Yifei and Seth discussed the top stories from the last week over on DroneDJ’s YouTube Channel this week. Check out the video below.
DJI devices getting the kick for support in 2022
As companies develop new products and improve the design of their products, it gets more tedious to continue updating the older ones. So DJI is adding new devices to its “End of Service” list, which you see here.
As part of DJI’s EOS program, you will no longer be able to get information, repairs, or technical support on them. DJI stated that the discontinued support is to help better allocate development resources to new products.
DJI added to US Treasury blacklist
Another blacklist now has the name of drone leader DJI on it, and this time it comes from the US Department of Treasury. US investors are now barred from buying or selling shares of DJI due to China’s continued abuse of Uighurs Muslims.
DJI is not a publically traded company, so this won’t affect most of us. However, this will cause trouble for private investors or investment firms based in the US looking to get a stake in the largest drone maker in the world. A big blow to DJI is that this new blacklist will likely stop them from becoming publicly traded in New York, if that was in DJI’s plans.
Only time will tell if these blacklists will force the change the US wants or further sour China-US relations.
Last minute sales are back on for the holidays
With 2022 only a couple of weeks away, we still see some savings on major drone products. Two major companies with some more deals are DJI and Skydio. You can once again get DJI’s FPV drone for $999. Additionally, the Air 2S Fly More Combo with the new RC Pro is now available. Announced alongside the Mavic 3, the RC Pro now supports the Air 2S, and you can purchase the combo for $749 off.
The Skydio 2 is also back and on sale. You can get any of the Skydio 2 kits for $400 off at the company’s website. These drones have been on sale for quite some time now. This begs the question, is a new Skydio drone about to be released in 2022? It has been two years since the Skydio 2 was released, and we could be up for the Skydio 3. However, who knows how Covid-19 and the chip shortage have affected Skydio’s development.
Is it a bird or a “d-word”?
While we don’t know if this new “eNVTOL” concept is true, it caught our eyes. Phractyl’s Macrobat is an interestingly designed winged drone that could carry people. The electric near-vertical take-off and landing aircraft takes inspiration from birds, landing on bird leg-like landing gear. Again, we don’t know much. If this is a serious product in development, stick around to see if the Macrobat leaves the nest.
16x digital zoom coming to EVO II drones
With the upcoming release of Autel’s Nano and Lite drone lines, the company updated its Explorer app to include 16x digital zoom on its EVO II drones. While this degrades the image quality, this feature will significantly improve functionality for those using the EVO II for inspections and navigation purposes.
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