Drone pilots?

[Jkwellborn 6,892]

Anyone here use a drone for anything or just fly for recreation? We had a DJI Phantom 3 Pro at work that I used for a few things and enjoyed flying it. I think we are about to upgrade to a DJI Mini 3 Pro since the old drone messed up.

 

I’m tossing around eventually getting a DJI 3T since it’s thermal.

 

Anyone else fly or have recommendations for one?

[Slacks 6,921]

My son has a Mavic Mini and the other one that is slightly larger (Pro?) The larger one requires more FAA clearance, so he doesn't fly it much.

He is training to be an actual commercial pilot, and says he's going to study UAV as a minor in college next fall. 

 

 

[Your Mom 4,879]

A family member gave me their old Mavic something or other and I was excited to try it but it required a firmware update and I never could get it to upload so it’s been sitting in my closet ever since. I should take it somewhere to get some help from a pro. 

[cabowabo 4,578]

I bought a DJI Macic Air several years ago.  Ended up selling it because I didn’t fly it that much. 
I then bought a DJI Mavic Air 2. Ended up selling it because I didn’t fly it that much.  
I am thinking about buying another drone. Maybe a Mini 3. 

[Patricio Swayze 17,058]

I used to have the Mavic pro 2 or whatever. Got some cool photos of one of the body farms and some other stuff. Most posted in the photo thread.

[PRONG HORN 3,164]

 

Find the guy who pilots this one   :35

 

 

 

[Lat22 4,053]

I’d like a Bayraktar. 

[jofus 2,266]

Anyone here use a drone for anything or just fly for recreation? We had a DJI Phantom 3 Pro at work that I used for a few things and enjoyed flying it. I think we are about to upgrade to a DJI Mini 3 Pro since the old drone messed up.
 
I’m tossing around eventually getting a DJI 3T since it’s thermal.
 
Anyone else fly or have recommendations for one?

I fly a mini 3 pro at work sometimes, and it takes great photos. It can go up to 48mp, but it’s not a true 48mp sensor. They stitch together 4 12mp photos to do it.

I think the new mavic 3 pro takes true 48mp photos.

[Jkwellborn 6,892]

Do you use the newer controller that has the screen on it?

[jofus 2,266]

Yes, and so far I like it a lot.

I previously used my phone with a mavic 2, but it often overheated, which limited me to morning flights during the summer.

[Captainant 27,989]

I've got a mini 3 pro that I've packed on hikes for some great photography. Took a really nice 360 panorama from the top of a "mountain" on my in laws ranch last year, and have used it to inspect my roof and neighbors roofs (at their specific request to) after hail/wind storms. It's a really cool tool to have

[TwiceHorn 31,699]

DJI just lost a patent suit to Bell Helicopter on guidance last week.  Some features may go missing soon, or the prices may be going up, or both.

[Jkwellborn 6,892]

I've got a mini 3 pro that I've packed on hikes for some great photography. Took a really nice 360 panorama from the top of a "mountain" on my in laws ranch last year, and have used it to inspect my roof and neighbors roofs (at their specific request to) after hail/wind storms. It's a really cool tool to have

I’ve inspected my roof and gutters with the older drone we had at work. I had it at home and was flying around. Decided it was easier than getting a ladder out.

[Captainant 27,989]

7 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

DJI just lost a patent suit to Bell Helicopter on guidance last week.  Some features may go missing soon, or the prices may be going up, or both.

Was it more on the avionics/electronics or on their rotor design? First I've heard of that

Edit: on some googling it seems like this lawsuit was on the assisted takeoff and attitude control based on camera inputs. Fucking crazy that a company can "own" the idea of a control feedback loop - it's not a new idea or some new technology, just a methodology to use camera inputs to guide robotic outputs. Hell, I've built ML models to drive a car around a track based solely on a camera inputs - am I gonna get sued?

