16 ms·

DJI FPV

324 points by qkhhly 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
Flying in VR is not good for motion sickness.
- hmate9 6y ago
  Not sure why downvoted. But it’s true, it’s not for everyone. I love my oculus but I can only play games in which I am stationary (my character doesn’t move unless I move in the real world) It’s a shame because this looks fantastic but I probably won’t be able to use it without getting motion sickness almost immediately.
  - InvertedRhodium 6y ago
    I think this would suit itself to a 'cockpit' style overlay - I play a lot of Elite Dangerous in VR and know others that do too. It seems almost a perfect use-case for VR IMO.
  - Guillaume86 6y ago
    It's not VR (no stereo image) it's just an easy portable way to have a big screen.
- SimpleMinds 6y ago
  Anectodal data point, if that helps, tested with 3 people I own Quest and DJI FPV system (not the drone from the link, but custom built with DJI FPV googles) - I can get dizzy in VR, but I won't in FPV unless I do a lot of crazy movement like spinning for a couple of seconds. Even when crashing which involves a lot of spin, it's fine - If I watch FPV while someone else is flying, I feel dizzy. It's not as fast as in VR, but still can happen Friends who tried had the same feeling. There's something in the connection between visual movement and your control of that movement via stick that helps alleviate dizzines. Hope that helps in case you were wondering!
- Guillaume86 6y ago
  It's not VR it's just like a normal screen strapped to your face (it's a simple image not stereo like VR does).
- StavrosK 6y ago
  As others have said, this is definitely not VR, it's like looking at a big screen strapped to your face. People in our group that have lots of trouble with VR have no problem with FPV.
Dave_Rosenthal 6y ago
There has been a huge divide in the drone world between high performance first person view (FPV) drones capable of acrobatics and the "tripod in the sky" type drones that companies like DJI have popularized. The former has been very DIY and the latter have attracted companies to build integrated solutions. This new drone from DJI brings an truly staggering amount of innovation and integration to the FPV space: - Low res analog video -> high res digital video - Modest transmission range -> long range - Integrated simulation to learn to fly - "Bail out" button that almost instantly nulls drone movement and puts it in a stationary hover - ~5 minutes fly time -> ~20 minutes fly time - Adjustable camera tilt on the fly to maintain level horizon at a variety of drone speeds (drone tilts more with speed) Extremely impressive first offering in this category.
- LukaD 6y ago
  > - Low res analog video -> high res digital video > - Modest transmission range -> long range Those are not really new. DJI has been selling their standalone digital FPV system for a while now. And there are lot's of different long range radio systems available. But I agree that this is impressive. I wonder if Betaflight, etc. will also implement some kind of bail out feature.
  - bri3d 6y ago
    Betaflight already has very rudimentary RTH / "GPS Rescue" functionality, obviously without ground/forward sensors it's not as good, but it does work pretty well for "oh no something has gone wrong" in the form of video or control link loss.
- Naomarik 6y ago
  DJI digital video has been out for quite awhile now for hobbyists to include in their custom builds. Transmission range is not a valid point because a clean analog video signal and Crossfire outpaces DJI enormously. The 20 min flight time is a lie, Joshua Bardwell measured 10 minutes hovering. That's extremely easy to surpass on typical light weight 5 inch freestyle drone with a 1300mah battery that cost a fifth of the price of the DJI ones. It is an impressive drone, but for experienced FPV pilots it's very limiting.
erulabs 6y ago
Is this the first commercially available robotic projection device? I’ve been waiting patiently for VR+robotic applications - this project but controlling some Boston Dynamics is a terrifying military, or an amazing football team depending on how you look at it. Exciting!
hungryhobo 6y ago
Awesome controls, although a little disappointed in the image quality. Hoping for a v2 of this
- prawn 6y ago
  What of the image quality disappoints you? The example footage looked great to me, and 4k@60fps is the main thing missing from Mavic 2 that I wish it had.
klausjensen 6y ago
Holy sh*t that is amazing. I can't justify spending 1300EUR on it, unfortunately... :( I really like DJI and how innovative they have been in making awesome consumer products that just work and are super easy to use. I have owned a few.
- jonathannat 6y ago
  Interesting, so none of this bothers you DJI had been supplying drone technology to Chinese security forces in Xinjiang https://www.pcmag.com/news/us-blacklists-drone-maker-dji-over-alleged-human-rights-abuses https://www.pcmag.com/news/us-blacklists-drone-maker-dji-ove... Uighur camp detainees allege systematic rape https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071 Gang raped, shackled and broken students: Inside China’s ‘horrific’ Uighur detention camps https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-uighur-detention-camps-eyewitness-b1804804.html?utm_source=reddit.com https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-uighur-d...
  - Yeri 6y ago
    That's horrible but not unique to DJI. Western companies have (knowingly, or not) taken advantage of the slavery as well [https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53481253 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53481253]. But the same could be said of big western tech (Amazon, Microsoft, etc) companies providing tech to western armies.
- meheleventyone 6y ago
  Don't worry I think there'll be a big second hand market for these after people get cocky and switch flight modes and stack it into the ground. :)
matsemann 6y ago
