[HN Gopher] DJI Mini 4 Pro
___________________________________________________________________
DJI Mini 4 Pro
Author : Foivos
Score : 94 points
Date : 2023-09-25 19:40 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dji.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dji.com)
| exar0815 wrote:
| 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.
| htatche wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| baz00 wrote:
| 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.
| oytis wrote:
| 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.
| cheesemayo wrote:
| 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.
| SirMaster wrote:
| 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?
| bri3d wrote:
| One easy (albeit a little costly) solution here is to use the
| DJI Android-tablet remote (DJI RC / RC 2).
| hashtag-til wrote:
| I don't have any of these, but is the software some apk you
| download, and at that point can't that be inspected?
| spankalee wrote:
| 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.
| spankalee wrote:
| 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?
| Saris wrote:
| 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.
| Vox_Leone wrote:
| >>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.
| josefresco wrote:
| 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.
| cush wrote:
| 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.
| mrtksn wrote:
| 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
| amelius wrote:
| Even if they are 10x more quiet, then if there are 10 of
| these drones flying around we're back at square one.
| ben7799 wrote:
| 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.
| Foivos wrote:
| 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.
| photonbeam wrote:
| Lots of people avoid confrontation
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| The others do not say a thing because they are polite
| probably :)
| enlyth wrote:
| 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.
| loeg wrote:
| I've been annoyed by drones lots of times and never talked to
| the operators. It's not because I didn't notice.
| ben7799 wrote:
| 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..
| bragr wrote:
| 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.
| trust_bt_verify wrote:
| 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.
| IshKebab wrote:
| 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.
| Cannabat wrote:
| The mini is undetectable over 100ft or so. other drones
| will interrupt the peace, but this one is far less likely
| to.
| ashton314 wrote:
| [delayed]
| broguinn wrote:
| 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.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| screw the drone, anybody know what the motorized surfboard
| things are?
| emptysea wrote:
| Called an efoil, they also have non electric versions that
| are much cheaper
| patall wrote:
| The ones in the video don't seem to have a foil and look
| more like electric jetboards.
| dylan604 wrote:
| do they have ICE versions of these or do you mean towed
| only or the wind powered ones?
| mk_stjames wrote:
| 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.
| bunabhucan wrote:
| https://www.ll.mit.edu/sites/default/files/other/doc/2022-09...
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'd love to have my photoshoot not ruined by some wannabe
| hiker.
|
| it plays both ways
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| 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].
|
| [0] https://store.dji.com/product/pocket-2?vid=98631
| whyenot wrote:
| 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.
| coder543 wrote:
| 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.
| pb7 wrote:
| The interactive 3D model at the end is really sick.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| $759 for those wondering.
| endisneigh wrote:
| 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.
| all2 wrote:
| > lying in wait
|
| What are they waiting for?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| 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."
| endisneigh wrote:
| to be activated by a user
| fragmede wrote:
| 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.
| ramenmeal wrote:
| 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.
| all2 wrote:
| 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.
| livueta wrote:
| 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.
| SSLy wrote:
| > _I 'm not sure "codec" is right. Maybe encoding?_
|
| Numerology
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| 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.
| Aurornis wrote:
| 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.
| Foivos wrote:
| 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. :)
| blindriver wrote:
| If I claim to see the drone even if it's very far away, can
| anyone dispute that?
| f3d46600-b66e wrote:
| You're not allowed to use binoculars.
| SirMaster wrote:
| 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.
| Foivos wrote:
| 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) .
| SirMaster wrote:
| I've done it in the US and Brazil and the Carribbean.
| Foivos wrote:
| US and Brazil follow the FCC rules. I would guess most of
| the Carribbean would follow FCC as well.
| brentm wrote:
| 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?
| ben7799 wrote:
| 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.
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| 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
| eweise wrote:
| How do you drop the lure?
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| 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
| nxobject wrote:
| Agriculture, perhaps? I always imagine that these things are
| for people with lots of their own real estate to take care of.
| ben7799 wrote:
| I'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.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| 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.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Isn't this because they have to pay Red for their ridiculous
| patent of compressed raw video?
| bri3d wrote:
| 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.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| 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.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| 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.
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| > The "drone in hand" picture looks photoshopped, so I assume
| the drone is actually not-so-mini.
|
| Folded (without propellers): 148x94x64 mm (LxWxH)
|
| Unfolded (with propellers): 298x373x101 mm (LxWxH)
| coder543 wrote:
| 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.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| 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.
| _boffin_ wrote:
| Dammit! and i just purchased the Mini Pro 3 a few months back...
| i mean, i love it, but this is awesome too!
| TheCaptain4815 wrote:
| 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.
| jms703 wrote:
| Terrible website. So difficult to view.
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| 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?
| bittercynic wrote:
| 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.
| ben7799 wrote:
| 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.
| stefan_ wrote:
| 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.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| GoPro tried and failed, but I don't think regulation and
| legislation were the reason.
| ben7799 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| mschuster91 wrote:
| 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.
| zeusk wrote:
| 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.
| alsodumb wrote:
| 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.
| bri3d wrote:
| > 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.
| adolph wrote:
| 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.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| 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.
| asynchronous wrote:
| Really telling when all the drone deaths thus far have been
| from DJI drones being weaponized in the Ukraine-Russia war.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Furthermore, their drones comply with our registration.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 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.
| dopamean wrote:
| > 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.
| petsfed wrote:
| 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)
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| 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.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 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.
| yetanotherloser wrote:
| Solution: stop saying "why didn't you do anything",
| righteously slap people who do.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 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.
| yetanotherloser wrote:
| 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.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 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".
| Nition wrote:
| "Under" 249g. They never say how much it actually weighs,
| like they do for the larger model.
| willio58 wrote:
| 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.
| htrp wrote:
| >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?
| asadhaider wrote:
| 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...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/register_drone still
| says "except those that weigh 0.55 pounds or less (less than
| 250 grams)".
| jstanley wrote:
| It's not a loophole, it's a deliberate exemption!
| pkdpic wrote:
| Makes enough sense to me but curious why specifically? Are
| they quieter or less dangerous below that size / weight?
| antisthenes wrote:
| > Are they quieter or less dangerous below that size /
| weight?
|
| F = m*v^2
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| > _F = m_ v^2*
|
| F is some number of joules equal to twice E_k?
| e12e wrote:
| Not F (force, which is m*a), but Ki (kinetic energy):
|
| Ki = mv2/2
| ZunarJ5 wrote:
| Anyone see pricing?
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| 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.
| searchableguy wrote:
| 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.
| Foivos wrote:
| 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. :)
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| 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.
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