There has been a huge divide in the drone world between high performance first person view (FPV) drones capable of acrobatics and the "tripod in the sky" type drones that companies like DJI have popularized. The former has been very DIY and the latter have attracted companies to build integrated solutions.
This new drone from DJI brings an truly staggering amount of innovation and integration to the FPV space:
- Low res analog video -> high res digital video
- Modest transmission range -> long range
- Integrated simulation to learn to fly
- "Bail out" button that almost instantly nulls drone movement and puts it in a stationary hover
- ~5 minutes fly time -> ~20 minutes fly time
- Adjustable camera tilt on the fly to maintain level horizon at a variety of drone speeds (drone tilts more with speed)
Extremely impressive first offering in this category.
DJI digital video has been out for quite awhile now for hobbyists to include in their custom builds. Transmission range is not a valid point because a clean analog video signal and Crossfire outpaces DJI enormously.
The 20 min flight time is a lie, Joshua Bardwell measured 10 minutes hovering. That's extremely easy to surpass on typical light weight 5 inch freestyle drone with a 1300mah battery that cost a fifth of the price of the DJI ones.
It is an impressive drone, but for experienced FPV pilots it's very limiting.
I think the biggest thing is accessibility. DJI continues to break down the preexisting knowledge required to get into a space.
For better or worse, because there's a lot of irresponsible drone flyers as a result too, but this product makes fpv flying much readily available for those who want to try it without investing the time/effort to learn about how to do it better with other setups
> For better or worse, because there's a lot of irresponsible drone flyers as a result too
The industry is doing a horrible job of educating people and, as a result, they are ruining it for everyone else. I have been flying all manner of radio control craft for over thirty years (planes, helicopters, drones and "things"). As a simple example, I would never --ever-- fly anything over people, homes, roads or high fire risk brush areas. I have crashed enough time to understand that that these things are toys that are not designed to the standards of real aircraft, often suffering from multiple single-point failure risks that could bring them down and either hurt someone or cause serious damage to property.
Our neighborhood FB group is, at times (usually around Xmas and people's birthdays) filled with videos from people flying their new drones over roads (as in, directly over cars), over homes, over bone-dry brush surrounding our neighborhoods, over people (crowds, kids, at parks, without anyone knowing), etc.
The other kind of post is "I flew my drone for the first time in front of my house and I lost it". Which, of course, makes me crying at multiple levels. The crash could easily cause a brush fire that could take out an entire neighborhood [0], and, of course, hurt or kill someone [1].
At first I tried to educate people as to the realities of these devices. I own RC helicopters that cost well in excess of $3,000 and I still consider them unsafe toys. Yet people get offended and verbally abusive when you explain that their $300 drone, despite the hype, is a toy that could fall out of the sky at any time and potentially cause great harm. I mean, I have worked on the design of space capsules that are docked at the International Space Station and people are arguing with me about their toys actually being "reliable". Jeez.
It's only a matter of time until a tragedy occurs. Thankfully the large fires caused by drone crashes have, so far, been limited to open areas. One day someone is going to crash a drone into the bushes in a neighborhood, the LiPo is going to rupture and half the neighborhood will burn down. Sadly people seem to value their fun far more than the safety of others.
Why is gatekeeping FPV drones so important to you? Opening it up to new potential users some of which will want to eventually invest in better setups seems very much like a good thing.
I don't consider it gatekeeping. I consider it responsibility. Low barrier to entry is not always such a good thing. The idiots that would not get into it because of some sort of required training but would get into it without hesitation without training are typically ones that cause the problems for everyone else. There are lots of things in life/society that requires some sort of responsibility. I feel that something you can fly in a manner that you can only see in one direction without fully knowing what else is around you is one of those things. Caveat being designated areas setup and maintained as a UAV operating area.
Yup. I've been flying long enough to know that even though my radio and video link can easily take me several kilometers out, it can fail at any moment and I have to treat it as such.
RTF packages have always existed, but DJI making this widespread will allow every random person to buy one from their local store and have the ability to fly acro, which is pretty horrifying.
Anything with rotors generates extra lift when moving vs hovering, so it requires less power to hold altitude when moving vs hovering.
