Haye Kesteloo

As we go into the winter here in New York, summer is just getting started in Perth, Australia. 7 News Perth reports that this year the lifeguards will have a new member on their team, a drone. In Surf Life Saving colors these drones will help the lifeguards patrol the beach, looking for swimmers in need and to spot any sharks nearby. Both swimmers and sharks are very hard to spot from the beach, but from a drone’s point of view, they are clearly visible in the ocean water.

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Very early in November, DJI published a video on YouTube called: “DJI – Happy Holidays From Spark“. Most of the viewers on YouTube seemed to appreciate the Season’s Greetings from DJI, although some said it may have been a little early. One commenter noticed that around the 0:06 mark the video clip showed the camera and gimbal on the Spark moving from left to right (yaw), which is sort of interesting because the camera on the Spark does not, in fact, move sideways at all. It is a 2-axis mechanical gimbal that only allows for pitch and roll movements. All other camera movements involve de drone moving as a whole. This is where the Spark differs from, for instance, the Phantom 4 Pro and Mavic Pro drones, that do feature 3-axis gimbals.

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AZ Central reported that a drone attempting to deliver phones and drugs to inmates in the Buckeye prison in Arizona crashed in a yard only accessible to corrections officers. The Arizona Department of Corrections said on Thursday, that they are investigating the incident to determine who was behind the attempted contraband delivery by drone. According to corrections spokesman Andrew Wilder, this is the first known drone incident at an Arizona state prison. We have seen similarly attempted drone deliveries in Michigan, Louisiana, and Texas but also abroad in Australia, and Great Britain.

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Photographer Andy Yeung shows off the urban sprawl of the city of Hong Kong. Initially, Yeung used a regular DSLR camera to capture this multicultural and bustling city but in 2015 he switched to drone cameras from DJI, the Phantom series to be precise. On his website, he said: “Two years ago, I discovered a new passion for aerial photography. I put together several aerial series including Urban Jungle, which attracted international attention. My recent 360-degree photos went viral on Facebook and been shared thousands of times”.

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DJI just revealed their promotions for Black Friday and they have some pretty good offers, including $100 off the DJI Spark, $100 off the DJI Mavic Pro, Free Battery with Phantom 4 Advanced & Pro, $50 off DJI Goggles, $100 off Osmo Mobile & $90 off Osmo+ and chest mount. DJI’s Black Friday promotion will begin at 12:00 am EST Nov. 23 and ends at 2:59 am EST Nov. 28. This promotion is available on store.dji.com, at DJI Authorized Dealers and in all DJI Flagship Stores.

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This is perfect timing on DJI’s part as I was about to buy either this super small case from PolarPro or the Doubi carrying case for my DJI Spark. Those plans have been canceled as I just placed an order for this new travel charger from DJI, the Spark Portable Charging Station. It is a little bulkier and heavier, but it has a built-in battery that allows you to charge up to one DJI Spark and two additional batteries. It is priced at $89 and available as of today.

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Finally, Iceland has caught up with the rest of the world when it comes to herding sheep. Instead of using old-fashioned dogs, most modern farmers have moved on to drones or so it seems. Ólafur Ólafsson, a farmer in Iceland has caught up to this trend and has been experimenting with the use of a drone to herd his sheep in the cold and snowy highlands of Iceland. Ólafsson already confirmed to Vísir that the drone saves him a lot of work, although he wishes it could bark.

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Right before the start of the Holiday season, DJI introduces an Alpine White Limited Edition Mavic Pro Combo, exclusively available at Apple.com and Apple Stores in most countries or at the DJI store starting November 16th. The Mavic Pro Alpine White will be offered as a Holiday Combo which includes a remote controller, two extra Intelligent Flight Batteries, two additional pairs of propellers and an aircraft sleeve, at a US retail price of $1,049. This is $128 less than a regular Mavic Pro + additional batteries! The Mavic already was our favorite drone, but this deal may be too good to resist.

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Honduras coach Jorge Luis Pinto claims that the Australian team is using drone tactics to spy on the Honduran team during their practice session on Wednesday ahead of crucial World Cup qualifier. Both teams are trying to secure their spot in the World Cup that will take place in Russia next summer.

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The DJI Spark was used to create this dramatic video footage of the Himalayas in the Langtang Valley and Kyanjin Gompa Valley of Nepal. The scenes are indeed beautiful but, as we know the Spark’s video footage (1080p) is of limited quality and it shows. The main culprit is the resolution. It is simply too low to do the scenery any justice. Both the Mavic Pro or Phantom 4 Pro would have been able to create breathtaking 4K video footage instead and achieve that cinematic look they were after.

