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
For the second year in a row, Intel brought their drones to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. This time it was a live drone show instead of a pre-recorded one. The 420 Shooting Star drones were part of ODESZA’s act last Sunday and flew in a synchronized fashion to create ODESZA’s geometric logo in the sky in a spectacular fashion.
Good morning, here are yesterday’s headlines with news about DJI affiliate promotion contest, drones used to track monkeys in Malaysia to fight Malaria and another near miss between a passenger jet and a drone. This time the incident took place in the UK. Grab a coffee and jump in.
Right on the heels of their “Spring has Sprung” promotion, which offered 20% discounts and freebies on many popular drones such as the Mavic Air, Mavic Pro, Phantom as well as other items, DJI has now launched their second large-scale promotion. This time the promo is for DJI Affiliates, such as DroneDJ. Why is DJI having such a big Spring cleanup? Could it be that new drones are coming soon?
Drones are being used to monitor deforestation and to track malaria-carrying macaque monkeys deep in the Malaysian forests. Especially in Borneo, there has been a surge in the deadly ‘monkey malaria’, with the disease accounting for 69% of all the human malaria cases in Malaysia. With the help of drones outfitted with infrared cameras, researchers of the Monkey Bar Project are able to better track the monkeys through the forest and ultimately slow down the spreading of the disease.
According to a report from UK Airprox Board, the country’s air safety agency, the Airbus 319 carrying 160 passengers almost hit a drone after taking off from Heathrow Airport. The commercial jet passed a mere 20 feet underneath the drone at an altitude of 4,800 feet. The incident happened on January 7 and received the highest possible risk rating from the board.
Good morning, today we have for you our review of the Jackery Explorer 200, a very powerful and portable power bank. Furthermore, we have a deal on the Mavic Pro, police drones for Coachella, Kotisaari Island and more. Grab a coffee and jump in!
When I look at all the different pieces of equipment I use, I realize almost all of them need charging every single day. Normally this is not a big deal, but when I’m traveling, it is quite a challenge to keep everything fully charged. That’s where the Jackery Explorer 200 comes in. This power bank gives you all the connections to keep your drone, laptop, phone and other devices powered up, multiple times over. Jackery sent me the Explorer 200 to review and after having used it for the last couple of weeks, I really like it. This bad boy will be coming with me on any future trip I’ll be making.
In the wake of the Las Vegas massacre last year, the police are increasing security at this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival with the help of drones. This year the festival enjoys a larger footprint and is expected to receive 125,000 visitors daily. Drones will provide extra sets of eyes in the sky and will also be able to reach any area of the festival much faster than officials on the ground. In line with the FAA rules, the drones will not be flown over the crowds.
Nature photographer, Jani Ylinampa captured the beauty of Kotisaari Island during the four seasons with his drone. Until 1980, the island used to be a meeting point for the lumberjacks of Rovaniemi in Lapland, Finland. One of the buildings on the island has since been converted into a tavern and a daily ferry brings tourists to and from the island. As Kotisaari Island is only four miles from the Arctic Circle, flying a drone during the winter months proved to be a real challenge.
Good morning! Today we have the headlines you may have missed over the weekend as well as an amazing short film showing off the historic beauty of the Basque landscape. The short film was shot with the DJI Phantom 4 Pro and a Nikon D5500 camera and I’m sure took lots of hours editing. Well worth a watch!
More and more wildlife researchers and scientists are turning to drones to observe animals. Drones are in almost all cases a safer and more affordable option to observe wildlife. Ecologist and FAA certified drone pilot from Fort Myers, Church Roberts recently used his drone to study the rookery on little Lenore Island, on the Caloosahatchee River in Florida.
Two neighbors, an ecologist and an astronomer struck up a conversation in their backyard, which led to an unusual but fruitful collaboration using star-detecting tools to count endangered animals in South Africa. The scientists used drones with infrared cameras combined with computer-vision and machine-learning techniques to find, identify and count the animals.