Edited April 24, 2023 by Captainant

[TwiceHorn 31,699]

1 minute ago, Captainant said:

Was it more on the avionics/electronics or on their rotor design? First I've heard of that

Avionics.  https://www.kwtx.com/2023/04/21/federal-court-waco-awards-279m-defense-contractor-patent-infringement-dispute-involving-chinese-company/

One of the patents.  https://patents.google.com/patent/US8108085B2/en

Pretty sizable verdict that reflects DJIs sales.

[Captainant 27,989]

Here's some of my favorite drone shots that I've taken recently, putting em in a spoiler in case surly hates 360° photos 

Spoiler

 

Ranch in SW Texas:

Pololu on Hawaii (the big island)

This one is just a normal pano, but it's about 500 feet off the north top of the island looking back

 

 

Edited April 24, 2023 by Captainant

[Captainant 27,989]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Avionics.  https://www.kwtx.com/2023/04/21/federal-court-waco-awards-279m-defense-contractor-patent-infringement-dispute-involving-chinese-company/

One of the patents.  https://patents.google.com/patent/US8108085B2/en

Pretty sizable verdict that reflects DJIs sales.

Lmao if THAT is what lets you get a patent, that is some bullshit. They do zero problem solving work or even a design for any of the subsystems that their patent relies on, but they can wholesale claim anyone else's work because it matches the broad wireframe architecture? That's an impressively shitty jury verdict, no wonder they venue shopped to the famously favorable to IP holder judge in waco. God bless the free market judicial system

[TwiceHorn 31,699]

1 hour ago, Captainant said:

Lmao if THAT is what lets you get a patent, that is some bullshit. They do zero problem solving work or even a design for any of the subsystems that their patent relies on, but they can wholesale claim anyone else's work because it matches the broad wireframe architecture? That's an impressively shitty jury verdict, no wonder they venue shopped to the famously favorable to IP holder judge in waco. God bless the free market judicial system

First off, I venture that you don't have the first clue what's actually patented.

Second, you have probably failed to take into account that the application dates back to 2004.

Third, the patent was also granted in substantially the same form by the European Patent Office.

Fourth, Albright is not terribly favorable to patent holders, per se.  He runs a court with rules that are specifically adapted to patent cases, making it a favorable venue, as do courts in northern California, New Jersey, and Delaware and the Eastern District of Texas.  I'm not a fan of his trying to keep cases in Waco by any means necessary, but I'm reasonably sure he runs a pretty fair court, otherwise.  When a court doesn't have patent rules, and even a few that do, it reflects a judgment by the judges of the court that they don't like patent cases and don't give them proper attention and management.

A glowing example of this is David Godbey on the Northern District of Texas.  He's a fucking EE undergrad, but hates patent cases and they languish forever in his court.

Finally, DJI had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the validity of the patents in Albright's court and via the patent death squad of Inter Partes Review.  They did IPR at least one of them and they all survived.

Fun facts, both the lawyer that did the patents and the lead trial counsel are friends of mine.

Edited April 24, 2023 by TwiceHorn

[Captainant 27,989]

Twice, I get that this is personal for you. But broad aspects of the patent you linked have zero similarity with DJI's tech. I'm sure there's this and that legal huphuphup process that make it all copacetic, but the patent you linked is particularly talking about using GPS and intercommunicating instrumentation between the reference vehicle and the aircraft. It has nothing to do with DJI's actual tech innovation in their drones. Their big breakthrough success that actually made things work better was to use a pure vision-based tracking model that enables the drone to follow any subject WITHOUT applying additional sensors to the reference item. 

DJI's drones do make use of a "return to home" function when you take off in that it grabs the geotag of the controller and the drone at time of takeoff, and you can configure it to return to that spot if it loses signal, but it's not a moving target and not using a mutually-communicating network of sensors as that patent describes.

 

But hey, congrats to your buddies for profiting off of someone else's innovations just because they wrote a vaguely similar idea down and didn't use it for 20 years!