Imagine if you stopped the blades but the craft is still traveling forward... lift is being generated by the air flowing over one side of the rotor just liked a fixed wing aircraft.
At the extremes some full size helicopters can't climb straight up, they have to have forward motion to generate enough lift to climb. This allows use of a smaller motor to bring operating cost down.
In the case DJI drones the battery times are usually quoted with some amount of forward speed.. it generates a longer run time than a hover test.
it informs you that you're going to crash it when you try to actually fly it, and it will break badly.
fpv drone frames are usually made from thick carbon fiber, with replaceable arms, and are designed for durability and repairability and they still get wrecked in crashes.
so even if i put it in a funny way, it's not as much an hyperbole as much as a fact: unless you're pretty much hovering, you're going to end up with a very expensive and unserviceable pile of broken electronics and plastic
The main thing anyone starting needs to realize is that it takes quite a bit of time to get used to how Quads fly in Acro/Rate mode. I started on a simulator (Liftoff) with an XBox pad and that was super punishing as gentle and precise control is needed. Switching to a proper radio was a night and day difference. I'd guess it took 5-10 hours of flying time to get to the point where I could comfortably go where I wanted 99% of the time. I'm up to 50 hours of sim time now and flinging the things around with wild abandon. Looking forward to summer and getting out to try the real thing.
My recommendation for starting out would be to grab a cheap radio that is easy to connect to a PC and a copy of a simulator.
After research I went with the Radiomaster TX16s. There are several specs and I went for the mid-range version that has Hall effect gimbals for the sticks. You can get more console controller style radios as well but I fancied the bigger screen and a bit more space.
I haven't personally used these radios but they seem to be highly recommended budget options from people in the know:
- BetaFPV LiteRadio 2
- Jumper T-Lite
In terms of a pc simulator I have used Velocidrone which everyone says has the most realistic physics but is not necessarily the prettiest.
UAV futures is also a fun youtube channel to get started with and is a little less technical than joshua bardwell at first.
to have your mind blown by experienced fpv pilots, check out Nurk FPV, Johnny FPV, Mr. Steele, and Rotor Riot.
FPV is a disproportionately expensive hobby ... every hard crash can cost you between $20 ( broken motor bell) to $200 (cost of entire drone when dropped in water and electronics go poof).
Still great hobby, highly recommend!
UAVFutures is a Banggood/affiliate marketing shill unfortunately. Can't trust a word that comes out of his mouth when it comes to product reviews (which is the vast majority of what he does).
There are various FPV groups on Facebook, and Joshua Bardwell shares a lot of knowledge on YouTube. Also, prepare to lose a lot of your life soldering things.
> - Low res analog video -> high res digital video
> - Modest transmission range -> long range
Those are not really new. DJI has been selling their standalone digital FPV system for a while now.
And there are lot's of different long range radio systems available.
But I agree that this is impressive. I wonder if Betaflight, etc. will also implement some kind of bail out feature.
Betaflight already has very rudimentary RTH / "GPS Rescue" functionality, obviously without ground/forward sensors it's not as good, but it does work pretty well for "oh no something has gone wrong" in the form of video or control link loss.
Major benefit of analog video is a progressive degradation of quality as a signal gets weaker and almost instant reacquisition after a complete dropout. I'm curious to see how DJI competes with that on a digital video.
> ~5 minutes fly time -> ~20 minutes fly time
For FPV racing that's rather a downgrade. Ideally you'd like to land with almost empty battery right after finishing the course. Any leftover charge is a dead weight that only slows you down. But then again - I don't think this drone will be used in competitive FPV racing.
>Major benefit of analog video is a progressive degradation of quality as a signal gets weaker and almost instant reacquisition after a complete dropout. I'm curious to see how DJI competes with that on a digital video.
The good news is that you can find that out right now. DJI HD FPV has been available for over a year, this is just their first drone offering in the category.
The short answer is that it degrades very gracefully. They have what they call 'focus mode', where the edges of the video lose quality before the middle (where the data matters the most). Once you've used up that signal degradation threshold the rest of the frame slowly degrades to a lower bitrate, and then after that latency starts rising.
