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DJI Drone Flies over the Top of Mount Everest

• lizardactivist 4y ago
  It's a shame you can't even look at some spectacular drone footage without having to wade through a swamp of baseless accusations and petty hate, just because the camera drone is made by a Chinese company.
  • eldaisfish 4y ago
    I share this sentiment. it is flat out hate against groups of people at this point. Sure, there is credible evidence of the Chinese government doing horrible things and influencing corporate decisions but hating all Chinese products is just... stupid at this point. Exact same issue with the blind hate towards ordinary Russians.
    • lizardactivist 4y ago
      And all the stupid hate against US Americans because of the horrific things their government continues to do to this very day, don't you agree?
      • rocket_surgeron 4y ago
        Yes, and? Americans know our country is shitty. One of the top stories on hacker news RIGHT NOW is about how the life expectancy is plummeting because we’re all fat and addicted to something while being trapped in a shitty health care system. Chinese get so goddamned butthurt and defensive it is like they are mentally ill battered wives defending their abuser.
        • lizardactivist 4y ago
          Can you show some of these comments where Chinese people get butthurt because people shit-talk Chinese companies? Are those comments here on HN? I've been on the Internet many years and see a lot of people getting butthurt when they read about China excelling at things, and generally the Chinese themselves are next to non-existant, at least here on the Western side of the net.
          • rocket_surgeron 4y ago
            Besides the the comment I replied to? Whataboutism is prima facie, irrefutable, unquestionable evidence of butthurtism. The phenomenon is so prevalent that the phrase 伤害中国人民的感情 causes newspaper editors and online commenters to roll their eyes because if you publish an article about how heavy rain has caused flooding in a province somewhere a dozen state-controlled media outlets and ten thousand weibo posters will drone on about 中国人民的感情. https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=伤害中国人民的感情&op=translate https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=伤害中国人民的感情&o... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/08/you-should-consider-our-feelings-for-chinese-students-the-state-is-an-extension-of-family https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/08/you-sh...
            • lizardactivist 4y ago
              "Whataboutism" is not the ace-in-the-sleeve you think it is. It's tucking the tail between the legs and stubbornly refuse to acknowledge defeat, because once the blatant hypocrisy has been pointed out there's nothing sensible to respond with. But I see what level you're taking this to: anyone who disagrees with the agenda is a Chinese or Russian spy.
  • icoder 4y ago
    You can look at that footage without even tiptoeing the swamp. To read the comments might be a different story, although by the time I got here it was quite ease to stay on dry land, which may have been different for you. Then again, it's not about China, it's about a country with a regime that gives zero transparency and seemingly gives little about privacy regulation, and which has brought forth at least one big electronics company that's being blocked from big parts of western markets for fear of information (in)security. Now, all that might be up for debate by itself, but you can hardly blame people extrapolate from that.
    • lizardactivist 4y ago
      Your second paragraph describes the US more accurately than China, I think.
• themodelplumber 4y ago
  > A DJI Mavic drone was used a few years ago to aid in a rescue operation on K2 Are drone rescue-assist stories collected somewhere? I dreamed about this kind of thing all the time as a kid and now that it's actually happening I want the details! Congrats to DJI.
  • m4jor 4y ago
    Consumer drones have reached the point of insane use cases that I dont think a lot ever believed possible. They are being used in the Ukraine/Russia conflict atm by each side for spotting and dropping grenades and mortar shells. They are doing it by rigging them up with cheap aftermarket parts and then rigging the AUX light on/off to trigger the drop. They are also being used in other conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and Myanmar. They quite literally have changed warfare because they are so affordable. Really interesting overall. Will be interesting to see this all morphs into.
    • Maursault 4y ago
      Be prepared for your interest to taper. I expect the anti- or counter- drone technology is a little more expensive, but it exists, a lot, so drone warfare has technically been stalemated already. I think this is a good thing, leaving most of the interesting bits in earnest ethical discussion.
      • waste_monk 4y ago
        Apparently flak guns are predicted to become useful again (in the sense of anti-aircraft artillery), as anti-drone weapons.
