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
Earlier this week, official DJI retailer, Heliguy in partnership with DJI, organized the Emergency Services Roadshow. During this event in the UK, the Chinese drone maker provided an update to the battery problem that affects some of the DJI Matrice 200 and Inspire 2 drones. The batteries that are impacted are the TB50 and the TB55 series, as we reported before.
Check Point Researchers and DJI shared information about a vulnerability that might have allowed third parties access to DJI users’ data and drone images through the DJI Forum. If the vulnerability were to be exploited, it would have allowed a third party to access to a user’s account, including information such as photos, video footage, flight paths, GPS data, and other information without the user ever realizing his account was hacked. DJI was first notified about this in March of 2018. It has since been patched.
Salomon TV uploaded this really cool video of 2018 Olympic Bronze Medalist skier racer, Victor Muffat-Jeandet, racing against 2x World Drone Racing Champion, Jordan Temkin, in a dual GS race to see who is the fastest down the mountain. Who will win?
DJI just uploaded another video to YouTube that shows you the action from the FIA World Rally Championship up close. The Rally RACC Catalunya event took place in Spain and DJI was there with an Inspire 2 and Zenmuse X5s camera to capture all the action. I’m not sure if they used more than one drone, but they sure were not afraid of using the aircraft and pushing it to the limit. They flew the Inspire 2 very close to the cars, risking being hit by gravel that was kicked out from underneath the car. And then there were street signs, lamp posts, trees, power lines and people to watch out for. All in all spectacular footage and maybe even more spectacular flying and video capturing skills.
Good morning, a few days ago, I got an email from Philippe. Philippe is a French doctor and he picked up drone flying about five years ago as a hobby. Together with his wife, Ghislaine who btw is an avid photographer, he went to Burning Man to document the festival. Philippe, who from now on I will call ‘Le Docteur du Drone‘ was allowed to fly his DJI Phantom 4 Pro and capture video at night. His 2017 of Burning Man was already quite spectacular but the 2018 video you see below is even better. Forget the news for a second. Grab your coffee and watch this video first.
Then, you can come back and check out the headlines you may have missed, that cover things like DJI Airworks, the entire keynote on video, DJI & Peugeot Drone Film Festival, Delta crew spots drone and more…
This video shows the entire DJI Keynote from the first day of DJI AirWorks. My seating position was not ideal, but if you want to hear and/or see what DJI Had to say about things, like the Mavic 2 Enterprise, DJI Flight Simulator, DJI Terra and the various partnerships with companies like American Airlines, Southern Company, Microsoft, Skycatch, Kespry, Union Pacific and AutoModality, you will find it here. The video is over two and a half hours long, but I have included timestamps so that you can skip to the important sections. Enjoy!
DJI, Peugeot, and the Diaoyutai Mansion Frankfurt partner to bring you the Drone Film Festival for 2018 and 2019. There are four categories in which you can submit your video: Sports, Landscape, Story Telling and Experimental. The festival is in its third year now. Last year it had over 400 films submitted. The twelve finalists will be invited to Frankfurt in Spring 2019 in the Diaoyutai Mansion Frankfurt for the grand finale. Another drone film festival that might interest you is the NYC Drone Film Festival.
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The crew from a Delta flight reported seeing a drone near Boston Logan International Airport. According to the Boston Globe, the crew spotted the drone about 15 miles northeast of the airport late Wednesday morning, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The Delta flight was on its way from Philadelphia and proceeded to land safely at Logan Airport. Officials said that the crew did not have to take any “evasive action” because of the drone. The drone appeared to be flying much higher than the 400 feet altitude limitation set by the FAA.
Late last night, an FCC filing appeared for the DJI Osmo Pocket Wireless Module. As the FCC website has been down the entire morning we currently do not have a lot of information on this new DJI device. Of course, many people are speculating that it may have something to do with the black device we see in the bottom left corner of this image. Could it be that DJI is working on an improved, smaller version of the Osmo? It sure seems like it.
Most of you will probably have seen the viral bear video that has been circulating on social media this week. National Geographic just posted an article that lets experts weigh in on the matter. Many scientists have expressed concerns about the way the viral bear video was shot. The drone footage was taken by Dmitry Kedrov on the coast of Russia’s Sea of Okhotsk last summer and shows a brown bear and her cub climbing a slippery snowy slope. Luckily it all ends well but not after the mother bear seemingly swats at the drone halfway through the video.
Good morning, today’s drone video is from last summer and shows a melting iceberg floating off the coast of Goose Cove in Newfoundland. As far as the news goes, we have a number of articles for you, starting with our Yuneec Breeze Giveaway that ends tomorrow. Check that one out for sure if you haven’t done so already. Then we have the latest DJI video for you. A Parrot Bluegrass Fields. Charging your drone with lasers and diamonds. Spark, the best drone below $500. Fleets of drones finding lost hikers and lots more. Grab your coffee and jump right in!