After flying analog for 5 years it only took me about 1 day to strongly prefer the DJI FPV video solution. The range is far better, and the video is mind-blowingly clear when compared to analog. On anything but my racing specific drones I have been installing the DJI HD FPV system instead of normal analog gear.
> They have what they call 'focus mode', where the edges of the video lose quality before the middle (where the data matters the most).
If the latency is low enough it would be nice if they could incorporate eye tracking into that in the future, and move around the high quality region with your eyes. And maybe feed it from a gimballess 360 camera so you have full freedom to look around. Stereo cameras would also be nice, maybe with some differential compression between eyes to keep bandwidth down (would need a gimbal for that most likely, to keep line between cameras horizontal).
As you say at the end, this isn't a drone for racing. I think this drone would mostly be for videographers wanting to add FPV-style shots to their arsenal. I shoot with a Mavic 2 (https://serio.com.au/) and if there was a bit more of a market for the FPV look in the work I typically do, I'd grab one of these right away.
At this point though it's probably something I'd look at closer once I have a bit more spare time and can think about situations where it might be applied.
> Major benefit of analog video is a progressive degradation of quality as a signal gets weaker and almost instant reacquisition after a complete dropout. I'm curious to see how DJI competes with that on a digital video.
Waiting for a degradation tolerant codec.
Old MPEGs were, as they had broadcast use in mind, but even 264 blow them out of the water on compression nowadays.
Loss tolerant codec + modern channel coding will likelly outrange analog for quality picture
Lots of I-frames means you effectively revert to a little more sophisticated version of mjpeg
A cheap, and dirty hack I can think of is to dynamically adjust the bitrate for the bandwidth after FEC/channel coding. Margins will still have to be quite huge I believe.
On progressive degradation, perhaps the digital video output could be adapted with an indication of the error rate (which usually get corrected in the background until it reaches a threshold where the errors are too great)
Or perhaps the signal strength or SNR.
These parameters are available but not usually displayed.
I've been flying DJI HD FPV for about a year now and yes - latency hovers around 24ms in good conditions. The range also blows away my normal analog gear.
Presumably not literally like in the case of a rocket or formula 1, but also literally as in, I could have used a lighter battery with less charge that goes faster
The product is amazing, but I'm sad that the first amazing integrated fpv product out is coming from DJI. It makes perfect sense, but I hate giving them money as each DJI purchase is a positive reinforcement for their abhorrent approach to consumer privacy.
I'll probably get one, but continue to complain loudly online that every DJI product, including the offline ones, requires an account and email address and registration and the transmission of your serial number for it to work - including their little handheld, no-internet, record-to-sd-card cameras. :/
I use the one-time email, on a VPN, but there’s no way around it transmitting your serial number. To keep it private in the future you need a dedicated offline mobile device to run the app, which after installing the app never goes back online.
I don't want to have an offline DJI-only phone.
Most people who fly drones are sending their IP, gps data, and serial number to DJI on every flight.
High-res digital video has been available to the multicopter community for a long time now through https://www.dji.com/fpv. First released by DJI, later the technology was licensed to others (at least the camera / VTX side of the electronics), se for example caddex vista / nebula (https://caddxfpv.com/collections/dji-1).
DJI seem to have diverted their supply chain from hobbyist FPV to this new drone. Supply for all DJI FPV gear has been very limited ever since they filed the "V2" goggles (for the Drone) with the FCC.
I'm hoping they keep their hobbyist/DIY FPV system going though, as it blows everything else out of the water. Analog video is well, bad, open source alternatives are either abandoned or mediocre, and the Divimath/Fat Shark system is not even comparable in terms of quality.
That makes sense though.. they're probably putting initial production of the V2 goggles into the FPV kits, and running out their supply of independent V1 Goggles.
My guess is at some point soon they'll be selling the V2 goggles on their own for the hobby use case.
I guess all the things you mention is why they continue to get my money. Bought the drone yesterday to compliment the Air2, which I absolutely love, and can't wait to try it out.
> - Low res analog video -> high res digital video
For Hobbyists, the high res digital video is definitely a great development and makes for a better flying experience overall. Real racers still complain about the latency, but they are not the target of the digital FPV system and the new DJI FPV drone always.