[TwiceHorn 31,699]

38 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Twice, I get that this is personal for you. But broad aspects of the patent you linked have zero similarity with DJI's tech. I'm sure there's this and that legal huphuphup process that make it all copacetic, but the patent you linked is particularly talking about using GPS and intercommunicating instrumentation between the reference vehicle and the aircraft. It has nothing to do with DJI's actual tech innovation in their drones. Their big breakthrough success that actually made things work better was to use a pure vision-based tracking model that enables the drone to follow any subject WITHOUT applying additional sensors to the reference item. 

DJI's drones do make use of a "return to home" function when you take off in that it grabs the geotag of the controller and the drone at time of takeoff, and you can configure it to return to that spot if it loses signal, but it's not a moving target and not using a mutually-communicating network of sensors as that patent describes.

 

But hey, congrats to your buddies for profiting off of someone else's innovations just because they wrote a vaguely similar idea down and didn't use it for 20 years!

How do you know they didn't use it for 20 years?  Its one of five patents DJI is accused of infringing and we don't know yet which were actually found infringed.  The other four are more recent in time.

One thing people often fail to understand is that just because something has evolved past a prior technology doesn't mean that it doesn't incorporate elements of that prior technology.  That is, just because someone has made it better, or even received their own patent on a technology does not absolve them from infringement of more basic patents.

Collecting a 279M judgment from a Chinese entity is most likely going to be a tough slog and was never the goal here.  Textron doesn't need DJI's money.  They were after the injunction against continued sales in the US unless DJI pays a royalty, or designs-around Bell's patents successfully.  The injunction will only last about three more years.

Also worth noting that as an alien corporation, SZ DJI Technology Co. Ltd. is amenable to suit anywhere in the United States.

Edited April 24, 2023 by TwiceHorn

[StassneyHorn 6,703]

There was a drone convention in Denver a couple days ago and ended up talking to some random Chinese guy at a bar. He had an cool idea for underwater drones that scan your pool constantly like a cleaner and would in theory prevent baby drownings or small dog drownings.

Was a great idea, but I literally had to coach him up in how to use Excel ha. Simple payroll functions. 
 

you guys ever hear of anything like that?

 

[Captainant 27,989]

On 5/11/2023 at 9:12 PM, StassneyHorn said:

There was a drone convention in Denver a couple days ago and ended up talking to some random Chinese guy at a bar. He had an cool idea for underwater drones that scan your pool constantly like a cleaner and would in theory prevent baby drownings or small dog drownings.

Was a great idea, but I literally had to coach him up in how to use Excel ha. Simple payroll functions. 
 

you guys ever hear of anything like that?

 

IMO you could solve that problem much more easily using image recognition to spot something in the pool that shouldn't be there. Not even sure if such an underwater drone exists at the consumer/device price point

[baboso 6,057]

Maybe be aware of your fucking kid's whereabouts if you have a pool would work instead.

[StassneyHorn 6,703]

Yea that’s it

[Captainant 27,989]

Took the drone out to the ranch for a bachelor party this weekend, it came in handy a couple times when we couldn't decide the best way up out of a creek bed.  We flew the drone up high to spot the game trails we could use and get less torn up by thorns, and it's just crazy how easy to use it is

[Captainant 27,989]

Did a two mile flight out with the drone on the ranch to try and spot a couple of buddies that had just bagged an aoudad - you can't see em in this video but I had flown right over them and they radioed in when they saw it so we could come with some wheels to pick them up with 20lbs of meat and save us all a few hours lol.