The motion controller reminds me of a project I made many years ago, where head tilting of an oculus rift would control the cameras on your drone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654141 Also cool that they have been embracing virtual practicing it seems. The original DJI controllers were impossible to pair with simulators, so I had to hack it: https://github.com/Matsemann/mDjiController/ https://github.com/Matsemann/mDjiController/ I sold (or basically gave away) all my home-made drone setup a year or so ago, after it being in a box for 3+ years. It was a hassle to set up, and very hard to fly and get good pictures and actually be in control (original DJI Phantom included). Cool tech and fun to hack on, but not very good UX heh. However I would still very much like to fly and film more, but then with some out-of-the-box-ready solutions. Modern ones seem to have obstacle avoidance, better hovering, tracking or point-to-point etc, so I can actually focus on the (for me, now) fun parts of filming the sports action. What are some good drones for that use-case? DJI alone has a big lineup now, hard to know which one is more fitting. And are there other contenders selling ready to use stuff? Thought GoPro had one but seems like they've stopped.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Head trackers are cool, but DJI stuff is a step in the wrong direction there. Right now everything is open, you can write a small Arduino script to track your head with an accelerometer, send the channels through your radio to the drone, and add two servos there that move according to your head motions. With DJI, all of this is closed. I'd be surprised if you can connect/have access to any of these things.
  - wpearse 6y ago
    DJI has a pretty comprehensive SDK, I’m pretty sure that they’ve published the tools you need to do this.
  - 05 6y ago
    Well, nobody is stopping the community from making their own open source/open hardware OpenTX based motion flight controller, do they? Just like Naza32 didn’t prevent people from developing Cleanflight/Betaflight
dmitrygr 6y ago
50Mbit, 28ms latency wireless link at 12km distance, and on a battery budget, eh? I'd love to hear more, I love science fiction.
- comboy 6y ago
  Ocusync has been out for some time now and it already sounds like magic. I think when compared to wifi or some radio bridges it usually operates in much less congested environment. Nonetheless, if you think about frequencies used, energy going down with r^2 and bandwidth they are doing, it's an amazing feat even in ideal conditions. And here's it's a moving object, on battery, with four electromagnets around it.
  - joezydeco 6y ago
    My son has a Mini2, the transmission range on this is pretty amazing. We were watching a neighbor's house over the holiday, which meant mostly checking for delivery boxes on their porch and putting them inside. We could drive the Mini2 out the window of our house and 2 blocks away to check the porch without getting out of our seats. And this is a suburban area full of houses, trees, and a shit ton of interference at the wifi/4G/LTE ranges. The video never lost a frame.
    - 0_____0 6y ago
      Boasting about flying beyond line of sight without a spotter in a cluttered residential neighborhood isn't going to score you many points among the drone enthusiast crowd.
      - joezydeco 6y ago
        Heh, true. Thanks.
        0_____0 6y ago
        No worries. If there's just one thing I want to get across though, it's that as drone operators, we are collectively responsible for how the broader community views us and drones. Random drones floating through neighborhoods is sketchy from a safety standpoint but also it tends to upset people, who often think that any drone they see is spying on them. Just a consideration. Personally I like to fly around abandoned buildings and decrepit structures. Lots of interesting flying to be done and cool vids to be taken, and there's nobody around to complain :)
PostThisTooFast 6y ago
Disappointing that there’s no HDMI input on the goggles for general use. Seems dumb.
sonium 6y ago
Why is the flight time at 40km/h roughly 1.4 times hovering time? One would expect drag reduces the efficiency...
- lukastr0 6y ago
  It's the same thing with helicopters, they need more power to hover than to fly forwards. It's called translational lift. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translational_lift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translational_lift
baby 6y ago
That’s impressive. I’m not sure I understand how you can still communicate and see the video feed even when the drone is far away.
- matthew-wegner 6y ago
  Long-range FPV builds can go out for miles--especially if you build specifically for that, and fly in areas with low radio noise like mountain ranges: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqDcd7cDv4Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqDcd7cDv4Y
wepple 6y ago
I’d love for someone to build an overIP bridge for this, so I can sit on the couch at home and fly through the Grand Canyon. I’d happily pay a reasonable sum for it. I wonder if it could be done using a Stadia controller and chrome cast?
- jaywalk 6y ago
  Who's going to let random Internet users fly their very expensive drone?
  - ccozan 6y ago
    I smell a SaaS ( or FlightaaS ) here!
  - kevinsundar 6y ago
    This was actually a thing a couple years ago. I tried it out a couple times and it worked really well: https://www.flythere.com/ https://www.flythere.com/ Basically the gave you a big "box" of air space that had 0 obstacles that you could fly around in. It's impossible to crash the drone and it takes off / lands automatically.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  sit on the couch at home and fly through the Grand Canyon And ruin it for everyone who actually spent the effort to go there in person.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    This will be the reason they will start letting people bring shotguns to national parks.
- 05 6y ago
  Yeah it’s called a sim.
- kekeblom 6y ago
  Qualcomm recently released a platform which has 5G and decent compute, which could be used for this. https://www.qualcomm.com/products/qualcomm-robotics-rb5-platform https://www.qualcomm.com/products/qualcomm-robotics-rb5-plat... Likely would have to build some autonomy into the system to handle scenarios where the communication gets patchy or the user is about to crash into something. Now you only need to install 5G on the Grand Canyon.
huhtenberg 6y ago
Anyone's got it yet?
- tamu_nerd 6y ago
  Joshua Bardwell (a prominent FPV YouTuber) has a review video up. It looks very cool and performant. Unfortunately one of his units broke an arm after a relatively common looking crash during his review.
cromwellian 6y ago