But the high res is nothing unique to the DJI FPV drone. DJI started offering the Digital FPV system a few years ago for integration into diy drones.
> - Modest transmission range -> long range
There are plenty of long range transmission standards in the DIY space such as TBS Crossfire etc. For video transmission, it heavily depends on the transmission power which quickly becomes the listing factor. In Germany (and most EU states iirc) the transmission power for 5GHz signals limited to 25mW, which heavily reduces the range . 2.4GHz is not supported with the DJI AirUnit or Caddx Vista iirc.
For lots of countries long range isn't even that much of an important feature since its legally only allowed to fly line of sight anyways. However, for countries with less strict drone laws this seems like an awesome addition.
> ~5 minutes fly time -> ~20 minutes fly time
That is the most misleading part imho. The 20 minutes flight time are only realistic when flying in the fully sensor supported "Mavic like" mode. If you're actually going for the powerful freestyle FPV experience, the flight time is still around 3-5 minutes with the major difference that a replacement battery for the DJI FPV is about 150€ while a LiPo for a DIY racing quad costs around 30-40€ a piece. That the flight time is heavily decreased when flying in the actual FPV freestyle (acro) mode is not surprising (its only a 2000mAh battery in a heavy drone), but I find the claim highly misleading.
> - Integrated simulation to learn to fly
In the FPV space, simulators have been a thing for quite a while now. There are multiple simulators such as Freerider, Velocidrone or Liftoff, all with different focuses and a broad support for controllers. You can even use a Xbox controller for the beginning. So integrating a simulation to learn to fly is no unique to DJI and nothing new in the FPV space at all.
> - "Bail out" button that almost instantly nulls drone movement and puts it in a stationary hover
The bail out button, even though I see a lot of risks with it, seems like a great feature for beginners. I really hope that beta flight will add a similar feature to upcoming firmware versions.
The DJI FPV drone seems like a relatively fragile drone. The most annoying part is, that there is apparently no real way to fix anything yourself besides the props. The current FPV drones really can take a beating and you probably won't break that much. If you do, you can simply order a new arm for your frame or a new motor. You need some technical knowledge and skills such as soldering, but you do not depend on the manufacturer with an Apple like repair policy.
The DJI FPV seems like a great entry option for cinematographers who just want to get some FPV style footage (which might be possible, but seems limited since the props often show up in the frame) with as little technical confrontation as possible. For people who just fly for fun and want some high speed stunts, diy drones still seem like the better option.
For anyone wanting to enter the hobby, there are a lot of bind and fly drones out there where little technical knowledge is required. For the technical knowledge that is required, there are lots of really supportive communities.
> The DJI FPV drone seems like a relatively fragile drone. The most annoying part is, that there is apparently no real way to fix anything yourself besides the props.
That seems to be untrue - according to the verge:
"If you’re like me and wreck this drone, you can replace the following items yourself: the top housing shell, propellers, the gimbal / camera module, and the arms. "
Given it's shooting 4k with a wide FOV, you could crop out the props. Most of the time with 4k, I am cropping and reframing anyway. In the past, my Mavic props have occasionally been in view too.
As I said, 10-15 minutes seems completely realistic when talking about the sensor stabilized and comparatively slow flight modes.
Most FPV channels that were reporting on the DJI FPV drone and actually tested the completely manual flight mode (which is the only one that really compares to the FPV flying you see in many videos) got around 3-5 minutes out of the battery.
And again, it makes sense when looking at freestyle maneuvers and how much power they require.
Sure you’ve been watching the actual reviews? All the ones I could find show 15-20m for sport mode, 10-12m for manual mode averaging >140km/h. It’s one of the key selling points over kits really.
The motion controller reminds me of a project I made many years ago, where head tilting of an oculus rift would control the cameras on your drone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654141
Also cool that they have been embracing virtual practicing it seems. The original DJI controllers were impossible to pair with simulators, so I had to hack it: https://github.com/Matsemann/mDjiController/
I sold (or basically gave away) all my home-made drone setup a year or so ago, after it being in a box for 3+ years. It was a hassle to set up, and very hard to fly and get good pictures and actually be in control (original DJI Phantom included). Cool tech and fun to hack on, but not very good UX heh. However I would still very much like to fly and film more, but then with some out-of-the-box-ready solutions. Modern ones seem to have obstacle avoidance, better hovering, tracking or point-to-point etc, so I can actually focus on the (for me, now) fun parts of filming the sports action.