I'm insanely impressed with my DJI Mini 3 pro - this flight was in 10-15mph winds and was a 4 mile round trip at 900ft of relative elevation rise from launch point(which is fine because it was at mountaintop height at its highest) and it came back with 35% battery remaining! Absolutely awesome bit of kit

Edited May 30, 2023 by Captainant

[Armybrat 41,016]

On 5/15/2023 at 12:48 PM, Captainant said:

IMO you could solve that problem much more easily using image recognition to spot something in the pool that shouldn't be there. Not even sure if such an underwater drone exists at the consumer/device price point

Or, you could go this route…

 

[Captainant 27,989]

Ok, another drone shot! We all hiked to the top of the mountain I flew to in the last video and while we were all standing looking at Mexico I did an orbiting 360° shot. Goddamn the Texas desert is pretty, and unusually green right now

[Cajun 11,766]

Magic Air 2 with the Pro controller here.  I fly mine quite a bit:  love the pics & video.  This was from last week…

 

[Cajun 11,766]

Some stills I got with it recently…

 

[Captainant 27,989]

On 6/4/2023 at 11:35 AM, Cajun said:

Some stills I got with it recently…

 

Wow that's some fantastic long exposure work on the storms! While I was on the ranch we were lucky enough to see THREE storms with crazy lightning, but I would never have thought to send my drone up with the 15-20mph winds and STRONG gusts

[Patricio Swayze 17,058]

Anyone seeing specs of the alleged soon to be released DJI Air 3? I used my Mavic 2 Pro 100% for still photography but sold it awhile back. Hoping to replace it in the near future with something that excels at still photography. Wondering if this new Air could be it.

[Cajun 11,766]

7 hours ago, Captainant said:

Wow that's some fantastic long exposure work on the storms! While I was on the ranch we were lucky enough to see THREE storms with crazy lightning, but I would never have thought to send my drone up with the 15-20mph winds and STRONG gusts

To be clear, those were screen captures off the video I ran while watching the storm.  That cell was up near Wimberly, so the winds over my place were not too bad.  I sent the drone up about 100 feet over my house, hit record, and went back inside to make a late dinner.  When the battery hit 10% I just did I the “Return Home” thingy, downloaded the 4K video, and scrolled frame by frame to find those stills.  Loses a lot of quality in the screen grab process, but not too bad. 

[Cajun 11,766]

7 hours ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Anyone seeing specs of the alleged soon to be released DJI Air 3? I used my Mavic 2 Pro 100% for still photography but sold it awhile back. Hoping to replace it in the near future with something that excels at still photography. Wondering if this new Air could be it.

I was unaware of the new model coming out.  I’m very interested too.

[BoomMF 1,399]

I have an DJI Inspire 1 v2 that's still fun to fly, but I do the most damage with my army of FPV racers (all Lumenier based frames). Each time I decide to fly them, if I'm lucky and the god's are in a good mood, it only costs about half a dozen propellers and maybe a battery. Usually, though, I leave with 3 air-worthy racers and come home with 1 that still turns on. Fun fun.

[Cajun 11,766]

I bought a DJI FPV drone over a year ago and still haven’t flown it.  I didn’t realize how different and more involved the operation of it would be until I unboxed it and started to go through the tutorials. 
 

Night and day from my Air2S.

Edited June 7, 2023 by Cajun

[Jkwellborn 6,892]

Where did y’all get your drones? Amazon, Best Buy or from a dealer?

I’d love to mess around with an FPV drone, but I ain’t buying one for that.

[Captainant 27,989]

9 hours ago, Jkwellborn said:

Where did y’all get your drones? Amazon, Best Buy or from a dealer?

I’d love to mess around with an FPV drone, but I ain’t buying one for that.

I got my Mini 3 pro at best buy because they had one in stock I could just go pick up, and then I bought the Fly More kit (2 more batteries plus a multi charger, bunch of spare parts, carrying pouch, etc) online because NOBODY has that on hand it seemed. It's a pretty easily found consumer item, I feel like I've seen them at BestBuy, Microcenter, even Target had the air2s. 

Depending on how much of a hobby you want, you could even build your own drone custom and use some of the open source flight control software to manage it all. But I just want to fly and take cool pictures from cool places, so I'm quite happy to have such a functional package. I also sprung for the DJI version of applecare that includes "flyaway coverage" to fully replace a lost drone, and cover any damage to the airframe or compute. 