DroneShield is bringing their anti-drone technology to NASCAR events at the Texas Motor Speedway, so if you were planning to fly your drone there to capture some awesome racing footage, you will be out of luck. Droneshield develops a number of counter drone devices to bring down rogue drones. Recently the company was hired to protect the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, Australia, and the Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. DroneShield press release:
Like anywhere else in the world, drones are becoming increasingly more popular in Switzerland. Now Swiss legal experts found that if a drone is invading your personal privacy, you are entitled to shoot it down and you will not be liable for damages.
Good morning! More photos of the mysterious new Phantom drone surfaced. Take a look and let us know what you think we are looking at here. Furthermore, we have all of yesterday’s headlines you may have missed as well as some other third party news. Grab your coffee and jump in!
Yesterday some detailed photos surfaced of what may be the new DJI Phantom 5 or Phantom 4 Pro V2.0. Today, we come across additional photos of the same drone, with one caveat, this time there are two grey aluminum Phantoms visible in the photos. Are these drone the new DJI Phantom 5 or the Phantom 4 Pro V2.0? Take a look and let us know what you think in our poll!
According to four U.S. officials, Russia has found a way to jam American unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) over Syria, seriously impacting the drone operations. It started a few weeks ago, after the suspected chemical attacks on civilians in rebel-held eastern Ghouta. First, the Russians began jamming some of the smaller drones as they were seemingly afraid the U.S. military would retaliate over the attacks.
UUV Aquabotix Ltd (ASX: UUV) (“Aquabotix”), an underwater robotics company with operations in Australia and the U.S., today released SwarmDiver™, a micro unmanned surface vehicle (USV) and unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) that operates in a swarm. Multiple SwarmDivers™ can function simultaneously as a single coordinated entity, be easily controlled via one operator on the surface, and perform dives on command to collect valuable intelligence. SwarmDivers™ can be viewed in operation here.
Police officers from five law enforcement agencies used a spike strip, a drone with a thermal camera and a K-9 unit to locate a fleeing suspect early Tuesday morning. After the spike-strip punctured the car’s tires, the suspect fled on foot. At that point, the officers from Greenfield, WI deployed a drone, and the canine officer from the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department’s K-9 unit released their dog. In the end, the dog found the suspect before the drone did.
Paul Riemens, CEO of the RAI Amsterdam convention center, has launched the ‘Amsterdam City of Drones’ initiative in parallel with this week’s Commercial UAV Expo Europe. “RAI Amsterdam aims to be more than an event organizer in this context,” says Riemens. “Our goal is to provide a platform for knowledge, contacts and innovation as we aim to make Amsterdam the drone capital of the world.”
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a specialized agency of the United Nations, has begun to lay the groundworks of what will become a low-altitude traffic management guidance for domestic unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). In September this year, the organization will host their second Drone Enable/2 Symposium to facilitate a global approach to safely integrate UAS traffic management systems into the existing manned airspace. Drone industry experts, innovators, and academia are invited to submit their proposals ahead of this year’s event in Chengdu, China.
This week at the MRO Americas, Airbus revealed their new Advanced Inspection Drone. This fully autonomous drone speeds up the visual inspection process of aircraft when they are parked inside a hangar. A laser-based obstacle detection sensor, flight planner software, and an Airbus’ aircraft inspection software analysis tool allows the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to perform the entire inspection automatically. This new drone-based process reduces the aircraft downtime drastically, and it improves the quality of the inspection itself.
Good morning! Here are yesterday’s headlines as well as a selection of news items from other outlets. There is more happening in the drone industry than we can possibly cover so this is our attempt to bring you the most important news items every day of the week. In case you missed yesterday’s new about the proposed French drone laws, a close call between a drone and an NZ Airforce Helicopter and the Grand Prize of $1 million for Fotokite, well here is your chance to catch up. Grab your coffee and jump in!
Just now new photos surfaced of what seems to be the upcoming DJI Phantom 5. This time the photos come from two different Chinese sources. One of them is our old friend @OsitaLV, who seems to be done playing games and is getting back to business (thank you). The other one is a new source and possibly one of DJI beta-testers. In the photos, we see the new aluminum-colored Phantom, possibly a prototype, in action, two detailed shots of the interchangeable lens, camera and gimbal combination, the DJI Phantom 5 in a backpack (Fly More Combo?), a DJI Mavic Pro and the Phantom 5 controller. We have seen the same equipment in a previous tweet as well.