What are some good drones for that use-case? DJI alone has a big lineup now, hard to know which one is more fitting. And are there other contenders selling ready to use stuff? Thought GoPro had one but seems like they've stopped.
Head trackers are cool, but DJI stuff is a step in the wrong direction there. Right now everything is open, you can write a small Arduino script to track your head with an accelerometer, send the channels through your radio to the drone, and add two servos there that move according to your head motions.
With DJI, all of this is closed. I'd be surprised if you can connect/have access to any of these things.
Well, nobody is stopping the community from making their own open source/open hardware OpenTX based motion flight controller, do they? Just like Naza32 didn’t prevent people from developing Cleanflight/Betaflight
Are you saying that because they aren't actively coming to your house and holding your hands away from the keyboard, the fact that they sell closed source hardware is neutral?
It’s actually positive. Open source community has limited resources, so DJI proving this thing can be made to work well removes any uncertainty someone would have when starting their own project without that knowledge. It also affects the way people look at the feature - previously many would just automatically dismiss it as a useless gimmick, but DJI implementing it and people liking their implementation gives the idea credibility.
So the only reason nobody implemented digital video systems until now is that they weren't sure if it could be done, and DJI locking their stuff down is actually good for the hobby.
OpenHD. If you fly wings and 135ms latency doesn't bother you, you can build it yourself. Of course, it uses Raspberry Pi's proprietary Broadcom SoC h264 encoder, so much for open :)
Is TBS locking their proprietary protocol they use to differentiate themselves from commodity Semtech ICs good for the hobby?
Does that produce VR sickness? Transmission time + going all the way to some motors seems like it would be pretty hard to fit in even 60fps, haha.
I wonder if any consumer VR FPV drones would consider transmitting a 360 video signal (or just one that includes more FOV than can be displayed on the headset) to allow some head movements to be handled in software.
Yes, but not anymore than standard fpv goggles (with no tracking) would give in this case anyway.
Yes, we thought of that as a possible improvement ("future work"). It may be harder to get the stereo cameras to match up, is my guess. But for a single camera setup it's probably not too hard and already exists for 360 videoes. So I guess if one's capable of streaming the video it shouldn't be too hard.
And stereo cameras arent really that useful. We explored it, and found that when looking at stuff more than a few meters away it made no difference. For inspections (which was what our drone was made for) of close stuff it has some merit, but could still probably be handled by some IR sensor or other computational stuff adding an overlay to the video.
As for vr sickness, the most jarring experience was flying behind yourself like a 3rd person shooter haha.
The first-person view seems like it would be a total blast to try out-- basically every kid's dream toy. I would have given anything for something like that when I was 12 years old. But from a pragmatic standpoint of using the drone to capture video footage, I feel like having robust "self driving" capabilities (in particular, obstacle avoidance and smart target tracking) is more interesting. I was blown away recently watching footage of this new drone from a US based drone company, Skydio:
I also like that there finally seems to be a decent alternative to DJI in the market-- it was a bit worrisome how much better DJI has been than everyone else.
Note that Skydio isn't immune to thin branches - AFAIK no current tech can reliably detect them at distance sufficient for avoidance at high speeds. There are Youtube videos demonstrating Skydio crashes caused by these (and similar low visibility obstacles). Also note that while Skydio has technically superior avoidance tech (360 view vs forward only on DJI drones), it failed to capture non-negligible consumer market share and has pivoted to commercial drone niche.
I’m surprised there aren’t lower tech ways of detecting thin branches besides doing real-time analysis of the live video feed. Like some kind of primitive proximity detection using radar to augment the image based approach, and if there is any doubt, taking quick evasive maneuvers.
High res radar seems pretty energy intensive and doesn't scale down to typical drone size (especially considering the new registration requirements for over 250g drones). Dry branches have low radar signature but are still fully capable of catching props. Low torque motors paired with large props optimized for flight time and for smooth cinematic flight (remember, it's foremost a flying camera) aren't capable of super-fast braking either.