 

Actually on that note - these drones are pretty fuckin tanky! When I first got mine, I crashed it right into the fountain in our neighborhood showing off to a neighbor lol. Fully submerged for probably 15 seconds! I yanked the battery out first, toweled it off and left it in a bag of rice for a week, got it cleaned back up, and it fired right up! Everything I've ever shot with it has been post-swim, and it's been fine for around 30-40 hrs of flight so far

[Jkwellborn 6,892]

I’ve looked at them at Best Buy. I’m kinda leery of buying on from some online sellers, especially since it’s going to be work that is ordering it.

[Hank_Hill 19,001]

See how these videos load, all shot here on Maui with a Mini 2

Spoiler

 

 

     

 

That manta ray was shot from 60ft up to give you an idea of the size of that thing

Edited June 7, 2023 by Hank_Hill

[Hank_Hill 19,001]

[Captainant 27,989]

19 hours ago, Jkwellborn said:

I’ve looked at them at Best Buy. I’m kinda leery of buying on from some online sellers, especially since it’s going to be work that is ordering it.

Yeah I'd go Best Buy or Amazon or some other known retailer. It's just a unit in a box. 

Definitely get the one with the full RC controller with a screen though. It's a must have IMO, much better than fucking with a phone mount and app pairing every time you want to fly. With the dedicated remote, it's just turn both on and get to flying. The range on the video link from the drone to the controller screen is MILES if you have LOS, and probably around half a mile or so if you don't have LOS (depending on other RF interference)

Edited June 8, 2023 by Captainant

[UnivTex34 1,763]

Cross posted from rain thread:

 

[Sbbruin 21,925]

I have a Parrot Anafi that is pretty sweet, but need to play with it a LOT more to get the maneuvering down. But it's a blast and has a great camera.

[Jkwellborn 6,892]

Mini 3 pro came in today for work. Going to look at a few things and purchase DJI Care Refresh for it and try to have it in the air by Friday.

Any of y’all order hard cases for yours? We have a huge one do the P3P that died on us.

[Cajun 11,766]

I’ve got an aftermarket hard case for my Air 2S.  Love it, especially since I take the drone out on the boat a lot.

[Captainant 27,989]

On 6/13/2023 at 2:33 PM, Jkwellborn said:

Mini 3 pro came in today for work. Going to look at a few things and purchase DJI Care Refresh for it and try to have it in the air by Friday.

Any of y’all order hard cases for yours? We have a huge one do the P3P that died on us.

I have a hard case for my mini 3, but Ive found myself using the soft pouch that came with the fly more kit. 

[UnivTex34 1,763]

On 6/13/2023 at 2:33 PM, Jkwellborn said:

Mini 3 pro came in today for work. Going to look at a few things and purchase DJI Care Refresh for it and try to have it in the air by Friday.

Any of y’all order hard cases for yours? We have a huge one do the P3P that died on us.

I went cheap and did a Harbor Freight Case for mine. It works well.

[Jkwellborn 6,892]

We ordered one from Amazon. The case for our P3P is massive obviously but it’s badass. I’m not gonna lie, I was shocked at how small the mini 3 is when it’s folded up. I got it updated last night. I’ll probably get some flight time today and check out the storm damage in my area.

[Captainant 27,989]

24 minutes ago, Jkwellborn said:

We ordered one from Amazon. The case for our P3P is massive obviously but it’s badass. I’m not gonna lie, I was shocked at how small the mini 3 is when it’s folded up. I got it updated last night. I’ll probably get some flight time today and check out the storm damage in my area.

If I'm going to a national park or somdwhere else beautiful and I have backpack space, it's a no-brainer to bring along. The whole carrying pouch - with drone, controller, batteries, and spare parts - weighs just over two pounds. And you'll get around 30-40 minutes of flight time per battery depending on conditions

It's a crazy capable little device, it's handled 15mph winds no problem and even made 20MPH ground speed against it!!! All in a 249g drone with a fucking 4k camera and collision avoidance radar built in. Just nutso.