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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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!
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.
> 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.
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.
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. )
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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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. :)
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 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 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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
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.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/270608...
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.
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.
Meanwhile in the US...
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!
It was hard not to chuckle.
RIP.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Folded (without propellers): 148×94×64 mm (L×W×H)
Unfolded (with propellers): 298×373×101 mm (L×W×H)
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.
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...
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?
I guess the Android version could be a lot different, but why?
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.
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?
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.
I thought that was because the company was sanctioned by the US, and therefore google can't work with them?
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.
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.
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?
I suspect military communications uses wattage MUCH stronger than what's allowed by regulation in the battle space, correct?
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.
Is it using LTE bands? Or just LTE technology on non-licensed bands?
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. :)
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.
Dead Comment
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.
Numerology
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.
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.
My biggest crowd are children and pets. They always seem to be amused by the drone.
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.
Mini 2's are quiet enough and much of the hostility against their use is rooted in prejudice and a little bit of hysteria.
it plays both ways
Anyone own one? What do you use it for?
- 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.
This is very much an opinion. I have way more fun with my Air 2 than with any RC plane I've had.
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.
* 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
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 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).
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.
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.
Here’s my latest video:
https://vimeo.com/860800214
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...
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?
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.
Because they're tools for filming. I don't think people need to buy these as a toy.
On the other hand I can imagine using drone with Lidar mapping (on private property).
The DJI Mini 2 SE is $339 at most stores.