Wait, why does the goggles look like VR goggles, but the drone only has 1 camera? Wouldn't this FPV system be way more awesome with binocular vision and head tracking? Imagine flying the drone, and moving your head would move the camera gimbals, and you'd experience it like you were in VR in the drone?
- FractalParadigm 6y ago
  >Wait, why does the goggles look like VR goggles, but the drone only has 1 camera? Funny, I was thinking the same when I watched the video. The optimist in me hopes there's a pair of lower-res stereo cameras located somewhere near the main camera (the one we can see) being specifically for shooting video? The way you described it is exactly how I thought it operated until I got further into the video. It's a great step forward in drones with added range, batter, etc, but the whole "first-person VR" shtick feels like it was only half-thought out and never changed during the design/implementation
  - bzzzt 6y ago
    Even some kind of 'splitter' for 3d vision like Panasonic had on their handheld videocamera range (VW-CLT2) would work I think...
- somehnguy 6y ago
  That's cool to imagine, but nobody does it in practice because it isn't nearly as cool when you're doing it as imagining it makes it out to be :) Fixed camera angles are the standard in FPV. Partly because the drone itself tilts to change direction so you would lose your orientation very quickly, and partly because that would just add fragility to the drone. Something you don't want when you're likely going to crash it often.
- michaelt 6y ago
  > Wouldn't this FPV system be way more awesome with binocular vision Human binocular vision depth perception is actually extremely short range. It varies from person to person, but some measurements put it as short as 10 feet [1] - beyond that, the mind starts depending on other cues [2] like motion and relative size. So the costs in bandwidth and hardware might not be worth it - getting your drone that close to things sounds like an expensive skill to learn :) [1] http://visionlab.psych.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2016/03/131_WatsonEnns_DepthPerception.pdf http://visionlab.psych.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2016/03/131_Wa... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_perception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_perception
purple_ferret 6y ago
Awesome. I look forward to these being obnoxious whenever I'm outside, trying to enjoy nature or any sort of attractive site.
habosa 6y ago
This looks like too much fun. Basically the X-Wing fights in Star Wars video games but in real life. Not looking forward to random people flying these around me at 60-90mph ... but I really want one!
whalesalad 6y ago
At $1299 this is a lot more affordable than I imagined it would be.
- josefresco 6y ago
  Honestly I was hoping for a package around $600-700 but DJI took this in another direction which is probably smart for their bottom line. I'm hoping in 1-2 years they'll have a "mini" or cheaper version.
kbos87 6y ago
DJI is such an impressive company. I know comparing anyone to Apple has been done to death, but I'd really be hard pressed to think of another company that comes closer. It also seems like they are following a similar playbook of blending hardware and software to deliver a fantastic, simplified experience - and they always deliver. It's not a wonder why they really don't have a legitimate competitor.
- ilyas121 6y ago
  Speaking from the experience of building drones, it's honestly black magic to me how they pull off their controls. I can't imagine kalman filtering yourself into such a great system as theirs. Unworldly.
- rasz 6y ago
  If you really want to be blown away read up on their annual RoboMasters competition where they recruits best students from best Chinese technical universities https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/27/13059144/dji-robomasters-robot-drone-battle-video-frank-wang-interview https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/27/13059144/dji-robomasters-...
pastelsky 6y ago
Imagine if FPV augmented reality gaming became a thing...
YoungWeb 6y ago
Beyond all the technical specification, this is just a cool looking drone. I remember as a kid thinking how cool it would be if I had a camera on an RC car. Now, we're flying first person through the sky. So cool.
korse 6y ago
It isn't the first offering. Teal drones gave it a shot some time back and has a pretty solid product with excellent performance. They didn't get many sales with the sport models and pivoted to military and industrial applications though. I worked for them for a moment... weird company and founder, but good engineering team. Also, does anyone have a solid guess as to what sort of restrictions this thing has on it? I like DJI for their mechanical engineering but their drones are way too locked down. Are we going to have to reverse engineer this one too for fun mode to be playable?
- ben7799 6y ago
  It's hard to imagine this thing not having the same GEO-zone lockouts as all the others. I have a DJI Mavic Mini and the lockouts are very, very strict. I can't fly it at ALL at my house outside. I wish there was a little more compromise.. in some cases it would be a heck of a lot useful if you could fly even with some draconian restriction like a 25ft max altitude. My house is in a restricted zone due to being on the flight path for an airport. But the airplanes come over my house around 150ft AGL. There are 75ft trees all the way around my property. I would have plenty of fun never going above 50ft in my yard, but DJI won't let me fly at all. Given it's speed this FPV model would have the largest capacity for mayhem of almost any DJI model, and since it's FPV you know there will be lots of people flying it without a spotter in violation of FAA regulations.. so it makes sense for it to be at least as locked down as the other models. I flew my drone over salt marshes near another airport that didn't have a tower over the weekend. Because it didn't have a tower it didn't have a "Red" zone near it and I could fly after acknowledging the risks. I was able to fly and keep my altitude < 20ft and it was still a ton of fun and I got some great pictures. I only flew for about 10 minutes, I saw one airplane, but it was ~100ft AGL and I was ~15ft AGL and had some horizontal separation from the plane, no harm done. This model looks insanely fun and I'd love to have one but realistically I bet I'd be in that situation a lot where I didn't have a spotter and couldn't fly it without knowingly breaking the rules. I didn't see anything in the material yet in terms of whether or not you can fly it line of sight without the goggles.
