Haye Kesteloo

According to a post from Rick G. on Facebook, his DJI Inspire 2 was shot out of the air by an angry neighbor in Ohio last night. The drone crashed down to earth from about 168 feet high. The aircraft, as you can see in the photo was heavily damaged as a result. The pilot has a pretty good idea who had shot down the drone. He went to the house and finally got his Inspire 2 back after the neighbor first denied shooting it down. The drone pilot then turned to Facebook for advice.

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It happened before when we wrote about these leaked photos earlier this year. DJI reached out to us and told us that these two silver colored Phantoms were not prototypes of the new Phantom 5, but a one-off for a commercial customer. Now after Billy wrote about these new photos of seemingly the same two drones, DJI contacted us again to reaffirm that these are not, in fact, Phantom 5 prototypes.

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Earlier this year Skydio stunned the drone industry with the introduction of the R1. The first consumer drone that flies fully autonomously. Today, Skydio announces a new drone developer program, new cinematic skills and a lower price ($1,999) for their self-flying drone. The R1 can now be programmed like any robot to perform a series of tasks.

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Good morning, here are the headlines you may have missed. I am at InterDrone this week so expect more news and insights coming from that event, starting with Dan Elwell Grand Opening keynote address. Furthermore, we have tips from Billy to get cinematic drone footage with the DJI Mavic 2 Zoom as well as Parrot’s introduction of the ANAFI Work drone. Enjoy!

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This morning InterDrone started with the Grand Opening keynote address from Dan Elwell, the Acting Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). During his speech, Elwell reiterated that “the FAA is open for business.” InterDrone will run until Friday and is taking place at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

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Right at the start of the InterDrone show in Las Vegas, Parrot introduces two new drones; the ANFI Work and the senseFly eBee X. Let’s take a look at the ANAFI Work first. As the name implies, the drone is geared towards the commercial drone market. The drone features 4K HDR video and a 21 MP camera to take high-resolution images.  It features a new gimbal design with 2 mechanical axes and 1 digital axis for stabilized video footage. One of the features that set the ANAFI apart is the 90 degrees upward tilting camera, which can be very helpful for inspections of buildings and bridges.

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Good morning, here we are with yesterday’s headlines. First, we have some new photos of the two silver Phantom drones that we have seen before. The ones with the interchangeable lenses. DJI claims that these are one-off for a commercial customer. Many of our readers say that is BS and that these photos may indeed show the new Phantom 5. As you can see in the new photos, the drone itself looks very much like the Phantom 4 series. Maybe these are just test camera/gimbals for the upcoming Phantom 5 that are being tested on the Phantom 4 body. What do you think? Furthermore, I am at InterDrone the next couple of days and will try to keep you up-to-date with the latest news and insights from the commercial drone industry. Enjoy!

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InterDrone is about to get started in Las Vegas. Tomorrow morning at 9:45 am PST the Grand Opening keynotes will start. First, we have Dan Elwell, who is the Acting Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Followed by Michael Chasen, the CEO of PrecisionHawk. InterDrone runs from Wednesday 9/4 until Friday 9/7 and DroneDJ is present to bring you the news and industry insights from the event, that markets itself as the largest commercial drone event in North America.

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Little Ripper’s Lifesaver drone can spot sharks with 90% accuracy. It distinguishes them from 16 other types of marine life, such as dolphins. This makes the drone when outfitted with the SharkSpotter artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm superior to the human eye.

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The FAA celebrated their first four successful drone test as part of the UAS Integration Pilot Program (UAS IPP). In Raleigh, NC, WakeMed Health and Hospitals in partnership with Matternet used drones to deliver medical supplies to remote rural locations. Three other drone trials took place in Virginia, Kansas, and Oklahoma.

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Good morning, I hope you have had a great Labor Day Weekend? Now it’s back to work again. It’s only a four-day workweek so things could be worse, right? Here are the headlines from Monday with two videos. One from Peter McKinnon and one from DJI. And we have a firmware update for the Mavic Pro to make the DJI Goggles work with the DJI Mavic 2 drones. Check it out!