        • lazide 4y ago
          The issue is collateral damage. Using a flak gun to take out a drone flying 20 ft over a crowds head at 120mph is going to probably do far more damage than the drone would.
• senectus1 4y ago
  heh, I bet the battery performance was below par :-D actually I wonder what the ambient temp is up there compared to say the surface of mars
  • hackcasual 4y ago
    It's an interesting question. Radiant heating from the sun should be improved, and the lower air density should slow heat loss due to conduction
    • Maursault 4y ago
      > the lower air density should slow heat loss due to conduction Also, propellers have to work harder with less air density. More work, more heat.
  • dmd 4y ago
    You wonder? It specifically mentions that.
• agloeregrets 4y ago
  I kinda wonder how much altitude factors into vertical climb performance and hover.
  • teeray 4y ago
    Quite a bit. It directly affects the amount of lift the props are able to produce. I would imagine they probably used props with more aggressive pitch than the stock ones.
  • magicalhippo 4y ago
    Current Formula 1 cars go the fastest in Mexico City, which is the track at the highest elevation on the current calendar at 2200m[1]. The engine lacks power due to the thinner air, but the reduced drag more than makes up for it. So the thrust produced by the propellers on the drone should be considerably lower at the same RPM, but they might spin a fair bit faster if the engine can handle it, which would compensate. I too would be interested to know how it works out in practice. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aut%C3%B3dromo_Hermanos_Rodr%C3%ADguez https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aut%C3%B3dromo_Hermanos_Rodr%C...
    • mlsu 4y ago
      That same trade off exists in an extreme form with the copter that flew on Mars! Same volume of air pushed through the props, much lower density, and as you say, much higher RPM.
  • sbf501 4y ago
    The latter needs to be done for all drone builds. Its quite simple: turn on manual mode, turn on blackbox recording, record hover throttle setting; enter this value in the firmware via the Mavic/CLI interface. Pretty simple. Surprised they didn't use ArduPilot or PX4 (or even iNav) all three of which are just as good as DJI, completely open source and wildly easy to configure.
    • usrusr 4y ago
      > Surprised they didn't use ArduPilot or PX4 (or even iNav) all three of which are just as good as DJI, completely open source and wildly easy to configure. Smaller sponsoring budgets. Tweaking the drone a little is not the hard part, the hard part is walking up there and funding everything required to do so.
• saagarjha 4y ago
  It seems like someone brought up the drone and then flew it around near the summit. Knowing very little about the current state of drones, would it be feasible for one to take off from a high-altitude camp instead and truly “fly over” Everest?
  • hnuser123456 4y ago
    Top-end parts can produce over a 10:1 thrust to weight ratio on performance drones at sea level. I would expect that's still enough to at least hover at the summit of Everest, and if not with the exact same specs, then with larger-than-sea-level-optimal propeller.
    • orangepurple 4y ago
      The batteries required to get up that far would make a 10:1 thrust to weight ratio difficult to attain if starting from low elevation. Plus Everest has strong wind shear and cold temps, both of which are extremely taxing on batteries. That said, this guy flew his drone to 40,900 feet from the ground in the wintertime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6QL0VjqYgI&t=0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6QL0VjqYgI&t=0s
      • diimdeep 4y ago
        This was almost 4 years ago, I bet that today someone could fly even higher. > The flight took place on January 3, 2019, near the Strezhevoy city, Tomsk Region, RUSSIA. (Western Siberia). My goal was to overcome the record height for rotary-winged machines (According to Wikipedia: June 21, 1972, the French pilot Jean Bulet raised the Aérospatiale SA.315B Lama helicopter to a height of 12,442 meters), which was completely possible. My drone reached a height of 12,467 meters from ground level as measured by GPS and 12,925 meters from ground level as measured by a barometer, which is standard for aviation.
  • Aperocky 4y ago
    The battery is probably the limit here, climbing consumes a lot of battery, I would imagine quite a lot more in thin air.
• Mockapapella 4y ago
  Aren't there international rules that ban flights over Mount Everest due to it being sacred to the local populace or something like that? Do they apply to drones?