  - korse 6y ago
nitrogen 6y ago
Do these things come with instructions for how not to use them? I got pretty sick of the jerk who kept buzzing people's heads with an FPV drone last time I was at the beach.
AbraKdabra 6y ago
Lets be honest, that "N" mode is just "noob mode" but less aggressive.
freakynit 6y ago
This is great... finally dji going-in for the specs that makes us vow! Pricing surely could have been better though. At $1200+, it definitely is not cheap.
josefresco 6y ago
For those of you without $1300 to spend on an FPV drone, you can pick up a pretty decent package for about $250ish: https://betafpv.com https://betafpv.com As a new Mavic Mini owner, the one feature I'm craving for is FPV.
- 05 6y ago
  If you add up the costs of Nazgul5 HD (probably the cheapest BNF 5 inch HD kwad worth buying), DJI FPV goggles, a controller that you won’t outgrow in a month (either Radiomaster TX16s or Tango2), a charger, parallel board, lipos, a sim to practice acro, etc. you’ll probably reach something awfully similar to that $1300 price tag.
  - josefresco 6y ago
    Personally, I would start with something like this ($130): https://betafpv.com/products/fpv-whoop-racing-starter-kit-2 https://betafpv.com/products/fpv-whoop-racing-starter-kit-2 As opposed to replicating the package and capability of what DJI sells.
rglover 6y ago
"Citizen, get back in your pod. Citizen, get back in your pod. Your face has been recorded in the Problematic Citizens Database. You have one point left on your license."
djrogers 6y ago
Holy cats - 0-60 in 2seconds! This will be fun - and probably dangerous... sigh. How soon can I scratch together $1300?
dukeofdoom 6y ago
This is great. The biggest draw back seems to be the small image sensor on the camera. Not sure if its good enough to compete with gopro typically used in FPV in image quality.
eigenvalue 6y ago
The first-person view seems like it would be a total blast to try out-- basically every kid's dream toy. I would have given anything for something like that when I was 12 years old. But from a pragmatic standpoint of using the drone to capture video footage, I feel like having robust "self driving" capabilities (in particular, obstacle avoidance and smart target tracking) is more interesting. I was blown away recently watching footage of this new drone from a US based drone company, Skydio: https://skydio.com/skydio-2 https://skydio.com/skydio-2 I also like that there finally seems to be a decent alternative to DJI in the market-- it was a bit worrisome how much better DJI has been than everyone else.
- rasz 6y ago
  The difference is US startups releasing fake promotional/VC pitch videos vs DJI actually manufacturing and iterating over its designs for almost 10 years now. Here is how DJI recruits top talent https://www.robomaster.com/en-US https://www.robomaster.com/en-US https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/27/13059144/dji-robomasters-robot-drone-battle-video-frank-wang-interview https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/27/13059144/dji-robomasters-...
- hungryhobo 6y ago
  For the photography crowd, self flying just needs to be good enough, because you are controlling it most of the time anyways to get the shot you want. what's really important is image quality, when the mavic 2 came out it really blew me a way with the one inch sensor. It was incredible to see that kind of image produced by such a compact body.
  - rasz 6y ago
    When Mavic 2 Pro came out its camera was better than most stand alone prosumer 4K cameras, really mind blowing.
- 05 6y ago
  Note that Skydio isn't immune to thin branches - AFAIK no current tech can reliably detect them at distance sufficient for avoidance at high speeds. There are Youtube videos demonstrating Skydio crashes caused by these (and similar low visibility obstacles). Also note that while Skydio has technically superior avoidance tech (360 view vs forward only on DJI drones), it failed to capture non-negligible consumer market share and has pivoted to commercial drone niche.
crftr 6y ago
Is the distortion correction applied in the feed to the operator, or is it applied in post? With such fast movements in close quarters, I would love to see a global shutter.
tamu_nerd 6y ago
Very cool! I wonder how DJI justifies the R&D costs of this drone when it (and their existing lineup) could possibly be banned overnight by the looming UAS regulations? Where does this drone sit with regard to the current set of regulations? It will certainly at least need operator ID markings, yes?
colordrops 6y ago
Waiting for the stereoscopic version.
qqqturing1 6y ago
too bad you can't fly drones in germany with all the regulations. For FPV drones you have to have a second person "spotting" the drone and keeping line of sight. Complete bureaucratic nonsense.
Geee 6y ago
Doesn't it make you nauseous like VR?
- n3dm 6y ago
  No, it is no delay 120fps. The sickness induced from VR is primarily when the tracking is bad, then slow refresh rate of display, then screen door effect last. Something like this would make only screen door effect be the factor that makes one sick which is minimal for most.
renewiltord 6y ago
Amusing. Any time someone says some cool thing from a big company is "limiting for the experienced" I know it's probably a great product for me, the amateur.
gdubs 6y ago
I haven’t used this specifically, but I’ve been really impressed with the DJI brand overall. I got a Mavic Air 2 and a gimbal for photography from them this year, and have been very happy with the quality of both. (The gimbal, being more of a professional tool, was a bit annoying to setup.) They have bitten a lot of Apple’s packaging, presentation, and UX — which isn’t really a bad thing. (Imitation and flattery, and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, etc.) I’m intrigued by FPV, but I have no burning need for it right now — I’m mainly interested in cinematography and building maps of my property for farming, gardening, and architecture. One thing I would say: having a big property to learn on has been handy. It does concern me how flippant some are in this thread about barriers to entry and the risks. Until you get yourself into a hairy situation, you may not fully appreciate the risks.