However, it is not the quality of the video footage that impresses me. No, it is the fact that the small Spark still flies so well at this altitude of 13,000 feet above sea level. The Nepal360 crew even reported high winds and judging by the video, it seems that the smallest DJI drone handled really well.

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Another close call. This time in the southern hemisphere. On its final approach, a Boeing 737-800 passenger jet collides with a drone over the Tierra Santa religious theme park in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Aerolineas Argentinas jet was flying from Trelew, northeastern Patagonia and was struck by the drone on the final approach to the Buenos Aires Jorge Newbery Airport, La Capital reports. The incident happened right over the theme park.

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A candy-carrying drone fell out of the sky in Ogaki, Gifu Prefecture, Japan last Saturday, injuring six people, including children. The unmanned aerial vehicle was distributing candy over a crowd at an event, when it suddenly crashed to the ground, as reported by The Japan Times.

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We all know DJI from their unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones. Now, we have learned that maybe DJI will not restrict itself to the only the air but may launch something for our terra firma, i.e. the ground. We do not know exactly what DJI has in store for us, but late last year on December 30th, DJI started a new company at the same address as their European Headoffices in The Netherlands, called DJI Terra B.V.

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Today DJI released new Inspire 2 firmware for both the drone and the controller. Some of the new features include: support for the Zenmuse X7 gimbal and camera, updates CineCore 2.1, new EI mode in Camera Setting and a number of other bug fixes.

So far, the initial reactions on social media vary from: “Who’s going to try first? ” to “No longer iso-lock at D-LOG ” . Other people wonder, “how much speed and range they reduced again ” and when DJI will make the Point of Interest (Orbit) feature available for the Inspire series. 

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Chances are you have seen this video: “Drone used to catch cheating wife” as it has been watched nearly 14 million times on YouTube. The video shows John’s wife of 18 years, Donna leaving home to go to work. However, she doesn’t go to her office, instead, she meets and kisses some other guy in an SUV at the CVS parking lot. John, a professional photographer from Honesdale, Pa., suspected his wife was up to something and decided to follow her with his drone. He captured the whole episode on video and later on shared it on YouTube, where it became a viral sensation.
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Hurriyet Daily News reported that Turkish security forces had seized a drone with a handmade explosive attached to it. The bomb rigged drone appears to be a DJI Mavic Pro and supposedly is made by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in the eastern province of Ağrı.

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In a few short years, Nazaré has grown from a sleepy little coastal town in Portugal that nobody had ever heard off to the undisputed big wave surf location. Every winter, storms on the Atlantic ocean bring massive swell to the Nazaré. The canyon underwater and the way the ocean floor is shaped, create a very unique wave pattern, that peaks higher than pretty much anywhere else on this planet. As surfers flock to this Portuguese town, so do the filmmakers with their drones to capture the amazing action. One of them was Cameron Calistro who flew his drone low to better show the size of these massive waves.
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On Friday, a Myanmar court jailed a Singaporean and Malaysian journalist together with their interpreter and driver for 2 months over drone use in Myanmar.

Cameraman Lau Hon Meng from Singapore and reporter Mok Choy Lin from Malaysia were on assignment for Turkey’s state broadcaster and were detained together with their Myanmar interpreter, Aung Naing Soe, and driver, Hla Tin on October 27th for attempting to fly a drone near the parliament in the capital, Naypyidaw. They had been working on a documentary for TRT World, an English-language subsidiary of the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation.

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Non-commercial or hobbyist drone pilots would be required to register their drones (again) in a government registration system as part of a defense policy bill agreed to by House and Senate negotiators. This measure would reinforce the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) ability to regulate the booming world of consumers drones and is part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2018, a bipartisan compromise that will likely be passed by both chambers.

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This Greek guy on YouTube has been showcasing both his own ignorance of any Greek flight safety measures and regulations as well as the impressive flying ability of the DJI Mavic Pro and Spark drones. In his latest video, he claims to set an altitude record of 8,200 feet with his DJI Mavic Pro drone, right next to the Milos Island National Airport(!).

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This week AT&T, deployed its helicopter Flying COW (Cell on Wings) for the first time ever. In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, 48% of the cell sites in Puerto Rico is still out of service. Cellular company AT&T launched their Flying COW on Tuesday in an effort to re-establish connectivity throughout the area. This is the first time a drone equipped with cellular technology has been used successfully to provide data, voice, and text services to customers after a disaster.

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