  • ulfw 4y ago
    You can't tell me flying a tiny drone over the mountain top could in any way shape or form be worse than trashing the whole mountain. Not sure how 'sacred' that is https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/06/06/mount-everest-garbage-pounds-waste-human-bodies/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/06/06/mount-evere...
    • bongoman37 4y ago
  • hackernewds 4y ago
    Mount Everest is in Nepal. The Nepali people are far too chill to be offended by this. However, I'm sure others will be on their behalf :)
  • StringyBob 4y ago
    There was a general rule banning drones from Sagamartha national park, but actually you just need a permit. However if you are going over Everest, you are crossing the border from Nepal to Tibet (China), so you would have more of a challenge getting approval there. In general though drones qualify as ‘quite annoying’, in national parks - particularly in areas like peaks or base camps where others are present.
  • yosito 4y ago
    Do you think the police are gonna roll up at the top of Everest, see someone flying a drone, and confiscate it? The worst I could possibly imagine happening is that later when the footage is released the authorities demand payment of a fine. And even if you were forced to or decided to pay the fine, that seems like it would be insignificant in light of climbing the worlds tallest mountain. In other words, who cares?
• praveen9920 4y ago
  I still wonder at the fact that reaching or flying a drone on a place on earth is still an "almost impossible" feat when humans are going out to space or even other planets to explore. I understand the science, I still can't comprehend the fact. These small things are reminder that there is lot of exploration left for human kind.
  • ehnto 4y ago
    Imagine the points in the wilderness we haven't truly explored due to lack of safe passage. Valleys or caves or even just particularly dense forest. I am not sure we would discover much new, but I do enjoy the fact that we haven't been everywhere. The internet can make it feel like all possible exploration has been done, reduced to datapoints and photos.
    • ezconnect 4y ago
      We couldn't find a 777 plane in an ocean. Maybe technology made us feel the earth is small.
      • onion2k 4y ago
        The area of the Pacific is 386,900,000,000 times larger than the wing area of a 777.
        • scoopertrooper 4y ago
          And given what we do know (various wing bits have washed up on beaches), those wings broke apart on impact.
        • praveen9920 4y ago
          We are talking area, we didn’t consider depth. We should change the idiom to “searching 777 in pacific”
        • mkl 4y ago
          Just as well it went missing in the much smaller Indian Ocean then! A surprising amount of that ocean was searched in some way or other in the year following MH370's disappearance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370#/media/File:MH370_SIO_search.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370#/...), but pieces of plane are still pretty small in comparison.
• computator 4y ago
  I've seen hundreds of photos from the summit looking out, thousands of photos looking toward the summit from below, but this is the first time I saw a photo that really gives a feel for how much room there is at the summit. The point in the video shortly after he releases the drone at 1min 57sec feels like seeing the Earth from a spaceship or satellite for first time -- it's a perspective I'd never seen before.
  • eps 4y ago
    Zoom-out at 1:11 is equally insane.
  • Seb-C 4y ago
    Because of it's geography (only high peak in a plain), climbing mount Fuji gave me pretty much the same vibe, except that the landscape is quite different and it's doable by most people without risking your life.
  • ansible 4y ago
    Agreed. I've watched a few Everest documentaries over the years. The camera work in the ones I saw doesn't quite give me an overall sense of the space. This was very nice to see.
  • ftcHn 4y ago
    I got the same feeling. Would have loved to see more of that shot as they followed the path from the summit down.
• skybrian 4y ago
  Is the raw footage posted somewhere? I don't why people try to "improve" on it, the editing spoils it as far as I'm concerned.
  • throwaway742 4y ago
    Agreed. I would have enjoyed it a lot more without all the editing and music. I just wanted to see the one flight.
  • vanderZwan 4y ago
    So. Many. Terrible. Cuts. It's just "mountain mountain mountain" to me without the slightest bit of coherence or sense of place.
    • brian_cunnie 4y ago
      Agreed. I couldn't finish watching it because of the excessive cuts.
      • mav88 4y ago
        Same here. Very annoying editing. Mountain footage is best when it's sweeping, languid and relaxed. Just as I was identifying a location it would cut. Hope there's raw footage out of this.