DJI FPV

324 points by qkhhly 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

etaioinshrdlu 6y ago

Flying in VR is not good for motion sickness.

hmate9 6y ago
Not sure why downvoted. But it’s true, it’s not for everyone. I love my oculus but I can only play games in which I am stationary (my character doesn’t move unless I move in the real world) It’s a shame because this looks fantastic but I probably won’t be able to use it without getting motion sickness almost immediately.
- InvertedRhodium 6y ago
  I think this would suit itself to a 'cockpit' style overlay - I play a lot of Elite Dangerous in VR and know others that do too. It seems almost a perfect use-case for VR IMO.
- Guillaume86 6y ago
  It's not VR (no stereo image) it's just an easy portable way to have a big screen.
SimpleMinds 6y ago
Anectodal data point, if that helps, tested with 3 people I own Quest and DJI FPV system (not the drone from the link, but custom built with DJI FPV googles) - I can get dizzy in VR, but I won't in FPV unless I do a lot of crazy movement like spinning for a couple of seconds. Even when crashing which involves a lot of spin, it's fine - If I watch FPV while someone else is flying, I feel dizzy. It's not as fast as in VR, but still can happen Friends who tried had the same feeling. There's something in the connection between visual movement and your control of that movement via stick that helps alleviate dizzines. Hope that helps in case you were wondering!
Guillaume86 6y ago
It's not VR it's just like a normal screen strapped to your face (it's a simple image not stereo like VR does).
StavrosK 6y ago
As others have said, this is definitely not VR, it's like looking at a big screen strapped to your face. People in our group that have lots of trouble with VR have no problem with FPV.

Dave_Rosenthal 6y ago

There has been a huge divide in the drone world between high performance first person view (FPV) drones capable of acrobatics and the "tripod in the sky" type drones that companies like DJI have popularized. The former has been very DIY and the latter have attracted companies to build integrated solutions. This new drone from DJI brings an truly staggering amount of innovation and integration to the FPV space: - Low res analog video -> high res digital video - Modest transmission range -> long range - Integrated simulation to learn to fly - "Bail out" button that almost instantly nulls drone movement and puts it in a stationary hover - ~5 minutes fly time -> ~20 minutes fly time - Adjustable camera tilt on the fly to maintain level horizon at a variety of drone speeds (drone tilts more with speed) Extremely impressive first offering in this category.

LukaD 6y ago
> - Low res analog video -> high res digital video > - Modest transmission range -> long range Those are not really new. DJI has been selling their standalone digital FPV system for a while now. And there are lot's of different long range radio systems available. But I agree that this is impressive. I wonder if Betaflight, etc. will also implement some kind of bail out feature.
- bri3d 6y ago
  Betaflight already has very rudimentary RTH / "GPS Rescue" functionality, obviously without ground/forward sensors it's not as good, but it does work pretty well for "oh no something has gone wrong" in the form of video or control link loss.
Naomarik 6y ago
DJI digital video has been out for quite awhile now for hobbyists to include in their custom builds. Transmission range is not a valid point because a clean analog video signal and Crossfire outpaces DJI enormously. The 20 min flight time is a lie, Joshua Bardwell measured 10 minutes hovering. That's extremely easy to surpass on typical light weight 5 inch freestyle drone with a 1300mah battery that cost a fifth of the price of the DJI ones. It is an impressive drone, but for experienced FPV pilots it's very limiting.

erulabs 6y ago

Is this the first commercially available robotic projection device? I’ve been waiting patiently for VR+robotic applications - this project but controlling some Boston Dynamics is a terrifying military, or an amazing football team depending on how you look at it. Exciting!

hungryhobo 6y ago

Awesome controls, although a little disappointed in the image quality. Hoping for a v2 of this

prawn 6y ago
What of the image quality disappoints you? The example footage looked great to me, and 4k@60fps is the main thing missing from Mavic 2 that I wish it had.

klausjensen 6y ago

Holy sh*t that is amazing. I can't justify spending 1300EUR on it, unfortunately... :( I really like DJI and how innovative they have been in making awesome consumer products that just work and are super easy to use. I have owned a few.

jonathannat 6y ago
Interesting, so none of this bothers you DJI had been supplying drone technology to Chinese security forces in Xinjiang https://www.pcmag.com/news/us-blacklists-drone-maker-dji-over-alleged-human-rights-abuses https://www.pcmag.com/news/us-blacklists-drone-maker-dji-ove... Uighur camp detainees allege systematic rape https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071 Gang raped, shackled and broken students: Inside China’s ‘horrific’ Uighur detention camps https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-uighur-detention-camps-eyewitness-b1804804.html?utm_source=reddit.com https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-uighur-d...
- Yeri 6y ago
  That's horrible but not unique to DJI. Western companies have (knowingly, or not) taken advantage of the slavery as well [https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53481253 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53481253]. But the same could be said of big western tech (Amazon, Microsoft, etc) companies providing tech to western armies.
meheleventyone 6y ago
Don't worry I think there'll be a big second hand market for these after people get cocky and switch flight modes and stack it into the ground. :)

matsemann 6y ago

The motion controller reminds me of a project I made many years ago, where head tilting of an oculus rift would control the cameras on your drone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654141 Also cool that they have been embracing virtual practicing it seems. The original DJI controllers were impossible to pair with simulators, so I had to hack it: https://github.com/Matsemann/mDjiController/ https://github.com/Matsemann/mDjiController/ I sold (or basically gave away) all my home-made drone setup a year or so ago, after it being in a box for 3+ years. It was a hassle to set up, and very hard to fly and get good pictures and actually be in control (original DJI Phantom included). Cool tech and fun to hack on, but not very good UX heh. However I would still very much like to fly and film more, but then with some out-of-the-box-ready solutions. Modern ones seem to have obstacle avoidance, better hovering, tracking or point-to-point etc, so I can actually focus on the (for me, now) fun parts of filming the sports action. What are some good drones for that use-case? DJI alone has a big lineup now, hard to know which one is more fitting. And are there other contenders selling ready to use stuff? Thought GoPro had one but seems like they've stopped.

