by stardenburden on 10/10/22, 12:38 PM with 188 comments
by magic_hamster on 10/10/22, 1:42 PM
DJI's application (Mimo) has been banned from the Android Play Store for some time, with no explanation given by DJI. They offer an APK to side load, which is completely unsupervised, and requires access to your phone's accurate location and other invasive permissions no matter which of their products you are using.
This is an important detail. Your phone location might be helpful when using drones (though GPS should be on the drone, not your phone) but there is absolutely no reason to use it for something like a phone stabilizer, which it absolutely requires and will not let you continue unless you turn it on.
I did not reverse engineer their application but I will be surprised if there isn't a copious amount of data being sent to the back office.
You might not care as an individual, but then maybe ten years from now you will visit China, and they might know about you more than you're comfortable sharing.
As a side note, Aljazeera is comically ridiculous: https://imgur.com/a/HnbLy4O
by mschuster91 on 10/10/22, 1:45 PM
The #2 used to be GoPro with its Karma drone which is one hell of a beast of a drone, but they exited the market when it became clear that neither the US nor EU had any idea what they were doing regarding drone regulations (to this day the EU hasn't managed to publish the licenseable Standard Scenarios, there is exactly one drone model on the market that is classified under the new EU schema that will become mandatory Q1/23, obtaining permissions by individual restricted zones such as fire departments is a hot mess because no one there knows what to do, countries like Croatia theoretically ban camera drones without a completely intransparent special permit process...).
Now, in the EU you're pretty much stuck with DJI if you want to fly in residential areas, hobby built drones and cheap China-made knockoffs that fall under the toy directive. For stuff such as gimbals, there are again virtually only DJI's Ronin series and cheap China-made knockoffs.
Seriously the EU and US need to step up and establish or at least fund companies that can compete with DJI and other sanctioned entities. It's ridiculous that people have to choose between funding CCP associated organizations or cheap knockoffs that are riddled with quality issues, software bugs and license issues.
by 1-6 on 10/10/22, 3:51 PM
by z9znz on 10/10/22, 1:54 PM
by sbf501 on 10/10/22, 7:58 PM
(*PX4 on Hawk and Cube FCs is the best experience I've had.)
by fasteddie31003 on 10/10/22, 1:57 PM
by qwezxcrty on 10/10/22, 5:50 PM
Honest question: is there any competent alternative to DJI drones? Better to be more hackable. DIY a drone with open source flight control boards is not hard (for me), but optimizing for battery life and having a good video downlink seems hard.
by emehex on 10/10/22, 2:16 PM
by stephenitis on 10/10/22, 1:55 PM
anyone know if DJI drone use prolific within China? How does China regulate their own drones?
by adultSwim on 10/10/22, 5:06 PM
by RadixDLT on 10/10/22, 2:26 PM
by dijonman2 on 10/10/22, 4:49 PM
With that said - yes, my drone is registered.
by coffeeblack on 10/10/22, 1:23 PM
by alexfromapex on 10/10/22, 4:48 PM
by AdrianB1 on 10/10/22, 4:56 PM
by simonebrunozzi on 10/10/22, 5:49 PM
by AnonMO on 10/10/22, 5:25 PM
by endisneigh on 10/10/22, 4:52 PM