DJI posted a video on YouTube that shows more footage of the trip to Greenland with the DJI video team, Jimmy Chin and Kit DesLauriers. We had already seen some of this footage during the launch of the DJI Mavic 2 Zoom and Pro drones. The mysterious new remote controller that we have seen before, show up in this video as well (2:21). Initially, I thought this might have been the controller for the DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise but since that launch happened last week and no new controller was shown, I am starting to wonder, will this be the controller for the highly anticipated DJI Phantom 5? Hmmm, now there’s a thought…
Parrot, the leading European drone group, today announces Parrot Bluegrass Fields, an end-to-end agriculture drone solution, which provides farmers, agronomists and researchers with the insights they need to boost the quality of their crops and maximize yields. Part of the Parrot Business Solutions portfolio, Parrot Bluegrass Fields brings together today’s popular Parrot Bluegrass drone with the all-new ParrotFields mobile mapping app and Pix4Dfields desktop and cloud-based drone mapping software.
Sounds crazy? That’s what I thought too, but apparently, it’s possible. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, has just released information about a spin-off start-up, LakeDiamond from their incubator which has developed lab-grown diamonds that can be used to recharge drones in flight.
Australian startup, Emesent raises $2.5M to map mines with autonomous drones. Similar to these search and rescue drones, the drones from Emesent work in an environment where there is no GPS available. Instead, they use LIDAR systems to map their surroundings.
Finding lost hikers in a forest can be very difficult as the thick canopy prevents helicopters and manned aircraft from getting a glimpse of what is down below. Using drones may be difficult as well as flying in between the trees, GPS signals may be very difficult to pick up. This is where autonomous fleets of drones outfitted with LIDAR systems may come to the rescue of lost hikers, as presented by MIT researchers at the International Symposium on Experimental Robotics conference.
Good morning, we’re back on to our normal schedule. Last week was a very busy week with DJI AirWorks. We will still be posting content related to that event today and tomorrow so stay tuned. Here are the headlines you may have missed from last week with a lot of AirWorks related news. Our video for today is from the hands of DroneDJ contributor, Gab707 who shows that FPV racing drones can also be very effective tools to capture mind-blowing aerial footage. So, grab your coffee and jump right into this FPV racing drone video!
The Commercial UAV Policy Panel (The new drone policy era ahead – How FAA Reauthorization will impact your business) was one of the most informing panels, I attended during DJI’s Airworks 2018. It provided an update and perspective of what commercial drone operators can expect now that the FAA Reauthorization Act has been signed into law. The panel consisted of some heavyweights from the drone industry, including three lawyers and a few pilots. All of them, experts on the subject matter.
I tried to capture the entire session on camera but unfortunately missed a little bit at the beginning and towards the end due to battery switching, full memory cards, etc. Either way, if you are a commercial drone operator and want to find out what the latest is, I highly recommend watching the video below.
This week, during the DJI AirWorks convention, Propeller Aero, a cloud-based drone analytics company, announced their partnership with the world’s largest drone maker, DJI to leverage the Phantom 4 RTK and launch their Propeller PPK solution.
This week during AirWorks 2018, Kespry announced that the company is partnering with DJI and will add the DJI Mavic 2 Pro to their aircraft line-up. Kespry’s drones are currently used to autonomously survey open-pit mines and carry out roof inspections. The addition of the Mavic 2 Pro will provide Kespry’s customers with a small, foldable and cost-effective drone.
West Midlands Police in the UK has grounded their DJI Matrice 200 drone after the aircraft had suffered an unexpected power failure causing the drone to fall from the sky. DJI has now come out with a statement urging people to fly with caution when using TB50 and TB55 batteries that are found in the Matrice 200 and Inspire 2 drones, while the company is working on a firmware update.
Here we continue with Part II of the coverage of the DJI AirWorks event in Dallas, TX. For Part I click here. The second half of DJI’s keynote started with Mario Rebello, DJI’s Vice President and Country Manager of North America. Let’s jump right in.
This year’s AirWorks event from DJI started with a ton of news and partnership announcements. It is obvious that the drone maker means business when it comes to the Enterprise market. DJI started with the introduction of the Mavic 2 Enterprise yesterday, but today they followed that product release up with a lot more. Let’s dive in.
DJI’s mystery controller for the Mavic 2 makes another appearance. This time it is right in front of us on the official DJI website. If you look closely at this picture on the page for the Mavic 2 Enterprise that was launched yesterday, you will see a controller that does not resemble the normal controller that works with your smartphone.