StavrosK 6y ago
Head trackers are cool, but DJI stuff is a step in the wrong direction there. Right now everything is open, you can write a small Arduino script to track your head with an accelerometer, send the channels through your radio to the drone, and add two servos there that move according to your head motions. With DJI, all of this is closed. I'd be surprised if you can connect/have access to any of these things.
- wpearse 6y ago
  DJI has a pretty comprehensive SDK, I’m pretty sure that they’ve published the tools you need to do this.
- 05 6y ago
  Well, nobody is stopping the community from making their own open source/open hardware OpenTX based motion flight controller, do they? Just like Naza32 didn’t prevent people from developing Cleanflight/Betaflight

dmitrygr 6y ago

50Mbit, 28ms latency wireless link at 12km distance, and on a battery budget, eh? I'd love to hear more, I love science fiction.

comboy 6y ago
Ocusync has been out for some time now and it already sounds like magic. I think when compared to wifi or some radio bridges it usually operates in much less congested environment. Nonetheless, if you think about frequencies used, energy going down with r^2 and bandwidth they are doing, it's an amazing feat even in ideal conditions. And here's it's a moving object, on battery, with four electromagnets around it.
- joezydeco 6y ago
  My son has a Mini2, the transmission range on this is pretty amazing. We were watching a neighbor's house over the holiday, which meant mostly checking for delivery boxes on their porch and putting them inside. We could drive the Mini2 out the window of our house and 2 blocks away to check the porch without getting out of our seats. And this is a suburban area full of houses, trees, and a shit ton of interference at the wifi/4G/LTE ranges. The video never lost a frame.
  - 0_____0 6y ago
    Boasting about flying beyond line of sight without a spotter in a cluttered residential neighborhood isn't going to score you many points among the drone enthusiast crowd.
    - joezydeco 6y ago
      Heh, true. Thanks.
      - 0_____0 6y ago
        No worries. If there's just one thing I want to get across though, it's that as drone operators, we are collectively responsible for how the broader community views us and drones. Random drones floating through neighborhoods is sketchy from a safety standpoint but also it tends to upset people, who often think that any drone they see is spying on them. Just a consideration. Personally I like to fly around abandoned buildings and decrepit structures. Lots of interesting flying to be done and cool vids to be taken, and there's nobody around to complain :)

PostThisTooFast 6y ago

Disappointing that there’s no HDMI input on the goggles for general use. Seems dumb.

sonium 6y ago

Why is the flight time at 40km/h roughly 1.4 times hovering time? One would expect drag reduces the efficiency...

lukastr0 6y ago
It's the same thing with helicopters, they need more power to hover than to fly forwards. It's called translational lift. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translational_lift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translational_lift

baby 6y ago

That’s impressive. I’m not sure I understand how you can still communicate and see the video feed even when the drone is far away.

matthew-wegner 6y ago
Long-range FPV builds can go out for miles--especially if you build specifically for that, and fly in areas with low radio noise like mountain ranges: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqDcd7cDv4Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqDcd7cDv4Y

wepple 6y ago

I’d love for someone to build an overIP bridge for this, so I can sit on the couch at home and fly through the Grand Canyon. I’d happily pay a reasonable sum for it. I wonder if it could be done using a Stadia controller and chrome cast?

jaywalk 6y ago
Who's going to let random Internet users fly their very expensive drone?
- ccozan 6y ago
  I smell a SaaS ( or FlightaaS ) here!
- kevinsundar 6y ago
  This was actually a thing a couple years ago. I tried it out a couple times and it worked really well: https://www.flythere.com/ https://www.flythere.com/ Basically the gave you a big "box" of air space that had 0 obstacles that you could fly around in. It's impossible to crash the drone and it takes off / lands automatically.
nitrogen 6y ago
sit on the couch at home and fly through the Grand Canyon And ruin it for everyone who actually spent the effort to go there in person.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  This will be the reason they will start letting people bring shotguns to national parks.
05 6y ago
Yeah it’s called a sim.
kekeblom 6y ago
Qualcomm recently released a platform which has 5G and decent compute, which could be used for this. https://www.qualcomm.com/products/qualcomm-robotics-rb5-platform https://www.qualcomm.com/products/qualcomm-robotics-rb5-plat... Likely would have to build some autonomy into the system to handle scenarios where the communication gets patchy or the user is about to crash into something. Now you only need to install 5G on the Grand Canyon.

huhtenberg 6y ago

Anyone's got it yet?

tamu_nerd 6y ago
Joshua Bardwell (a prominent FPV YouTuber) has a review video up. It looks very cool and performant. Unfortunately one of his units broke an arm after a relatively common looking crash during his review.

cromwellian 6y ago

Wait, why does the goggles look like VR goggles, but the drone only has 1 camera? Wouldn't this FPV system be way more awesome with binocular vision and head tracking? Imagine flying the drone, and moving your head would move the camera gimbals, and you'd experience it like you were in VR in the drone?