  • wil421 4y ago
    It has more cuts than a Michael Bay action scene. I can barely take in the scenery due to 3 seconds cuts.
    • ape4 4y ago
      Possibly so many cuts because it couldn't fly for very long.
      • dougmwne 4y ago
• jasonhansel 4y ago
  • solardev 4y ago
    Weren't the Ukrainians also using drones?
    • 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
      but.... underdogs
  • scoopertrooper 4y ago
    ISIS used to use them as well. The sad truth is that drones are inherently dual use and there's nothing that can be done to stop that.
    • solardev 4y ago
      Yeah, DJI is like the Microsoft/Apple/Google of drones... just a big standard company that everyone uses. Reminds me this photo of the North Korean dictator guy using a Mac to carry out his shenanigans: https://www.businessinsider.com/brand-new-photo-confirms-that-kim-jong-un-is-a-mac-user-2013-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/brand-new-photo-confirms-tha... I mean, yeah, he uses a telephone too and has a bog-standard photo frame. Some things are just commodities now... consumer drones are arguably like that. Doesn't really matter that it's DJI or any other company. Unless there are export restrictions on non-Chinese drones...? But lol, are there even any non-Chinese consumer drone manufacturers still in business or did DJI eat them all?
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• throwaway290 4y ago
  How likely the drone was modified? Hard to believe DJI would let them fly vanilla drone in conditions well outside specified range knowing if it failed they would lose whatever money it took to sponsor the ascent.
  • bamboozled 4y ago
    I agree, I've used these drones on top of mountains > 2000M in really cold conditions, nowhere near as cold as the summit of Everest and we always say thanks to the mountain gods for her safe return. But it's always precarious with the wind and diminished battery life. The top of mount Everest with a standard unmodified model? Skeptical.
• schaefer 4y ago
  This is not how you do tasteful expedition sponsorship. I want to hear about the Athletes and their story first and foremost. Exactly how many times does DJI shove their brand name or their product name in our faces in this footage? The Athletes themselves are mentioned practically as a footnote. And some not even by name but by social media handle. That's beyond icky, imo.
  • ceejayoz 4y ago
    Hundreds of bored middle aged people summit Everest annually. There's not all that much new to learn about the experience; it's not the feat of atheticism the first attempts involved. > And some not even by name but by social media handle. That may be their preference.
    • aero-glide2 4y ago
      >it's not the feat of atheticism the first attempts involved Very misleading statement, you still need to train many years.
    • aero-glide2 4y ago
      To show what I mean, this is what will happen if someone decides to go to Everest after reading your comment :https://youtube.com/shorts/QFrvWS7dGHs https://youtube.com/shorts/QFrvWS7dGHs
      • ceejayoz 4y ago
        I can find videos of people dying in car crashes, too, but that doesn't make every soccer mom in a minivan the equivalent of an F1 driver. Everything involves risk. Yes, you can die on Everest if you're unprepared, or unlucky. The same can happen in the Adirondacks. I'm far more interested in the stories of folks like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirmal_Purja https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirmal_Purja than plain old Everest summiters, which has been conquered by folks from age 13 to 80, double amputees, and the blind. (Those folks, I'm interested in. Tech CEOs looking for a thrill? Nah.)
  • 4y ago
• baskethead 4y ago
  How did they get to the summit without there being a traffic jam? I thought it was supposed to be packed with people all the time these days
  • qbasic_forever 4y ago
    The traffic jams are during the peak guided climbing season in May. AFAIK they've made changes to the number of permits given per year now so there should be less traffic on the mountain.
    • dewey 4y ago
      This and the “viral” picture of the jam was also after a bad weather period where a small window opened up and everyone from the camps had to go.
• runnr_az 4y ago
  Here's an earlier drone effort on k2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoTDf0W911E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoTDf0W911E [K2 Ski Descent with Andrzej Bargiel]
  • pilina 4y ago
    Here's another from 2016 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzLWdNfNj-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzLWdNfNj-4 [K2 with a drone, Petr Jan Juračka]
• Donckele 4y ago
  Have to say, the video footage and editing was terrible. I suppose thats what you get when you’re sponsored and the important thing is the product placement.