For the photography crowd, self flying just needs to be good enough, because you are controlling it most of the time anyways to get the shot you want.
what's really important is image quality, when the mavic 2 came out it really blew me a way with the one inch sensor. It was incredible to see that kind of image produced by such a compact body.
I really like Skydio's product but they've priced themselves out of being a competitor to most of DJI's drones. Of course, all the hardware for their autonomy engine (Jetson TX2 with six cameras) isn't cheap. I'd still love to see a cheaper version (maybe $400?) with a less sophisticated autonomy engine compete with Mavic Mini. If they could open-source the design and allow for custom flight/autonomy code, it would be a superb value proposition.
DJI is such an impressive company. I know comparing anyone to Apple has been done to death, but I'd really be hard pressed to think of another company that comes closer. It also seems like they are following a similar playbook of blending hardware and software to deliver a fantastic, simplified experience - and they always deliver. It's not a wonder why they really don't have a legitimate competitor.
Speaking from the experience of building drones, it's honestly black magic to me how they pull off their controls. I can't imagine kalman filtering yourself into such a great system as theirs. Unworldly.
Wait, why does the goggles look like VR goggles, but the drone only has 1 camera? Wouldn't this FPV system be way more awesome with binocular vision and head tracking?
Imagine flying the drone, and moving your head would move the camera gimbals, and you'd experience it like you were in VR in the drone?
> Wouldn't this FPV system be way more awesome with binocular vision
Human binocular vision depth perception is actually extremely short range. It varies from person to person, but some measurements put it as short as 10 feet [1] - beyond that, the mind starts depending on other cues [2] like motion and relative size.
So the costs in bandwidth and hardware might not be worth it - getting your drone that close to things sounds like an expensive skill to learn :)
That's cool to imagine, but nobody does it in practice because it isn't nearly as cool when you're doing it as imagining it makes it out to be :) Fixed camera angles are the standard in FPV. Partly because the drone itself tilts to change direction so you would lose your orientation very quickly, and partly because that would just add fragility to the drone. Something you don't want when you're likely going to crash it often.
>Wait, why does the goggles look like VR goggles, but the drone only has 1 camera?
Funny, I was thinking the same when I watched the video. The optimist in me hopes there's a pair of lower-res stereo cameras located somewhere near the main camera (the one we can see) being specifically for shooting video? The way you described it is exactly how I thought it operated until I got further into the video. It's a great step forward in drones with added range, batter, etc, but the whole "first-person VR" shtick feels like it was only half-thought out and never changed during the design/implementation
I haven’t used this specifically, but I’ve been really impressed with the DJI brand overall. I got a Mavic Air 2 and a gimbal for photography from them this year, and have been very happy with the quality of both. (The gimbal, being more of a professional tool, was a bit annoying to setup.)
They have bitten a lot of Apple’s packaging, presentation, and UX — which isn’t really a bad thing. (Imitation and flattery, and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, etc.)
I’m intrigued by FPV, but I have no burning need for it right now — I’m mainly interested in cinematography and building maps of my property for farming, gardening, and architecture.
One thing I would say: having a big property to learn on has been handy. It does concern me how flippant some are in this thread about barriers to entry and the risks. Until you get yourself into a hairy situation, you may not fully appreciate the risks.
Is this the first commercially available robotic projection device?
I’ve been waiting patiently for VR+robotic applications - this project but controlling some Boston Dynamics is a terrifying military, or an amazing football team depending on how you look at it. Exciting!
Likely would have to build some autonomy into the system to handle scenarios where the communication gets patchy or the user is about to crash into something.
Now you only need to install 5G on the Grand Canyon.
This was actually a thing a couple years ago. I tried it out a couple times and it worked really well: https://www.flythere.com/
Basically the gave you a big "box" of air space that had 0 obstacles that you could fly around in. It's impossible to crash the drone and it takes off / lands automatically.
Beyond all the technical specification, this is just a cool looking drone. I remember as a kid thinking how cool it would be if I had a camera on an RC car. Now, we're flying first person through the sky. So cool.