FractalParadigm 6y ago
>Wait, why does the goggles look like VR goggles, but the drone only has 1 camera? Funny, I was thinking the same when I watched the video. The optimist in me hopes there's a pair of lower-res stereo cameras located somewhere near the main camera (the one we can see) being specifically for shooting video? The way you described it is exactly how I thought it operated until I got further into the video. It's a great step forward in drones with added range, batter, etc, but the whole "first-person VR" shtick feels like it was only half-thought out and never changed during the design/implementation
- bzzzt 6y ago
  Even some kind of 'splitter' for 3d vision like Panasonic had on their handheld videocamera range (VW-CLT2) would work I think...
somehnguy 6y ago
That's cool to imagine, but nobody does it in practice because it isn't nearly as cool when you're doing it as imagining it makes it out to be :) Fixed camera angles are the standard in FPV. Partly because the drone itself tilts to change direction so you would lose your orientation very quickly, and partly because that would just add fragility to the drone. Something you don't want when you're likely going to crash it often.
michaelt 6y ago
> Wouldn't this FPV system be way more awesome with binocular vision Human binocular vision depth perception is actually extremely short range. It varies from person to person, but some measurements put it as short as 10 feet [1] - beyond that, the mind starts depending on other cues [2] like motion and relative size. So the costs in bandwidth and hardware might not be worth it - getting your drone that close to things sounds like an expensive skill to learn :) [1] http://visionlab.psych.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2016/03/131_WatsonEnns_DepthPerception.pdf http://visionlab.psych.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2016/03/131_Wa... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_perception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_perception

purple_ferret 6y ago

Awesome. I look forward to these being obnoxious whenever I'm outside, trying to enjoy nature or any sort of attractive site.

habosa 6y ago

This looks like too much fun. Basically the X-Wing fights in Star Wars video games but in real life. Not looking forward to random people flying these around me at 60-90mph ... but I really want one!

whalesalad 6y ago

At $1299 this is a lot more affordable than I imagined it would be.

josefresco 6y ago
Honestly I was hoping for a package around $600-700 but DJI took this in another direction which is probably smart for their bottom line. I'm hoping in 1-2 years they'll have a "mini" or cheaper version.

kbos87 6y ago

DJI is such an impressive company. I know comparing anyone to Apple has been done to death, but I'd really be hard pressed to think of another company that comes closer. It also seems like they are following a similar playbook of blending hardware and software to deliver a fantastic, simplified experience - and they always deliver. It's not a wonder why they really don't have a legitimate competitor.

ilyas121 6y ago
Speaking from the experience of building drones, it's honestly black magic to me how they pull off their controls. I can't imagine kalman filtering yourself into such a great system as theirs. Unworldly.
rasz 6y ago
If you really want to be blown away read up on their annual RoboMasters competition where they recruits best students from best Chinese technical universities https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/27/13059144/dji-robomasters-robot-drone-battle-video-frank-wang-interview https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/27/13059144/dji-robomasters-...

pastelsky 6y ago

Imagine if FPV augmented reality gaming became a thing...

YoungWeb 6y ago

Beyond all the technical specification, this is just a cool looking drone. I remember as a kid thinking how cool it would be if I had a camera on an RC car. Now, we're flying first person through the sky. So cool.

korse 6y ago

It isn't the first offering. Teal drones gave it a shot some time back and has a pretty solid product with excellent performance. They didn't get many sales with the sport models and pivoted to military and industrial applications though. I worked for them for a moment... weird company and founder, but good engineering team. Also, does anyone have a solid guess as to what sort of restrictions this thing has on it? I like DJI for their mechanical engineering but their drones are way too locked down. Are we going to have to reverse engineer this one too for fun mode to be playable?

ben7799 6y ago
It's hard to imagine this thing not having the same GEO-zone lockouts as all the others. I have a DJI Mavic Mini and the lockouts are very, very strict. I can't fly it at ALL at my house outside. I wish there was a little more compromise.. in some cases it would be a heck of a lot useful if you could fly even with some draconian restriction like a 25ft max altitude. My house is in a restricted zone due to being on the flight path for an airport. But the airplanes come over my house around 150ft AGL. There are 75ft trees all the way around my property. I would have plenty of fun never going above 50ft in my yard, but DJI won't let me fly at all. Given it's speed this FPV model would have the largest capacity for mayhem of almost any DJI model, and since it's FPV you know there will be lots of people flying it without a spotter in violation of FAA regulations.. so it makes sense for it to be at least as locked down as the other models. I flew my drone over salt marshes near another airport that didn't have a tower over the weekend. Because it didn't have a tower it didn't have a "Red" zone near it and I could fly after acknowledging the risks. I was able to fly and keep my altitude < 20ft and it was still a ton of fun and I got some great pictures. I only flew for about 10 minutes, I saw one airplane, but it was ~100ft AGL and I was ~15ft AGL and had some horizontal separation from the plane, no harm done. This model looks insanely fun and I'd love to have one but realistically I bet I'd be in that situation a lot where I didn't have a spotter and couldn't fly it without knowingly breaking the rules. I didn't see anything in the material yet in terms of whether or not you can fly it line of sight without the goggles.
- korse 6y ago

nitrogen 6y ago

Do these things come with instructions for how not to use them? I got pretty sick of the jerk who kept buzzing people's heads with an FPV drone last time I was at the beach.