  • tourist2d 4y ago
    Did you click on a wrong link? Lol DJI made the video, did they sponsor themselves? They don't even show the drone in the video so I don't know where you're seeing product placement.
    • Donckele 4y ago
      LOL…lipop! Did you read the article?
    • capableweb 4y ago
      It's unclear who did the editing of the video, but the marketing push of the video is definitely by DJI, and the actual capture of the video (and the Everest journey) was done by 8KRAW FILMS. Original video is at their own YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnFI8lUGeks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnFI8lUGeks
    • kzrdude 4y ago
      They show it when he's sitting at the summit and launching the drone.
• Tronno 4y ago
  A reminder that DJI's mobile flight control app ("DJI Fly") was removed from the Google Play store over 1.5 years ago. The company officially wants you to sideload an APK downloaded from their website. No clear explanation has been given. https://forum.dji.com/thread-256590-1-1.html https://forum.dji.com/thread-256590-1-1.html There's a joke about red flags somewhere in there.
  • radicaldreamer 4y ago
    It’s due to US sanctions: “DJI drones were sanctioned under US Commerce Department and US Treasury Department regulations in 2020 and 2021. It is now illegal for any person within the United States to: Purchase any goods or services directly from SZ DJI Technology Co. Export certain data to DJI's servers in China.”
    • Tronno 4y ago
      DJI Fly is still listed on the Apple App Store. Would the same laws not apply?
      • radicaldreamer 4y ago
        You’d think so, but Apple gets special treatment (by both the US and Chinese government). See: Apple’s secret deal to fund Chinese technology development and how US customs ensures nobody but Apple can import even genuine Apple parts and merch.
        • Tronno 4y ago
          Are you implying that Apple would openly flaunt US sanctions for the benefit of a Chinese company? I find that hard to believe. DJI themselves have publicly blamed "the compatibility strategy between the DJI App and Google Play Store", without elaborating. There's been no mention of US sanctions from DJI or Google.
  • solardev 4y ago
    Possibly related: I thought the US banned DJI for a while? They got sucked in to Trump's Chinese dragnet, I think... https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/23/22193660/us-government-dji-drone-entity-list-export-ban-effects https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/23/22193660/us-government-d...
• keepquestioning 4y ago
  How was it ever confirmed that Everest was truly the highest peak on Earth?
  • justinator 4y ago
    Yes, using geometry, theodolites, and GPS. The second highest point, K2 isn't all that close at well under 750' of the height of Everest. New LiDAR measurements are shaking up some of the heights and thus rankings of peaks in Colorado, which is sort of interesting in a more mundane way, https://listsofjohn.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1411 https://listsofjohn.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1411
• eimrine 4y ago
  Was it powered by Lithium batteries without extra heating? There might be cold over Everest, and Lithium batteries use to have not full capacity under such conditions.
• worldshit 4y ago
  Can't escape noise even at the top of the world...
• hunglee2 4y ago
  So this is how you advertise a product - fly it over Mt Everest and give everyone the birds eye view of the tallest point on earth. Suspect DJI will shift some models of the Mavic 3...
• AngeloAnolin 4y ago
  Some questions: 1. Was this sponsored by DJI, which they could potentially use for any of their promotional / advertising efforts? 2. Is there a raw version? I would think that there should be more shakiness or variability in the captured footage, given the high altitude and assumption that the air flow would easily disrupt the flight of the drone. 3. What period of the year was this taken? Usually you'd hear that Mt. Everest is always packed with mountaineers, and being able to get a shot with very few people on the mountain slopes is quite uncommon. Side note: This is a spectacular feat - man and machine.
  • landr0id 4y ago
    I mean, the video is on DJI's official YouTube channel. Definitely sponsored.
  • hcrean 4y ago
    Regarding (2.) The gimbals on DJI drones are actually crazy good! As is the flight stabilisation and on-drone EIS. They make sub-millimetre and sub-arcsecondary orientation corrections every couple of milliseconds. When you put these all together you find that you rarely have to stabilise footage in post.
