Haye Kesteloo is the Editor in Chief and Main Writer at DroneDJ, where he covers all drone-related news and writes product reviews. He also contributes to the other sites in the 9to5Mac group such as; 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, and Electrek.
Haye can be reached at haye@dronedj.com or @hayekesteloo
The Severn Bridge that connects England to Wales was shut down earlier today after a man had climbed the bridge to fly a drone from the top. The drone incident follows the Gatwick Airport drone fiasco that took place right before the Holidays.
South Korean electronics giant, Samsung has filed a number of drone patents with the U.S. Patents & Trademark Office over the last few years. Reportedly five in 2018 and as many as 16 drone patents in total. The drone industry could surely use some competition as currently, DJI is running away with the market. However, will Samsung ever actually make a drone or will it just keep filing patents?
For the first time, counter-drone technology and NYPD drones will guard the NYE ball drop at Times Square in New York. Police officials have said that there is no known threat to the New Year’s Eve festivities in the city. The counter-drone technology and New York police drones will be present as a precaution and as part of the safety measures.
Romeo Durscher, DJI’s Director of Public Safety Integration, wrote an extensive piece on the DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual. In the article, Romeo points out the strengths of DJI latest drone and compares it to the more expensive but more capable Matrice 200/210 with a Zenmue XT2 camera.
DJI recently launched the DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual drone, which offers many advanced features that are useful for any police force. However, the DJI Matrice 210 with both a Zenmuse XT2 thermal and Zenmuse Z30 zoom camera may be the ultimate police drone, if there ever was one. As part of the expanding Santa Rosa Police Drone Program, the department just added this exact setup to their arsenal as the ultimate police drone.
The DJI Phantom drone is the unmanned aircraft that catapulted DJI to become the dominant drone manufacturer. Frank Wang who was still a student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology when he co-founded DJI in 2006. Even now when we are in the later stages of the Phantom 4 lifecycle, the Phantom is still the drone that does it all for a very reasonable price.
Now more than a week later after the infamous Gatwick Airport drone sightings, few questions have been answered. As of yet, no evidence that one or more drones were actually involved has emerged. Neither have any culprits been found. What has become very obvious though is how ill-prepared Gatwick Airport (and likely many other airports) are for occurrences like these.
Right after we were notified by the FCC about the filing for the new DJI Matrice 200 V2, 210 V2 and 210 RTK V2, we received another one (FCC ID SS3-GL900A1811) for the DJI Cendence S Remote Controller. Again a long and short-term secrecy cycle is being applied to this filing so we don’t get to see any photos or specs yet.
New versions of the popular enterprise drones are underway. In an FCC filing (FCC ID SS3-M200V21811) the DJI Matrice 200 V2, Matrice 210 V2 and Matrice 210 RTK V2 show up. From the filing, it does not become obvious what kind of improvements can be expected. Nor does it give us any indication as to when these new models may be released. Typically there between 4-8 weeks between a new DJI product showing up in FCC filings and its actual release. Unless, of course, there is a delay.
Drones are being used in the aftermath of the Indonesia tsunami as dozens of people are still missing. According to authorities, first responders are working around the clock to reach six villages that have been cut off and are no longer accessible by road.
A cartoon perfectly sums up the Gatwick Airport fiasco. It was posted by UK Paramedic Humour on Facebook and it shows one police officer saying to the other policeman holding a smoking rifle: “I don’t think that was a drone…” as the two are looking down on a Santa and his crashed sleigh and reindeer. In the background, you can see Gatwick Airport.
President Trump tweeted yesterday that drones are “lots of fun,” but only a “good old fashioned wall” works. The tweet went out on the second day of the partial government shutdown after Congress missed a midnight deadline on Friday to reach a compromise with the White House.
The Gatwick Airport confusion. This story is getting stranger by the day it seems. First, two suspects were arrested earlier in the weekend. The man and woman turned out to be innocent and have since been released. Then, a little later, a damaged drone was found near the airport. However, now the police say that there is: “a possibility there never was a drone.” Meanwhile, there have been 67 drone sightings at Gatwick Airport the last week. If this all starts to sound confusing to you, well, you’re not alone.