AbraKdabra 6y ago

Lets be honest, that "N" mode is just "noob mode" but less aggressive.

freakynit 6y ago

This is great... finally dji going-in for the specs that makes us vow! Pricing surely could have been better though. At $1200+, it definitely is not cheap.

josefresco 6y ago

For those of you without $1300 to spend on an FPV drone, you can pick up a pretty decent package for about $250ish: https://betafpv.com https://betafpv.com As a new Mavic Mini owner, the one feature I'm craving for is FPV.

05 6y ago
If you add up the costs of Nazgul5 HD (probably the cheapest BNF 5 inch HD kwad worth buying), DJI FPV goggles, a controller that you won’t outgrow in a month (either Radiomaster TX16s or Tango2), a charger, parallel board, lipos, a sim to practice acro, etc. you’ll probably reach something awfully similar to that $1300 price tag.
- josefresco 6y ago
  Personally, I would start with something like this ($130): https://betafpv.com/products/fpv-whoop-racing-starter-kit-2 https://betafpv.com/products/fpv-whoop-racing-starter-kit-2 As opposed to replicating the package and capability of what DJI sells.

rglover 6y ago

"Citizen, get back in your pod. Citizen, get back in your pod. Your face has been recorded in the Problematic Citizens Database. You have one point left on your license."

djrogers 6y ago

Holy cats - 0-60 in 2seconds! This will be fun - and probably dangerous... sigh. How soon can I scratch together $1300?

dukeofdoom 6y ago

This is great. The biggest draw back seems to be the small image sensor on the camera. Not sure if its good enough to compete with gopro typically used in FPV in image quality.

eigenvalue 6y ago

The first-person view seems like it would be a total blast to try out-- basically every kid's dream toy. I would have given anything for something like that when I was 12 years old. But from a pragmatic standpoint of using the drone to capture video footage, I feel like having robust "self driving" capabilities (in particular, obstacle avoidance and smart target tracking) is more interesting. I was blown away recently watching footage of this new drone from a US based drone company, Skydio: https://skydio.com/skydio-2 https://skydio.com/skydio-2 I also like that there finally seems to be a decent alternative to DJI in the market-- it was a bit worrisome how much better DJI has been than everyone else.

rasz 6y ago
The difference is US startups releasing fake promotional/VC pitch videos vs DJI actually manufacturing and iterating over its designs for almost 10 years now. Here is how DJI recruits top talent https://www.robomaster.com/en-US https://www.robomaster.com/en-US https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/27/13059144/dji-robomasters-robot-drone-battle-video-frank-wang-interview https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/27/13059144/dji-robomasters-...
hungryhobo 6y ago
For the photography crowd, self flying just needs to be good enough, because you are controlling it most of the time anyways to get the shot you want. what's really important is image quality, when the mavic 2 came out it really blew me a way with the one inch sensor. It was incredible to see that kind of image produced by such a compact body.
- rasz 6y ago
  When Mavic 2 Pro came out its camera was better than most stand alone prosumer 4K cameras, really mind blowing.
05 6y ago
Note that Skydio isn't immune to thin branches - AFAIK no current tech can reliably detect them at distance sufficient for avoidance at high speeds. There are Youtube videos demonstrating Skydio crashes caused by these (and similar low visibility obstacles). Also note that while Skydio has technically superior avoidance tech (360 view vs forward only on DJI drones), it failed to capture non-negligible consumer market share and has pivoted to commercial drone niche.

crftr 6y ago

Is the distortion correction applied in the feed to the operator, or is it applied in post? With such fast movements in close quarters, I would love to see a global shutter.

tamu_nerd 6y ago

Very cool! I wonder how DJI justifies the R&D costs of this drone when it (and their existing lineup) could possibly be banned overnight by the looming UAS regulations? Where does this drone sit with regard to the current set of regulations? It will certainly at least need operator ID markings, yes?

colordrops 6y ago

Waiting for the stereoscopic version.

qqqturing1 6y ago

too bad you can't fly drones in germany with all the regulations. For FPV drones you have to have a second person "spotting" the drone and keeping line of sight. Complete bureaucratic nonsense.

Geee 6y ago

Doesn't it make you nauseous like VR?

n3dm 6y ago
No, it is no delay 120fps. The sickness induced from VR is primarily when the tracking is bad, then slow refresh rate of display, then screen door effect last. Something like this would make only screen door effect be the factor that makes one sick which is minimal for most.

renewiltord 6y ago

Amusing. Any time someone says some cool thing from a big company is "limiting for the experienced" I know it's probably a great product for me, the amateur.

gdubs 6y ago

I haven’t used this specifically, but I’ve been really impressed with the DJI brand overall. I got a Mavic Air 2 and a gimbal for photography from them this year, and have been very happy with the quality of both. (The gimbal, being more of a professional tool, was a bit annoying to setup.) They have bitten a lot of Apple’s packaging, presentation, and UX — which isn’t really a bad thing. (Imitation and flattery, and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, etc.) I’m intrigued by FPV, but I have no burning need for it right now — I’m mainly interested in cinematography and building maps of my property for farming, gardening, and architecture. One thing I would say: having a big property to learn on has been handy. It does concern me how flippant some are in this thread about barriers to entry and the risks. Until you get yourself into a hairy situation, you may not fully appreciate the risks.