  • josu 4y ago
    Re 2 The camera is mounted on one of the best gimbals available. The DJI drones also do an amazing job at being stable during windy conditions. And sure, there could be some additional video editing later, but probably marginal.
  • stavros 4y ago
    As others said, and from personal experience, yeah, neither the camera nor the drone itself will move, even in high winds. It's amazing.
  • glawre 4y ago
    Regarding question 3, this would have been shot during the Spring climbing season. This year had an unusually long period of calm weather, which allowed the ~250 climbers and ~600 Sherpas to summit over the course of 12 days. The vast majority of climbers ascend from the southeast route (from Nepal), with a smaller number ascending from the northeast (Tibetan) route. I can't tell for sure which direction the drone is flying in, but some clever piloting may have helped here.
• quickthrower2 4y ago
  If batteries and props have such issues in the cold and thin air why not use a small jet engine and some wings?
  • progman32 4y ago
    Are you familiar with such a commercially-available alternative?
    • stavros 4y ago
      No, but I can build one in a day.
• beilabs 4y ago
  I have to wonder if they had a permit for this. In Nepal drone flying is illegal; they confiscate drones. The mountain range is a holy place.
  • weatherlite 4y ago
    But leaving dying people on the ground as you continue to push through to the summit is fine...well Everest is a crazy place I guess
    • beilabs 4y ago
      The people making the laws are usually not climbing the mountain. It doesn't change that the mountain range is a holy place for the people of Nepal.
      • weatherlite 4y ago
        So a bunch of corpses and tons of climbing trash does not desecrate the place but flying a drone does?
  • Gare 4y ago
    Half of the mountain is in Tibet/China, and DJI is a Chinese company. But climbing from Tibetan side is a bit more challenging.
• simonebrunozzi 4y ago
  Side topic: DJI is the clear market leader, and it's also a Chinese company. Is there a viable alternative for EU customers that are sensible about the geopolitical aspects of this? I also looked at some open source firmware, but didn't find anything particularly appealing. e.g. [0] [0]: https://www.parrot.com/en/open-source-drone-software https://www.parrot.com/en/open-source-drone-software
  • palata 4y ago
    Parrot Anafi is pretty nice. Haven't tried the Anafi Ai though. That won't be a Mavic, but that's european, and really not bad. Open source would be PX4, Ardupilot and BetaFlight, pretty much. But there you need to build your own frame.
    • ChemSpider 4y ago
      Anafi is still "made in China": https://parrotpilots.com/threads/parrot-anafi-is-made-in-china.3971/ https://parrotpilots.com/threads/parrot-anafi-is-made-in-chi...
      • jokowueu 4y ago
        That's not the issue here . Almost everything is made in china . People here care if it's a Chinese company or not.
        • texasbigdata 4y ago
          Perhaps a little pedantic but as a thought experiment, if ABC corp was awesome at drones and wanted to solely manufacture in China, but in order to do so was forced to form ABC_China_LLC and transfer al the IP and know-how, how would you feel about it then? It's like a reverse "what if China invades Taiwan and takes TSMC".
          • jokowueu 4y ago
            The main threat here is CPP's control/influence over the company's action not that it's a Chinese company specifically . https://www.seafarerfunds.com/prevailing-winds/party-committees-in-chinese-companies/ https://www.seafarerfunds.com/prevailing-winds/party-committ... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/technology/who-owns-huawei.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/technology/who-owns-huawe...
• lovelearning 4y ago
  Not knowing much about drones, I had no idea consumer drones can fly that high! Apparently, the maximum spec height is 6 km which is impressive on its own. And this thing went 3 km higher than the spec. I had always assumed they can't rise above two or three thousand feet max.
  • hotpotamus 4y ago
    The most impressive drone going now to me is the one NASA put on Mars since it's working at the equivalent atmospheric pressure of around 100,000 feet, though the lower gravity helps it out. Obviously it's not a consumer drone, but it used as much off-the-shelf gear as possible - I think I remember reading it just uses a few Sony 18650 lithium ion cells like you might find in your cordless drill.