Last week, the DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual was launched without much fanfare. No show. No special event. Just a simple press release for a drone that may, in fact, be one of the most important drones that DJI has launched recently. We know that drones have helped to save more than the 124 people DJI reported earlier. To have drone equipped with a thermal camera for less than $3,000 means that there really is no excuse for any fire department, police force, and first responders not to add this drone to their toolbox. Check out the video below in which Romeo Durscher from DJI explains the highlights of this new exciting drone and takes the DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual on a test flight
Drones have become part of the standard outfit of journalists and photographers for the NYT. Now we see how an unmanned aircraft helps to document and illustrate the effects of climate change in a series of NYT articles. In the series, the journalists take a closer look at the Galápagos, Yellowstone National Park, Easter Island, Cedars of Lebanon, and the Orkney Islands.
Hopefully, the drone chaos at Gatwick Airport will now have come to an end with the arrest of two people in connection with the ‘criminal use of drones’ which affected at least 120,000 people on Wednesday and Thursday. According to the Sussex police, a man and a woman were apprehended by officers in the Gatwick area around 10 PM on Friday.
Another drone sighting causes Gatwick Airport to shut down again late afternoon around 17:10 GMT, only to reopen again after 90 minutes. A spokesperson for the airport said that the suspension of all flights in and out of Gatwick was a precaution. Military measures that had been put into place that made it possible for the airport to safely reopen.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) seeks new Drone Advisory Committee members. The FAA’s Drone Advisory Committee provides an open venue for the FAA and stakeholders to identify and recommend consensus-based resolutions for issues related to the integration of unmanned aircraft (UAS) into the National Airspace System. It seems that almost all of the current members represent commercial drone operators, UAS manufacturers, other drone industry specialists, local government and members from the world of manned aviation. Apart from two members, it is unclear who represents the large group of hobbyist drone pilots and smaller commercial drone operators.
YouTube creators, Ivan Miranda and Tom Stanton went to work and first created a DIY light stick, and a second version was then mounted on to a drone. The resulting light painted images are pretty amazing as you will see in the videos below. We have seen other creations that were light-painted in the sky with a drone before as well as other drone photography works.
Together with AUVSI, the Federal Aviation Administration organizes the FAA UAS Symposium at the Baltimore Convention Center from February 12-14, 2019. The FAA says that they are “getting down to business. We’re not waiting for what’s next, we’re creating it.” We expect to hear a lot more with regards to the planning and timeline of many of the actions announced in the FAA Reauthorization Act. Especially after the Gatwick chaos, expect that safety, security, regulations and Remote ID will be high on the agenda.
After 36 hours of drone-caused chaos, Gatwick Airport reopened this morning with a limited number of flights. According to the airport, the operator of the drone has yet to be found, but no new drone sightings have occurred since late yesterday afternoon.
As we move into the third day of drone chaos at Gatwick Airport, we learned that there have been over 50 sightings of the unmanned aircraft on Thursday and that the drone was spotted ‘within the last hour’ later in the day. The drone chaos at Gatwick started Wednesday evening and lasted all of Thursday. Now officials say that the airport will remain closed at least until Friday morning 6 am local time. The drone chaos continues and Gatwick remains closed going into Friday. Read below the latest details of the mess that has now affected more than 350,000 people according to some reports.
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Today’s drone news has been dominated by the closing of Gatwick Airport as a result of drones entering the airspace over the landing and take off areas. Many flights have been canceled, leaving thousands of travelers stranded at Gatwick Airport and at other airports as well. DJI just offered their support to the Gatwick Airport incident investigators in an official announcement. There is as of yet however no indication that DJI drones were involved. Police have described them as ‘industrial’ drones. This is not the first time that drones have caused chaos as Gatwick Airport btw. Last year we had another situation in which drones caused many flights to divert or stay in a holding pattern.
DJI, the world’s leader in civilian drones and aerial imaging technology, today revealed the Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual, a portable industrial drone equipped with powerful, side-by-side visual and thermal cameras that provide commercial pilots a reliable tool to operate better, safer and quicker in challenging environments.