It isn't the first offering. Teal drones gave it a shot some time back and has a pretty solid product with excellent performance. They didn't get many sales with the sport models and pivoted to military and industrial applications though. I worked for them for a moment... weird company and founder, but good engineering team.
Also, does anyone have a solid guess as to what sort of restrictions this thing has on it? I like DJI for their mechanical engineering but their drones are way too locked down. Are we going to have to reverse engineer this one too for fun mode to be playable?
It's hard to imagine this thing not having the same GEO-zone lockouts as all the others.
I have a DJI Mavic Mini and the lockouts are very, very strict. I can't fly it at ALL at my house outside.
I wish there was a little more compromise.. in some cases it would be a heck of a lot useful if you could fly even with some draconian restriction like a 25ft max altitude. My house is in a restricted zone due to being on the flight path for an airport. But the airplanes come over my house around 150ft AGL. There are 75ft trees all the way around my property. I would have plenty of fun never going above 50ft in my yard, but DJI won't let me fly at all.
Given it's speed this FPV model would have the largest capacity for mayhem of almost any DJI model, and since it's FPV you know there will be lots of people flying it without a spotter in violation of FAA regulations.. so it makes sense for it to be at least as locked down as the other models.
I flew my drone over salt marshes near another airport that didn't have a tower over the weekend. Because it didn't have a tower it didn't have a "Red" zone near it and I could fly after acknowledging the risks. I was able to fly and keep my altitude < 20ft and it was still a ton of fun and I got some great pictures. I only flew for about 10 minutes, I saw one airplane, but it was ~100ft AGL and I was ~15ft AGL and had some horizontal separation from the plane, no harm done.
This model looks insanely fun and I'd love to have one but realistically I bet I'd be in that situation a lot where I didn't have a spotter and couldn't fly it without knowingly breaking the rules. I didn't see anything in the material yet in terms of whether or not you can fly it line of sight without the goggles.
Check out the faq/start. I haven't looked into minis, but the larger mavics are well supported.
If you want to really have some fun with your current drone, check out a program called Litchi. It costs lunch to get a copy but it gives you a full ground station with mission planning capabilities, a Google Cardboard compatible FPV function (a bit laggy for precision flying but if you pick you lines through obstacles you will be fine), limited head tracking that moves the camera gimbal as you look around and a heads up display / audio feedback.
All in all, modified dji + litchi + google cardboard headset + burner android phone is a surprisingly capable package that can be repaired, tweaked and has a very low price point if you can navigate the used goods market.
"Citizen, get back in your pod. Citizen, get back in your pod. Your face has been recorded in the Problematic Citizens Database. You have one point left on your license."
Very cool! I wonder how DJI justifies the R&D costs of this drone when it (and their existing lineup) could possibly be banned overnight by the looming UAS regulations?
Where does this drone sit with regard to the current set of regulations? It will certainly at least need operator ID markings, yes?
If you add up the costs of Nazgul5 HD (probably the cheapest BNF 5 inch HD kwad worth buying), DJI FPV goggles, a controller that you won’t outgrow in a month (either Radiomaster TX16s or Tango2), a charger, parallel board, lipos, a sim to practice acro, etc. you’ll probably reach something awfully similar to that $1300 price tag.
Do these things come with instructions for how not to use them? I got pretty sick of the jerk who kept buzzing people's heads with an FPV drone last time I was at the beach.
Honestly I was hoping for a package around $600-700 but DJI took this in another direction which is probably smart for their bottom line. I'm hoping in 1-2 years they'll have a "mini" or cheaper version.
This is great. The biggest draw back seems to be the small image sensor on the camera. Not sure if its good enough to compete with gopro typically used in FPV in image quality.
Amusing. Any time someone says some cool thing from a big company is "limiting for the experienced" I know it's probably a great product for me, the amateur.
This is great... finally dji going-in for the specs that makes us vow! Pricing surely could have been better though. At $1200+, it definitely is not cheap.
Long-range FPV builds can go out for miles--especially if you build specifically for that, and fly in areas with low radio noise like mountain ranges: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqDcd7cDv4Y
What of the image quality disappoints you? The example footage looked great to me, and 4k@60fps is the main thing missing from Mavic 2 that I wish it had.
too bad you can't fly drones in germany with all the regulations. For FPV drones you have to have a second person "spotting" the drone and keeping line of sight. Complete bureaucratic nonsense.