    • ansible 4y ago
      Yep. The rotors on Ingenuity spin much faster than a normal drone. They actually had a short test hop recently: https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/status/ https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/status/
• ubermonkey 4y ago
  What's really amazing is that they used a $2,000 drone, not something super super high end and specialized and out of reach. Plenty of hobby photographers have camera bodies, or combinations of camera body and lens, that cost that much. I have waded into the drone space recently. I had my eye on them (specifically DJI; they're clearly the leader) for a while (hobby photographer; lover of tech toys), but every time I looked in the past they were too expensive for me to justify. My uncle had one that as $1200 or so, and then a friend had one at like $600, and then just before we were going on vacation to Scotland I looked again and -- HOLY CRAP -- there's a model at $299. Sold. It's the DJI Mini SE, and you DO give up some stuff vs. the next level (about $500), but most of it is the drop from 4K video to "merely" HD. (There's also reduced range, which might end up mattering more.) OTOH $299 is for me a point where, if I fuck it up, I can be sanguine about it. It's INSANELY easy and fun to use. I got comfortable enough to send it far out over lochs, and to learn to trust its "return to home" function when flying in places where line of sight might obstruct the signal. If you haven't played with one you probably wonder how it handles losing a solid connection with the operator, and the answer is that, at least at this level, it remembers where it launched from, heads to a previously-set height (to avoid obstacles) and then comes home. At some point en route it'll re-acquire a connection and you can take back over. (Higher-end models (like the one they took to Everest) are able to navigate around obstacles and fly a more complex path home, but hey, this is the $299 model.) I'm happy to share the video I shot but not publicly here. PM me (is that a thing?) if you want a link. And if you plan to travel somewhere beautiful where drone flight isn't severely restricted, I strongly suggest you consider getting one, China or not.
  • Aperocky 4y ago
    The smaller drone is awesome for me, small form factor, low enough price and good enough camera. I use a mini 2 and my best use case has been flying and having it follow me while I'm paddleboarding, great footage that I'd never thought I'd get before I got the drone.
    • patall 4y ago
      What kind of follow me do you use? As I understand, the mini 2 doesn't have it by default, or was that an update? Are you using Litchi?
• jliptzin 4y ago
  Direct link to the video if you’re not in the mood to be bombarded with 17,000 ads on that awful site https://youtu.be/Zz9oI3B6v4c https://youtu.be/Zz9oI3B6v4c
• ryanmercer 4y ago
  It's crazy how far consumer, affordable consumer, tech has come.
• thecrumb 4y ago
  I don't see anything special here. It's a bunch of short edited clips. I could do that with my crappy homebuilt quad LOL I want to see someone take off from base camp and land at the summit. Would love to see a more technical look at how they did this, what issues they ran into, etc. Really curious about batteries in the cold.
• irrational 4y ago
  I feel like I need an annotated version. This is like looking at someone’s vacation photos, but you have no clue what you are looking at since you have never been there. I not even sure which mountain is Everest.
• saiya-jin 4y ago
  Few remarks - drone (Mavic Pro 1st gen IIRC, with modified firmware) was used on neighboring Broad peak and not K2 rescue few years ago. Polish drone operator in base camp tried to help rescue efforts looking for climber lost while descending it. While they were there to film extremely amazing first skiing of K2, they tried to help when news about lost climber reached the base camp. It was great success, the guy would otherwise die considering where he was and in what state. Then they filmed the ski descent of K2 by Andrzej Bargiel, a stunning achievement considering the exertion under no-O2 and how brutal the terrain is. Most people coming down K2 can barely walk, and plenty die on descents due to this over-exertion. They kept using the drone for quick carrying of ie medicine to higher camps, scanning the route down for skiing etc. In most places, 1 small mistake in those difficult snow conditions would be fatal,and due to weight the extremely lightweight ski equipment used required very high skiing level.
• fennecfoxy 4y ago
  *DJI Drone brought up near the top of Everest by climbers, taking short clips in the air along the way. Title makes it sounds like the drone flew itself up and over the summit from the base of the mountain, which is clearly not true.
• codyathez 4y ago
  Why are so many people malicious towards China, is it hard to admit?