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Peter McKinnon just released his first impressions video on YouTube. As always the video is very well put together and highly enjoyable to watch. He loves the new DJI Mavic 2 Pro so much that he is considering selling all his other drones as this new one basically replaces them all. Of course, the Mavic Air is a smaller package that is easier to bring along. And, the Phantom 4 Pro arguably still has better image quality and delivers 4K video at 60fps. But, if you have to pick one drone that does it all. Well, you really cannot go wrong with the DJI Mavic 2 Pro.

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I don’t know who is making these videos for DJI (actually, I do), but what a job these guys and girls have! Traveling all over the world to shoot the most amazing aerial footage with the latest DJI drones. This time the video production team went to Austria to show off what the Mavic 2 can do with its new features such as ActiveTrack 2.0. The subjects of the video are the beautiful, classic Porsche 550 Spyder and the Porsche prototype, the Mission-E. The latter will be called the Porsche Taycan (you can read more about that on our sister site Electrek.co). DJI latest in the Mavic series of drones captures both cars as they race up and down the Großglockner mountain pass. Definitely worth watching!

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DJI just released new firmware for the Mavic Pro. This is version v01.04.0500. The previous firmware update was early in July. On the DJI Forums, people have reported that this firmware does not change anything to the drone or the controller, but is merely for the DJI Goggles. Since the Goggles are updated through the Mavic Pro, you will have to do this in order to make the DJI Goggles compatible with the Mavic 2 Zoom and Pro drones.

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Good morning, here are the headlines you may have missed over the last few days. Starting with the Labor Day Weekend special on the SplashDrone. Second, we have a slew of articles on the DJI Mavic 2 with a special panning feature, End of Life document from DJI and more. Lastly, we have a beautiful 4K drone video from Syracuse, Sicily that is very much worth watching. Really nice aerial footage that is very nicely edited. So, grab your coffee and jump in!

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Recently the Brazilian government released drone footage of an indigenous and isolated tribe. The people belonging to the tribe live deep in the Amazon rainforest, close to the border with Peru. They are believed to have never made contact with the outside world. At least eleven such tribes exist.

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DJI announces the End of Life for the Phantom 4 Pro/Pro+, Phantom 3 SE, Osmo, Osmo+, Osmo Mobile, Mavic Pro and Mavic Pro Platinum in a memo to retailers. The announcement comes right after the introduction of the Mavic 2 Zoom and Pro drones last week. Especially the inclusion of the Phantom 4 Pro/Pro+ is interesting as it may indicate that its successor, the Phantom 5 may not be far away.

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Back in March, we already saw other work from this very talented photographer, Reuben Wu. Reuben uses drones to create artworks in the sky. The first time we saw Reuben Wu’s work here on DroneDJ, he used a drone to create halos over rock formations. This time he uses them to create illuminated or glowing symbols in the sky. The drone is outfitted with a lighting rig using Lume Cubes to draw symbols such as a plus sign, a square and a triangle from narrow straight lines. The artwork is created right above the water creating stunning abstract images.

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Just after Billy had posted this article on the teardown of a Mavic 2 Pro, we now get to see how you can quite easily swap the camera and gimbal on your new DJI drone. In this video, TronicsFix shows us how to remove a cover, some screws and a ribbon wire to quite easily remove the entire camera/gimbal setup. I’m not sure this is something you would do on the fly, but it probably beats having to send your drone to DJI and have them do it for you.

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A lot of people have been wondering how you mount Neutral Density or ND filters on the DJI Mavic 2 Pro with its 1-inch sensor as the lens shape is almost square-like. This video on YouTube shows you how it’s done. You carefully hold onto the camera and turn the protective cover that is in front of the lens counter-clockwise and it will come off. Then you take the ND filter of your choice and gently put it on the camera and turn it clockwise and voila. You are all set to go out and get that smooth cinematic footage with shallow depth-of-field.

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