC as a company that just branded cameras they ordered from overseas.
Anduril I guess? but they're exclusively focusing on the military applications.
What about zipline? There's also some other startups focusing more on use of drones rather than building drones from ground-up.
The moment DJI really took off from the competition is when they began using high-end cameras and optics.
DJI is a video camera company that happens to put the cameras on drones.
Not what I saw at all. I saw them take off with their shitty camera on the Phantom 2 Vision+. They had really good consumer drones long before they started having really good cameras. Then they bought e.g. Hasselblad.
I think it's less to do with regulation, and more to do with China acquiring most of the production capacity for the necessary components. Makes it easier to move quickly and iterate when the vendors are right there and speak your language.
There are numerous people and companies dealing with self-build kits, there is an active open source scene for literally everything around drones. There used to be an US-designed mass market drone, GoPro's Karma (which I happen to own and, somewhat regularly, fly), but well, GoPro suffered from financial issues back then, and couldn't afford competing with DJI.
It isn't clear to me that there is a reason for a US competitor to exist in the pro-sumer market. There are plenty of US firms selling their own parts/BNF kits for the hobbyist market and plenty doing commercial.
> Oh right, we instead pioneered regulation and legislation
To be honest, we were far, far behind DJI waaaaay before we started talking about regulation and legislation. And since then we have not really been catching up at all.
Furthermore, their drones comply with our registration.
The US doesn’t have the engineering talent to pull off what DJI has.
Really telling when all the drone deaths thus far have been from DJI drones being weaponized in the Ukraine-Russia war.
Let's hope this thing is compatible with DJI's own goggles. They seem to be getting better about this, but for a while they released drones that weren't... a real disappointing WTF.
Slightly off topic but it's wild how their online store is almost a direct rip-off of Apple's store. Has this been discussed before?
LOTS of webstores look just like that.
In Europe, it is limited to a flight height of 120m
That’s enough for photographing an entire small city from above. Though in the Netherlands for example the normal limit is 50m.
There is no way you can keep visual contact at this distance, especially for a tiny drone like this, and you’re getting relatively close to air traffic in some places. Europe is quite dense. Makes sense that going further requires a license / flight plan.
Dammit! and i just purchased the Mini Pro 3 a few months back... i mean, i love it, but this is awesome too!
But how many grenades can it carry?
Zero?
The interactive 3D model at the end is really sick.
I had the original Mini and it drifted away to the sea. I launched it from my home which was already in a steep location. RIP I'll never buy a light drone again.
I have a Spark and a Mavic Air 2. I really love flying the Spark, it's a fun zippy little drone. I'd compare it to something like a Miata. The Mavic on the other hand is all serious, professional utility. It's more like a mini-van. It's a great tool but it's not even remotely fun to fly.
My biggest issue with my Spark is the 9 minute battery life. Even though I have 4 batteries, having to constantly land and swap the batteries is a real drag.
Does anybody have one of the older Minis? How do they compare to the Spark?
The original was more like 20-25 minutes.
Which at some point becomes boring. Like you usually don't have enough interesting things to do with the drone to stay engaged that long.
So something like a 45 minute flight is not going to make me buy a newer one, cause i don't have something interesting/important I need to do for that long.
I have the original Mini, 20 minute flight time is common, I go over 30 when there is little to no wind.
I'll probably sell it if you're interested
I can't find replacement batteries for the Spark. My spark went into cold storage during covid, during which time all the batteries irreparably self-discharged.
I'm hesitant to buy another DJI for the reasons above but I haven't seen any non DJI products that wow me. I guess it's a toss up between the FPV and the mini 4.
Original mini here, and I've flown a friend's spark. The mini flies about 30 minutes on a charge, and is much more compact when folded. The spark had more sophisticated collision avoidance than my mini. They seemed comparably zippy to me, but I never flew them back-to-back.
The Mini 2 has a battery range of close to 30 minutes. It's a big improvement over the Spark, in particular the 3-axis gimbal makes a big difference.
But how does it handle? The spark is really agile. It doesn't go as fast as the bigger drones, but it accelerates and turns much quicker.
The successors can handle stronger winds and i've also noticed a reduction in latency going from the Mini (which wasn't great) to the Mini 2.
Anyone see pricing?
$750 or so
How many mm of rolled homogeneous steel does it penetrate?
Reactive armor would just shrug it off.
battery life good
everything else idk
might make drone LED shows easier though, those are probably a bigger use case than the one off drone enthusiast
LED shows use custom built drones, not commercial/recreational ones. You can’t program these, and you can build similar hardware for 1/5th of the cost.
that's nice! but can it drop F1 grenades?
I got all excited thinking of the potential of keeping this at the bottom of someone's pack given it's low weight, until I remembered how much I despise people flying drones on top of my head whenever I'm out in the outdoors, looking for a peaceful place to connect with nature.
Yeah this. In the middle of bloody nowhere in Central Asia completely off any beaten track and there was wanker with a drone buzzing around.
Exactly how I feel. For me, I think the best use case for drones, if I were to get one someday, is for shooting sports/events where the prop noise would be drowned out by an already noisy environment.
Like motocross, or a basketball game, or a car meet.
There's no way I'm taking out a buzzy drone when out on a quiet hike or at a typical campground. Just kills the calmness.
You’re not legally allowed to fly a drone over people without authorization.
Waiting for DC Rainmaker review before clicking buy!
Terrible website. So difficult to view.
DJI's website is literally one of the best out there, what do you mean?
So with all this talk over banning TikTok violating the 1st a. rights of Americans using Orwellian, authoritarian tactics critics are decrying, you'd think DJI and sketchy cloud-based webcams would be banned first over more obvious capabilities.