No, it is no delay 120fps. The sickness induced from VR is primarily when the tracking is bad, then slow refresh rate of display, then screen door effect last. Something like this would make only screen door effect be the factor that makes one sick which is minimal for most.
Ocusync has been out for some time now and it already sounds like magic. I think when compared to wifi or some radio bridges it usually operates in much less congested environment. Nonetheless, if you think about frequencies used, energy going down with r^2 and bandwidth they are doing, it's an amazing feat even in ideal conditions. And here's it's a moving object, on battery, with four electromagnets around it.
My son has a Mini2, the transmission range on this is pretty amazing.
We were watching a neighbor's house over the holiday, which meant mostly checking for delivery boxes on their porch and putting them inside. We could drive the Mini2 out the window of our house and 2 blocks away to check the porch without getting out of our seats. And this is a suburban area full of houses, trees, and a shit ton of interference at the wifi/4G/LTE ranges. The video never lost a frame.
Boasting about flying beyond line of sight without a spotter in a cluttered residential neighborhood isn't going to score you many points among the drone enthusiast crowd.
No worries. If there's just one thing I want to get across though, it's that as drone operators, we are collectively responsible for how the broader community views us and drones.
Random drones floating through neighborhoods is sketchy from a safety standpoint but also it tends to upset people, who often think that any drone they see is spying on them. Just a consideration.
Personally I like to fly around abandoned buildings and decrepit structures. Lots of interesting flying to be done and cool vids to be taken, and there's nobody around to complain :)
This has been out for a few years in the form of the "DJI FPV" system, Goggles and Air Unit, for DIY drone construction. It's not science fiction - the latency and bitrate taper off a bit at range, but it genuinely works.
If you tear down the hardware, it's using an Imagination IE1000 802.11ac frontend, Skyworks amps, and a custom DJI image processor chip (marked P1). So the air protocol probably looks somewhat like 802.11ac (OFDM etc.) but without the framing overhead and presumably without TCP/IP.
I don't think so, at least not outside of the channel bandwidth - based on the FCC filings and the observed behavior, initialization seems to happen on 5839MHz (Channel 8) and then the device hops to a user-selected channel, where it seems to stay.
Joshua Bardwell (a prominent FPV YouTuber) has a review video up. It looks very cool and performant. Unfortunately one of his units broke an arm after a relatively common looking crash during his review.
As others have said, this is definitely not VR, it's like looking at a big screen strapped to your face. People in our group that have lots of trouble with VR have no problem with FPV.
Anectodal data point, if that helps, tested with 3 people
I own Quest and DJI FPV system (not the drone from the link, but custom built with DJI FPV googles)
- I can get dizzy in VR, but I won't in FPV unless I do a lot of crazy movement like spinning for a couple of seconds. Even when crashing which involves a lot of spin, it's fine
- If I watch FPV while someone else is flying, I feel dizzy. It's not as fast as in VR, but still can happen
Friends who tried had the same feeling.
There's something in the connection between visual movement and your control of that movement via stick that helps alleviate dizzines.
Not sure why downvoted. But it’s true, it’s not for everyone. I love my oculus but I can only play games in which I am stationary (my character doesn’t move unless I move in the real world)
It’s a shame because this looks fantastic but I probably won’t be able to use it without getting motion sickness almost immediately.
I think this would suit itself to a 'cockpit' style overlay - I play a lot of Elite Dangerous in VR and know others that do too. It seems almost a perfect use-case for VR IMO.
This new drone from DJI brings an truly staggering amount of innovation and integration to the FPV space:
- Low res analog video -> high res digital video
- Modest transmission range -> long range
- Integrated simulation to learn to fly
- "Bail out" button that almost instantly nulls drone movement and puts it in a stationary hover
- ~5 minutes fly time -> ~20 minutes fly time
- Adjustable camera tilt on the fly to maintain level horizon at a variety of drone speeds (drone tilts more with speed)
Extremely impressive first offering in this category.